If workers at Chrysler factories across the country walk off the job this morning, Chrysler will be able to weather the short-term effects of the strike as it has at least three months’ worth of most vehicles in stock and has shut half of its U.S. assembly plants this week to let those inventories thin out, the New York Times reported today. Its most important new vehicles, a pair of minivans and the Jeep Wrangler, would keep rolling off assembly lines, because the Wrangler factory in Ohio has a separate labor contract and one of the two minivan factories is in Canada. Today’s strike deadline, at 11 a.m. ET, comes on the same day that voting on the union’s tentative agreement with General Motors is scheduled to finish. As of yesterday, most GM union locals had approved the deal, reached Sept. 26 after a two-day strike.

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The United Automobile Workers union and General Motors remained at odds on key issues, even as the union acknowledged the need for talks to move more quickly toward a settlement, the New York Times reported today. Talks recessed in the fourth session since the UAW’s contract with GM expired at 12:01 a.m. on Saturday. The negotiations were set to resume on Wednesday. The UAW’s contract with GM has been extended hour by hour. Contracts at Ford Motor and Chrysler have been extended indefinitely. The stop-and-start nature of the discussions suggested the two sides were still far apart on a deal that would cover GM’s 73,000 workers in the United States. The primary issue is the creation of a health care trust that would assume responsibility for $55 billion in benefits for employees, retirees and their families. The major sticking point appeared to be the way the trust would be financed. Normally such a trust, called a voluntary employee benefit association, or VEBA, is financed with a combination of cash, stock and possibly real estate.