The U.S automobile industry has seen less eventful times. Apart from Japanese rival firms like Toyota and Honda hotting up the competition by offering the most fuel-efficient cars, one of North America’s largest workers’ unions is bang in the middle of a series of strikes.

The United Auto Workers’ Union has ended a short strike at Chrysler finishing up just seven hours after it began. The latest strike saw very little financial damage to Chrysler as it turned out to be so short even though 32,000 workers took part. The strike came just weeks after the September 24 strike at General Motors (GM) which lasted two days and cost the company $100 million a day.

Analysts had been predicting that the Chrysler, now largely privately owned by private equity firm Cerberus Capital Management LP, could take a tougher stance with the union. They had said the company’s lack of institutional shareholders demanding resolution to stop plummeting share prices could potentially put it in a very different bracket from both GM and Ford Motor Company which are public companies. But those predictions ultimately didn’t hold true as the union announced it had reached a ‘tentative’ agreement with the corporation, one of the highest-paying automakers.

The issues at stake in the Chrysler negotiations were along the same lines as those between the union and GM – healthcare for active employees and their families, the setting –up of union-controlled trust fund for the healthcare of future retirees, as well as guarantees that new products will be built at UAW-staffed factories.

Industry watchers are certain union workers are now training their sights towards Ford Motors, the last of the beleaguered U.S automakers. Ford, the second-largest U.S. automaker, announced a staggering $12.6 billion loss last year and has approximately 58,000 UAW members working at its plants.