First modification:
After six weeks of strike and after constant extensions of the strike, the United Auto Workers (UAW) union is beginning to reach preliminary agreements with Ford, Stellantis, and the most recent, with General Motors. Both parties found common ground to respond to the demands of workers who alleged that salaries do not increase at the rate that companies’ profits do.
Last weekend was decisive in determining the course of the largest strike in the history of the United States in the automotive sector.
After the tentative agreement between Ford and the union was known on Wednesday, October 25, it was voted on and approved for application on Sunday. A day before, Stellantis also advanced a document and this Monday, October 30, General Motors decided not to be left behind and also laid the foundations for a text with the workers.
The Ford and Stellantis pacts, which would extend through April 30, 2028, include 25% in general wage increases for key assembly plant workers, and 11% once the agreement is ratified.
“UAW members at Ford will receive more direct across-the-board pay increases over the next four and a half years than in the last 22 years combined. Upon ratification, Ford workers will receive an immediate 11% pay increase. That’s almost equal to all pay increases since 2007 combined,” said UAW Vice President Chuck Browning.
The Ford and Stellantis agreements
They were the first to agree and are the most similar agreements. Ford’s revives cost-of-living adjustments that the UAW agreed to suspend in 2009 during the recession and ends the “abuse of temporary workers,” a key demand for striking workers who were demanding a lack of good conditions.
With the document, they will not only become permanent employees after nine months of continuous employment, but they will also receive profit-sharing checks, as explained by union president Shawn Fain.
“For too long, we have been left behind by an economy that only works for the billionaire class, in the billionaire economy, working class communities continue to be left behind. Plants continue to close and families continue to struggle while CEOs and the rich pocket every last cent,” Fain said.
“This contract goes beyond economic gains for auto workers. “It is a turning point in the class war that has been waged in America for the last 40 years,” he added.
Ford and union reach preliminary agreement to end the strike in the US
For its part, at Stellantis, workers receive a cost-of-living salary that would take increases to 33% compounded; Around 1,200 workers will be hired again, in addition to another 1,000 workers will be added for a new battery plant for electric vehicles, and employees will even have a say in deciding which plants could be closed when the energy transition becomes more evident. .
In addition to all this, the starting salaries of new Stellantis hires could increase by 67%, including cost-of-living adjustments, and would rise to $30 per hour.
Temporary workers will get raises of more than 165% and parts center workers will receive an immediate 76% increase if the pact is ratified.
The union also said that with Stellantis it obtained an investment of 19 billion dollars throughout the United States, above the 8 billion dollars in investments achieved with Ford.
General Motors also seeks agreement
According to a source familiar with the matter and interviewed by the AP news agency, General Motors (GM) has already reached a tentative agreement with the union that would perhaps be announced this Monday.
A fact that occurs only two days after the UAW dealt its strongest blow against GM, at least financially, after it activated a strike at its Tennessee factory, in Spring Hill, adding almost 4,000 workers to the strike that already totals 46,000 in total, which is also the largest plant in North America.
The company, with the numbers against it and with more than 14,000 workers from its factories in Texas, Michigan and Missouri on strike, decided to join the ideas of its two peers and make an independent agreement with the UAW with special paragraphs of which it still has details are unknown.
With AP and Reuters.
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