First agreement in the United States motor strike. As announced by the UAW union, Its negotiators have reached an agreement in principle for the collective agreement for the next four years that allows an end to a historic labor conflict. The agreement, which still must be ratified by the workers, puts more pressure on the negotiators of General Motors and Stellantis to also agree on new working conditions. The agreement is a triumph for the leader of the union, Shawn Fain, who has achieved with his strategy strong wage increases and other improvements in conditions for workers.
Ford has about 57,000 workers affiliated with the UAW union. Only a small part of them has joined the strike, given Fain’s progressive strategy, which has called for strikes only in some workplaces and reserved the possibility of increasing pressure with new factories. The union’s traditional strategy was to choose one company as a strike target and when an agreement was reached, demand that the rest match their conditions. Fain has preferred to hit all three with a carrot and stick strategy to advance the negotiations. Furthermore, he has managed to get public opinion to support the picket and even the president of the United States, Joe Biden, joined a picket for a few minutes.
Faced with the pressure of having three factories paralyzed, Ford has raised its offer to workers. According to the union, the agreement grants higher wage increases over the next four years than Ford workers have received in the past 22 years. The increase is 25% in hourly compensation until April 2028, and with some adjustments for the cost of living it will be more than 30%, up to more than $40 per hour. Starting pay increases by 68%, to more than $28 per hour. Ford’s lowest-paid workers will see a raise of more than 150% over the life of the agreement, and some will receive an immediate 85% raise as soon as it is ratified, always according to the UAW.
The agreement also includes restrictions on temporality, shortens the period of application of the double salary scale (the progression of new workers to the general salary scale goes from eight years to just three) and recognizes the right of workers to do strikes in protest against factory closures. An additional holiday and two weeks of parental leave are also included.
“For months we have said that record profits mean record contracts. And the UAW family and our strike Get up has fulfilled. “What started in three plants at midnight on September 15 has become a national movement,” says Fain in a video posted on social media. “We have achieved things that no one thought possible. Since the strike began, Ford has put 50% more on the table than when we left. This agreement puts us on a new path to do things right at Ford, the Big Three and the entire auto industry. Together, we are turning the tables for the working class of this country,” he adds.
General Motors Co. and Stellantis NV are scheduled to meet with the UAW on Thursday and the union hopes they will agree to the same conditions, according to sources familiar with the negotiations cited by Bloomberg.
Bill Ford, president of Ford and member of the fifth generation at the head of the company, made a call early last week to end the strike against the Big Three of the Detroit motor industry (General Motors, Ford and Stellantis) that It only benefited, he said, Tesla, Toyota, Honda and Chinese manufacturers. The manager warned that the future of the sector and the communities in the areas where the factories are located were being put at risk. It has not been that call, but the progress at the negotiating table that has allowed us to reach an agreement in principle.
The motor strike began on September 15 with the stoppage of one plant at each of Detroit’s Big Three that employ 14,000 union workers. Among them was Ford in Wayne (Michigan), which assembles the Bronco model and the Ranger truck. On Friday, September 29, the union leader called 7,000 additional UAW workers to strike at a General Motors factory and another Ford factory in Chicago (Illinois), where the Explorer and Lincoln Aviator models are produced.
On October 6, Fain announced important progress in the negotiations and resigned from extending the strike, but a few days later he surprised by calling a strike at Ford’s most profitable plant, a truck and high-end vehicle factory located in Kentucky. with about 8,700 workers that generates about 25,000 million dollars annually. Workers will continue to strike until the agreement is ratified.
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