Workers at GM’s Spring Hill Manufacturing are now on strike
UAW announced that it has reached a tentative agreement with Stellantis to end the six-week strike, including creating jobs by reopening a plant in Belvidere, Illinois and building a new battery plant at that location.
Shortly thereafter, the UAW announced that workers at the GM plant that makes the all-electric Cadillac Lyriq would go on strike.
Just days after the UAW reached a tentative deal with Ford, the union has now announced a similar deal with Stellantis, Chrysler’s parent company.
As with the Ford deal, not all details are currently available but will be presented to workers soon. Details are planned to be presented on Thursday, November 2nd, after which union members will be able to vote on whether to approve the deal. Until then, the UAW has directed workers in good faith to return to work at Stellantis and show the remaining company, GM, that they can end the strike at any time once an agreement is reached.
In a video announcement, UAW President Shawn Fain and Vice President Rich Boyer explained some details of the deal with Stellantis.
While we don’t know all the details yet, some of the key achievements include a 25% across-the-board wage increase and cost-of-living adjustments. The UAW says the total wage increase from this strike is higher than the total wage increase between 2001 and 2022, just as was the case with the Ford deal.
However, for some other workers, wage and working conditions increases are likely to far exceed this 25% increase. In particular, some workers at Mopar, Chrysler’s parts division, and temporary workers will receive larger pay increases.
Additionally, a major concrete victory for the UAW is the reopening of the Belvidere Assembly in Illinois. That plant was shut down by Stellantis in February and was a point of contention in negotiations. According to the UAW, Stellantis has committed to reopening the plant and building a new battery factory there with 1,000 jobs.
Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker said the deal would mean “thousands of jobs, billions in investment and a big win for Illinois.”
Overall, UAW says that Stellantis originally planned to eliminate 5,000 jobs across the company, but that this deal includes commitments to create 5,000 jobs, resulting in a net transfer of 10,000 jobs.
This is important because one of the key points of these negotiations is that assembling electric vehicles will likely require fewer labor hours per car because electric vehicles have fewer parts. This would theoretically mean that there are fewer jobs in the automotive industry, or at least fewer hours (an equation that could also be solved by introducing a shorter work week).
They told us for years that the transition to electric vehicles was the death knell for good automotive jobs in this country. We stood up and said no.
Shawn Fain, UAW president
In discussions about this strike, interviewers have repeatedly tried to get Fain to badmouth electric vehicles and blame them for wage or workplace problems, but Fain never took the bait and always insisted that the UAW was pursuing a “just transition.” to electric vehicles This will ensure that workers are still treated fairly even as the industry is turned upside down.
But the strike continues at GM, where no agreement has yet been reached. Earlier this month, GM “overtook” the other manufacturers in negotiations by agreeing to bring all of GM’s U.S. joint-venture battery factories under the union framework agreement, ensuring that battery jobs are treated the same as Jobs in general automobile manufacturing.
But progress appears to have slowed since then, with GM now the last holdout not having reached an agreement with the UAW.
The UAW has called its tactic a “stand-up strike,” in which the plan is to initially strike at a few facilities and then gradually expand the strike over time.
That’s why UAW workers have now decided to go on strike at GM’s Spring Hill Assembly Plant in Tennessee. This plant produces the GMC Acadia and the Cadillac XT5 and XT6, as well as the all-electric Cadillac Lyriq.
This is an interesting time for this considering Lyriq production has finally gotten underway. After years of slow ramping up of GM’s Ultium vehicles, the third quarter finally saw a big jump in production and sales of the Lyriq, with 3,108 vehicles delivered. That was more than double the previous record of 1,348 cars in the second quarter. This impasse threatens to dampen Lyriq’s momentum if an agreement is not reached soon.
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