Ford workers late Friday approved a labor agreement that negotiators on both sides of the wage fight called “historic.” The automaker marked the official end of the costly disruption that began two months ago with targeted strikes against the Detroit Three.
After preliminary vote totals were reported on the Ford UAW tracker website by 9:10 p.m., the contract was ratified by 69.3%, or 26,697 of the 35,522 votes cast. In the end, 11,825 UAW members voted no to the Ford deal. The contract covers approximately 57,000 UAW members employed by Ford.
Tony Richard, co-chair of the UAW-Ford national negotiating committee, told the Detroit Free Press late Friday: “I feel like we’ve made historic wins for our UAW members.” It’s been a while, since we were able to achieve such profits. The timing was right. Then we left it up to the members and the members decided. We let ourselves go with the flow…”
Richard, who represents approximately 9,000 Ford employees as president of the UAW Local 600 in Dearborn, has been with Ford for 47 years. He started as an assembly line technician at Dearborn Assembly in 1977.
He said his members were feeling good. “They’re glad we were able to come together and solve the problem.”
The vote ended with votes from a handful of Ford locations across the country, including workers at the Dearborn truck plant, where the best-selling F-150 pickup is built. They voted to ratify the treaty with 78.7% of the vote, or 2,697 votes out of 3,496 cast. The plant employs 5,114 hourly workers, according to Ford data available Friday.
The UAW said it plans to release the official vote count for all 56 Ford locations early Saturday. In purely mathematical terms, ratification occurred immediately after receiving the results from Dearborn Truck.
Ford and the union declined to comment Friday ahead of the official vote count and the UAW news release.
While Ford was the first to reach a tentative agreement, workers at General Motors were quicker to vote for ratification. Ford has the most UAW members among the Detroit Three. The total number of workers varies depending on the season and production schedules.
Where the vote failed
The Kentucky Truck Plant in Louisville, which builds the Super Duty pickup, Ford Expedition and Lincoln Navigator, was the only Ford vehicle manufacturing site to reject ratification. It failed by 370 votes. Of the 4,118 total votes cast, 54.5% or 2,244 voted “no”. Nearly 9,000 workers went on strike, and fewer than half of them voted.
Todd Dunn, president of UAW Local 862, attributed the low turnout to “apathy and complacency” based on the assumption that ratification would be approved. He also said Friday that inaccurate social media posts misled people and left old workers feeling like too little was being offered for retirement. In one unit, Dunn told the Free Press, only 10% of workers voted because they said they didn’t think their support was necessary.
The only other Ford location to vote against the contract was Lakeland HVC, a parts and accessories depot in Davenport, Florida, with a total of 30 votes cast.
Profits from the deal are more than four times the profits from the last UAW contract in 2019 and provide higher base pay increases than Ford workers have received in the past 22 years, the UAW said in a news release.
Ford contract: Wages and benefits improve
The Ford-UAW agreement includes: The cumulative increase in top wages by more than 30% to over $40 per hour and the entry-level wage increase by 68% to over $28 per hour. And restoring key benefits lost during the Great Recession, including Cost of Living Allowances (COLA). The deal also eliminates different pay rates or tiers for workers. Improve retirement benefits for current retirees, workers with pensions, and those with 401K plans.
UAW President Shawn Fain and UAW Vice President Chuck Browning posted a letter on the union website that said:
- “Our lowest paid members will receive a 150% pay increase through this agreement. That’s not a typo. Temporary workers hired this year at $16.67 will earn a base wage of over $40 per hour, with an estimated COLA of over $42 per hour, by the end of this agreement.”
- Lower tier members at Sterling Axle (in Sterling Heights) and Rawsonville (in Ypsilanti) will receive immediate raises of between 53% and 88%. A member with three years of service at these facilities will increase from $18.96 to $35.58 upon ratification.
- With COLA, by 2028 we will have a peak wage of over $42 per hour for manufacturing and over $50 per hour for skilled trades, an increase of over 30%. By the end of this agreement, our starting rate at COLA will increase to $30 per hour.”
General Motors and Stellantis are making progress
According to the UAW tracker, UAW members voted Thursday to ratify its contract with General Motors. The deal, which represents an estimated 46,000 GM workers at 50 locations, passed with 3,409 votes. The vote was cast by 35,957 employees, with 54.7% or 19,683 voting “yes”.
Workers at Stellantis, which owns Chrysler, Dodge, Jeep and Ram, are expected to complete the vote soon. This tentative contract represents approximately 43,000 UAW workers.
Marick Masters, a labor relations expert who teaches at the Mike Ilitch School of Business at Wayne State University in Detroit, said: “The ratification of these contracts is a milestone in the UAW’s attempt to reshape its future. The UAW is on record as having ratified the treaties while reaffirming its commitment to being more grassroots-informed in a more democratic way.”
Shortly after the UAW announced these tentative agreements, Toyota, Honda and Hyundai announced wage increases for their non-union U.S. workers.
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Contact Phoebe Wall Howard: 313-618-1034 or [email protected]. Follow her on X, formerly Twitter, @phoebesaid.