General Motors and Jeep maker Stellantis are expected to offer the United Auto Workers (UAW) union a deal that mirrors the recent agreement with Ford.
UAW members and Ford reached a tentative collective bargaining agreement on Wednesday, the union said, ending six weeks of strikes at the company. The deal includes a 25 percent wage increase over four years, including 11 percent in the first year. Rising costs of living could raise the salary to 33 percent, the UAW said.
If GM and Stellantis don’t follow Ford’s lead, UAW President Shawn Fain will include factories in the partial strikes, The Associated Press reported.
“Fain doesn’t strike me as someone who is willing to concede anything to the other two automakers to break the pattern,” Art Wheaton, director of labor studies at Cornell University, told the AP.
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More strikes could hurt companies, particularly GM’s profitable truck plants. GM said Tuesday that it was losing about $200 million a week as a result of the strike, the AP reported.
The UAW’s Ford employees will return to work pending a tentative agreement, but a majority of 57,000 members must approve the agreement for it to take effect.
Ford confirmed the deal in a statement late Wednesday. GM and Stellantis are likely under pressure after President Biden welcomed the Ford deal in a public statement.
According to the AP, GM has agreed to include its new electric vehicle battery factories in the UAW’s national contract that unionizes them. Electric vehicle production is one of the key points for striking workers as the industry prepares to ramp up production in the coming years.
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