The United Automobile Workers and Ford Motor have reached a tentative agreement on a new four-year labor contract, the union announced Wednesday, nearly six weeks after the union began a growing wave of strikes against the three Detroit automakers.
The union said the agreement includes a wage increase of about 25 percent over four years, significant improvements in pensions and job security, and the right to strike at factory closures. She called on striking Ford workers to go back to work while the tentative agreement awaits ratification.
Shawn Fain, the union president, said in a Facebook livestream that the agreement would be presented to the UAW Council, which oversees relations with Ford, at a meeting on Sunday. If the council approves, the union will present the contract terms to the company’s 57,000 union employees for review.
“We made history,” Mr. Fain said.
Ford issued a brief statement that said, in part: “We are pleased to have reached a tentative agreement on a new labor agreement with the UAW for our U.S. operations.”
The union continues to negotiate with General Motors and Stellantis, whose brands include Chrysler, Jeep and Ram.
Two weeks ago, when Ford said it had reached the limit of what it could afford without hurting its business, Ford offered to raise wages by 23 percent, adjust wages in response to inflation and time it shorten the period in which new hires reach the top wage. from eight to four years. The other companies made similar offers.
But the UAW pushed for bigger concessions, intensifying strikes and targeting them against factories that make some of the automakers’ most profitable models.
In total, about 45,000 workers at Ford, GM and Stellantis are on strike across the country, including 8,700 workers at Ford’s Kentucky truck plant in Louisville, the company’s largest, and nearly 10,000 more workers at Ford factories in Illinois and Michigan.
The tentative deal with Ford could increase pressure on other companies to reach an agreement with the union. In the past, once the union reached an agreement with one automaker, tentative agreements with the others quickly followed. But that story may not be as relevant now because, until this year, the UAW had never attacked all three companies simultaneously.
Companies are investing billions in switching to battery-powered vehicles, making it harder for them to pay significantly higher wages. Last week, Ford Chief Executive William C. Ford Jr. said the union’s demands could hurt Detroit automakers’ ability to compete with nonunion companies like Tesla and foreign rivals.
“Toyota, Honda, Tesla and the others love the strike because they know that the longer it lasts, the better it is for them,” he said. “You will win and we will all lose.”
The UAW takes a different point of view: Success in the fight for collective agreements with the Big Three will give it the impetus to organize auto workers at other companies.
The strikes began when the companies’ union contracts expired in mid-September. It received immediate support from President Biden, who called on automakers to “ensure that record corporate profits mean record contracts” and briefly joined workers on a picket line at a GM plant near Detroit late last month.
The union initially called for a 40 percent wage increase over four years – an amount that union officials said was in line with the raises top executives at the three companies received over the past four years. These increases are also intended to offset the more modest raises autoworkers have received in recent years, as well as concessions the union made to the companies starting in 2007.
Additionally, the union has called for an end to a system that pays new hires just over half the top wage of $32 an hour. It seeks to adjust the cost of living to raise wages to offset inflation. And she calls for the reintroduction of pensions for all workers, improved pension benefits and shorter working hours.
GM and Stellantis faced the latest escalation of UAW strikes as the union on Monday killed 6,800 workers at a large Ram pickup truck plant in Michigan and 5,000 workers at a GM plant in Arlington, Texas, the large sport utility Vehicles manufactured including the Chevrolet Tahoe, the GMC Yukon and the Cadillac Escalade.
“Ford knew what was coming on Wednesday if we didn’t get a deal,” Mr. Fain said. “That was checkmate.”
On Tuesday, GM reported third-quarter profit of $3.1 billion, down 7 percent from the same period last year, due in part to the ongoing strike. Ford is expected to report its third-quarter results on Thursday.