New York CNN –
The United Auto Workers union reached a tentative agreement with Stellantis on Saturday. But it expanded the strike against General Motors, America’s largest automaker and the Big Three’s last remaining holdout. dashing hopes It was close to ending the last remaining car strike.
The deal with Stellantis, which makes Dodge, Ram, Chrysler and Jeep vehicles, was announced Saturday by UAW President Shawn Fain and Vice President Rich Boyer, the union’s chief negotiator in the talks. They hailed it as a great victory The tentative agreement includes revitalizing an Illinois assembly plant that closed in February, initially leaving 1,200 people unemployed, as well as other gains for the union.
“On day 44 of our stand-up strike, I am honored to announce that our union is victorious once again. Once again, just a few weeks ago, we achieved what was thought impossible,” said Shawn Fain in an interview Video posted on Xformerly known as Twitter.
The 14,600 UAW members who struck at Stellantis will return to work within days. But nearly 4,000 GM factory workers that build Cadillac and GMC SUVs in Spring Hill, Tennessee, joined the strike at 5 p.m. CT.
“We are disappointed by the UAW’s action given the progress we have made,” GM said in a statement expanding the strike. “We have continued to negotiate in good faith with the UAW and our goal remains to reach an agreement as quickly as possible.”
Fain did not mention the talks with GM or explain the decision to expand the strike there. The union released a brief statement on
It has already expanded the scope of the strike five times since it began on September 15 to increase pressure on the Big Three. This is the first time Fain was not the one to announce the expansion and the first time the union did so without saying why the move was made.
The UAW’s National Stellantis Council will vote on Nov. 2 on whether or not to forward the tentative agreement to the broader membership, Fain said. The company’s 43,000 rank-and-file UAW members will then be given the opportunity to vote on ratification of the agreement. To come into force it must be ratified by both.
Saturday’s tentative agreement with Stellantis follows a similar agreement reached with Ford on Wednesday. The Ford deal also needs to be ratified by the Ford membership base before it can go into effect, just as the Stellantis deal also requires member approval.
Many details of the agreement with Stellantis are not yet known. But the pay is similar to that of the Ford deal, which would mean an immediate raise of at least 11% and additional raises that would total a total increase of 25% over the four-and-a-half-year term of the contract. Wages are also expected to include a cost of living adjustment (COLA) to protect members from rising prices.
The union abandoned the COLA when Stellantis predecessor Chrysler was in dire straits, heading toward bankruptcy and a federal bailout. But Stellantis recently experienced a blessing: The company was now making record profits. The guaranteed wage increases, combined with COLA, could increase total wages by more than 30% over the term of the contract.
The biggest surprise in the Stellantis deal, however, is that the UAW said the company had agreed to reopen a plant in Belvidere, Illinois, that closed on February 28, leaving 1,200 workers unemployed. The plant will receive a medium-sized truck to replace the Jeep Cherokee compact SUV built there.
“We have achieved the impossible. We have moved mountains. “We reopened an assembly plant that the company had closed,” Fain said.
The Stellantis-Ford deals give union workers significant pay and benefit increases to deal with inflation that has squeezed workers’ paychecks. The last contract was concluded in 2019, before the pandemic led to rapid price increases.
Automakers typically offer similar deals to union members across companies, so GM negotiations are expected to yield similar benefits for autoworkers.
Fain said the union also received commitments for new products for two other plants that may have to close in the future — an engine plant in Trenton, Michigan, and a machining plant in Toledo, Ohio, that makes parts for transmission products, among other products. Neither motors nor transmissions are needed in electric vehicles.
The union fears that the jobs of workers who make engines, transmissions and other car parts no longer needed for electric vehicles could be lost as automakers switch their lineup from gasoline-powered cars to electric power.
Fain said the company is in negotiations with a plan to eliminate 5,000 more UAW-represented jobs over the life of the contract. He said with the product commitments Stellantis has made in this contract, this will be the case instead Increase the number of UAW employees at the company by 5,000 under the terms of the tentative agreement.
If agreements with everyone If the Big Three are reached and ratified, it would likely end the longest autoworker strike in 25 years.
In addition to the wage increases in the Ford deal, the union also pushed for improved pension benefits for older workers with a traditional pension plan and increased company contributions to 401(k) accounts of workers hired since 2007. However, the union failed to achieve the goal of restoring traditional pension plans for those hired after 2007 or returning health insurance coverage for retirees.
The union also received enhanced job guarantees, including the right to strike again to protest a plant closure during the term of the contract. Previous contracts always contained a no-strike clause during the term of the contract.
Ford’s ratification process is scheduled to begin Sunday with a meeting in Detroit of local union representatives representing the company’s workers across the country. Although the deal includes record profits for the union with double-digit wage increases, ratification is not certain. A similar process will begin on Thursday for Stellantis.
Generally, a union will not allow strikers to return to work until a tentative collective agreement has been ratified. But the UAW ensured that workers returned to their jobs at Ford during the ratification process. That increased pressure on GM and Stellantis to quickly reach their own agreements with the union.
“The last thing they want is for Ford to go back to full capacity while they fool around and lag behind,” UAW Vice President Chuck Browning, the union’s chief negotiator at Ford, said in a statement to members Wednesday evening.
Some members have already returned to work at Ford as the company prepares to resume operations, said Todd Dunn, president of UAW Local 862, which represents workers at the Kentucky Truck Plant, Ford’s largest factory. Others are expected back on Saturday. The plan is for the facility to run at full capacity through Monday, he said.
Given the tentative agreements at Ford and Stellantis, it appeared as if the strike would have reached a full resolution relatively soon. But the expansion of the strike at GM makes the situation even murkier in the coming days.
The union has been striking against GM, Stellantis and Ford since September 15, the first time the union has struck all three companies simultaneously. The union represents 145,000 workers at the three companies, but not all members went on strike.
Instead, targeted attacks were carried out on specific works. It began with 12,700 members at each company walking out of an assembly plant, and since then the strike has expanded five times. When the Ford deal was announced, 16,600 members at Ford, 14,200 at GM and 14,600 at Stellantis went on strike.
Most recently, the union fired 6,800 members from the Stellantis plant in Sterling Heights, Michigan, on Monday, and on Tuesday, 5,000 members went on strike at GM’s largest plant in Arlington, Texas, shortly after GM reported stronger-than-expected quarterly profits.
In its earnings report, GM reported that it lost $200 million in the first two weeks of the strike in late September and lost another $600 million in the first three weeks of October. But the closure of the Arlington plant alone is expected to cause losses of an additional $130 million per week, according to an estimate by Colin Langan, an auto analyst at Wells Fargo.
Stellantis has not provided an estimate of losses from the strike, but Langan estimates that the striking Sterling Heights plant is increasing its weekly losses by $110 million a week to $200 million.