Members of the United Auto Workers union picket outside the Michigan Assembly Plant on September 26, 2023 in Wayne, Michigan.
Matthew Hatcher | AFP | Getty Images
Detroit – union members Ford A tentative agreement was approved Friday, ending contentious contract talks between the United Auto Workers and the Detroit automakers.
UAW-Ford workers were the last of the Detroit automakers to ratify the agreement. General Motors Workers narrowly approved a deal Thursday star Workers back their deal, according to preliminary vote results Published on Friday by the union.
according to UAW’s Vote Tracker, While much remains to be done, the Ford deal received support from 68.2% of Ford’s nearly 35,000 autoworkers who voted. There are still some smaller facilities that need to finish voting, but those locations don’t have enough staff to offset the gap of more than 12,600 votes.
As of early Friday afternoon, the local chapter of the United Auto Workers representing every Ford plant had voted in favor of the deal except a small parts plant in Florida and the automaker’s massive Kentucky truck plant. The plant that pushed approval to the brink was the Dearborn Truck Plant in Michigan, where about 2,700 members voted in favor of the deal with a 78.7% approval rating, according to the union’s vote tracking system.
Ford and the United Auto Workers did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The contract ratification comes weeks after the automakers and unions reached a tentative agreement to end about six weeks of targeted strikes by the United Auto Workers. The strike began on September 15, involving targeted work stoppages, and expanded to various plants to increase pressure on the automaker.
Preliminary results from Stellantis showed support for the hourly wage vote at 68.4%. At General Motors, the vote was 54.7%.
The vote at GM was closer, in part because of the demographics of the company’s workforce. The automaker has the highest proportion of traditional workers compared with its cross-town rivals. These workers expressed dissatisfaction with the salary increases these deals gave them compared with new hires. They are also unhappy with pension contributions and retirement benefits.
Still, the agreements are record-breaking for the union, with UAW President Sean Fein promising that the union will make more progress during the negotiations than in recent history. Confrontational and strategic.
These include salary increases of at least 25%, cost-of-living-adjusted returns and other economic improvements. The union said the deal’s improvements were worth more than four times the benefits of the 2019 contract and provided base pay increases greater than workers had received in the past 22 years.
For the union and Fain, the deals and associated financial benefits help expand the union’s ranks by including future jobs, such as battery plants, and organizing other non-union automakers operating in the United States.
For the company and its investors, these contracts represent an upper limit to forecast growth in labor costs.
Ford Chief Financial Officer John Lawler said last month that the UAW agreement, if approved by members, would increase assembly costs by $850 to $900 per vehicle. He said Ford will work to “increase productivity and efficiency and reduce costs across the company” to offset additional costs and achieve previously announced profitability targets.
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