UAW President Shawn Fain leads union to victory with the Big 3 automakers in the USA.
The UAW has reached a historic tentative agreement with General Motors that paves the way for a just transition and wins record economic gains for autoworkers.
This follows agreements reached with Ford and Stellantis.
The GM settlement along with agreements reached with Ford and Stellantis amounts to a massive win for the United Autoworkers whose campaign of strategic Stand Up Strikes by union members at the Big 3 US Auto manufacturers.
US media outlets are describing the settlements and disputes with the Big 3 as a ‘big win’ for the United Autoworkers.
The GM agreement includes gains valued at more than four times the gains from the union’s 2019 contract. It provides more in base wage increases than GM workers have received in the past 22 years.
The GM also brings into the master agreement all US Joint Venture battery manufacturing plants.
This represents a “leapfrog” in negotiations from GM, putting the company in front of others in terms of their offer to UAW, but then GM ended up being the last to come to a final agreement.
Batteries are an important win for UAW because in discussions over this strike, interviewers have repeatedly goaded UAW President Shawn Fain to blame electric vehicles them for the problems facing the auto industries and UAW members.
Fain refused to take the bait insisting that the UAW is looking for a “just transition” to electric vehicles that ensures workers still get treated fairly as the industry is upended.
The agreement provides for 25% in base wage increases through April 2028, and will cumulatively raise the top wage by 33% compounded with estimated cost of living adjustment (COLA) to over $42 an hour. The starting wage will increase by 70% compounded with estimated COLA, to over $30 an hour.
The GM agreement ends wage tiers that have divided the union. It will lift up those members who have been left behind and unify our membership for the fights ahead. The deal also brings battery production workers into the Master Agreement. Both of these groups have been left out of the Master Agreement, and have been told they would never come in.
Many thought GM would never put more money on the table for their hundreds of thousands of retirees. In this agreement, however, GM has agreed to make five payments of $500 to current retirees and surviving spouses, the first such payments in over 15 years.
The agreement reinstates major benefits lost during the Great Recession, including Cost-of-Living Allowances and a three-year Wage Progression, as well as killing divisive wage tiers in the union. It improves retirement for current retirees, those workers with pensions, and those who have 401(k) plans. Like the other two, the GM deal includes a right to strike over plant closures.
GM workers will return to work while the agreement goes through the ratification process, with the UAW National GM Council convening in Detroit to review the agreement.
