Wheaton noted that raising wages for the lowest-paid workers has been a focus of the union movement in the U.S. That issue nearly sank the contract at GM. He also is happy Fain’s negotiators were able to persuade Ford to pay workers about $100 a day for the time they were on strike.īut under the settlement, new hires and temporary workers will receive much larger raises than longtime assembly plant workers, with some more than doubling their pay. McGill, a 28-year Ford veteran who helps assemble Ford Bronco SUVs and Ranger pickup trucks, said he is pleased he’ll be earning $42 an hour by the contract’s end. “The union’s got way more power” because of the deals, said Mark McGill, a 67-year-old worker at Ford’s assembly plant in Wayne, Michigan, where employees went on strike for the entire six weeks. While wages at nonunion factories may be nearly equal, he said, UAW workers receive far better health care and retirement benefits, which is likely to be attractive to workers at nonunion plants as they age.Ĭontracts with the auto companies should also lead to higher wages at auto-parts supply companies and in other industries, Wheaton said. They also have accused the UAW of forcing GM and the former Chrysler into bankruptcy in 2009 and of engaging in corruption after federal prosecutors broke up a wide-ranging bribery and embezzlement scandal starting in 2017.īut with Fain’s election and the new contracts, the union has “cured or readjusted all of that rhetoric,” Wheaton said. He also said the union would try to recruit workers at Tesla.įoreign automakers have argued in the past that their workers earn about the same as UAW members, thereby negating the need for a union. They did so after Fain said the UAW would mount an aggressive effort to unionize their plants. Three non-union, foreign automakers in the United States - Honda, Toyota and Hyundai - quickly responded to the UAW contract by raising wages for their factory workers. “It’s lifting the boats of all or many autoworkers.” “I think this is a huge win for the UAW that they got all three contracts ratified,” said Art Wheaton, director of labor studies at Cornell University. This provision will give the UAW an opportunity to unionize the EV battery plants plants, which will represent a rising share of industry jobs in the years ahead. ![]() They also agreed in principle to bring new electric-vehicle battery plants into the national union contract. ![]() Under the agreements, the automakers also ended many of the multiple tiers of wages they had used to pay different workers. Top assembly plant workers are to receive immediate 11% raises and will earn roughly $42 an hour when the contracts expire in April of 2028. The companies agreed to dramatically raise pay for top-scale assembly plant workers, with increases and cost-of-living adjustments that would translate into 33% wage gains. ![]() The new contract agreements were widely seen as a victory for the UAW. The union later extended the strike to parts warehouses and other factories to try to intensify pressure on the automakers until tentative agreements were reached late in October. 15 at one assembly plant at each company. After summerlong negotiations failed to produce a deal, Fain kicked off strikes on Sept.
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