Workers at Ford’s assembly plants in Chicago and Flat Rock still must vote along with Dearborn Truck Plant and several other plants in Dearborn.
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The National Labor Relations Board has granted the United Auto Workers petition for a union vote for skilled trade workers at the Volkswagen plant in Tennessee. 75% of workers have now voted on the proposed four-year contract.
The proposed four-year contract also includes two 3 percent raises, as well as $1,500 inflation payments and bonuses and profit-sharing payments this year that add up to $10,250 this year alone for permanent employees. “Hundreds of millions invested into the plants, but not into the people”.
Estrada also told leadership that she planned to meet with General Motors to clarify a few language in the contract and to address specific issues brought up by skilled trades.
“We’re optimistic. It looks dark now, but it might be light in the morning”, Settles said.
Ricke said at Wednesday’s news conference that 16,000 Ford workers voting this year have never been through a contract negotiation process before.
To help Ford survive the recession without resorting to bankruptcy, veteran workers went nearly a decade without raises, while new hires started at half the wages of senior staff. The proposed contract provides a path for newer workers to climb to senior wages of about $29 an hour over an eight-year period.
But if Ford and the UAW’s leaders were to reach a hard impasse, the UAW could resort to strikes.
The tone of UAW statements on VW and the plant workers in Chattanooga has taken a turn since the union was working with VW more closely in 2014. “I’m a legacy employee and I don’t think they gave us anything back except one holiday so I am voting no”.
The UAW will need to keep the votes at least close at Local 600 as well as Local 551, which is linked to the Chicago Assembly Plant, for the contract to pass, said Kristin Dziczek, labor analyst with the Center for Automotive Research.
UAW leaders have met with skilled trades representatives at each plant to determine the reasons those workers rejected the deal.
UAW President Dennis Williams needed two tries to win ratification of a four-year contract for hourly workers in the USA operations of Fiat Chrysler Automobiles NV FCHA.MI FCAU.N . “That is not how real negotiations go”.
The workers will decide whether they want the United Auto Workers to represent them for collective bargaining purposes.
Samples said the Avon Lake production workers, the men and women who build the cars, voted 51 to 49 percent to approve the contract.
The Fiat Chrysler contract set a pattern followed by GM and Ford, which essentially ends a two-tiered system that paid UAW members hired after 2007 less than those hired before that year.
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Up to 4,000 eligible employees would be offered a $60,000 early retirement incentive.
