“We appreciate the solidarity from our members while we worked to secure the details of this proposed tentative agreement”, said UAW President Dennis Williams. Hale also warned that GM had vowed it would pull back on promises to invest $1.9 billion in its USA plants if members there went on strike.
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While details have not been released on the Ford deal, it is expected to largely mirror the terms reached in the GM deal which offers more money and benefits than the original contract struck with Fiat Chrysler Automobiles.
And a two-tiered wage system would phase out in the next eight years. Fiat Chrysler workers ultimately approved a sweeter deal than originally anticipated.
The Fort Wayne vote was seen as crucial because it came a day after workers at another large truck plant in Wentzville, Mo., near St. Louis, approved the four-year contract, with about 57 percent of 3,500 workers OK’ing the deal.
Ford plant leaders will meet Monday in Detroit to discuss the agreement.
Hourly workers at General Motors Co.’s Toledo Transmission plant narrowly rejected a tentative labor contract between the union and the automaker, United Auto Workers officials said today. Voting at plants nationwide ends Friday.
The agreement seems like a pretty good deal for workers. It is widely believed that the final push to nail down a contract at Ford would not begin until after GM’s ratification vote. If they approve the deal, it will be made public and subject to ratification by a rank-and-file vote.
“There are countless times they work together” on the factory floor, Butts said.
“The UAW is lying about the contract to get it passed”.
Kristin Dziczek of the Center for Automotive Research in Ann Arbor, Mich., noted that hourly production workers have tended to favor the contract. Now they are giving us just six percent over four years. All in-progression employees are moved to traditional health care plan. “It’s a lucrative contract, and I would expect that they would ratify it”.
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Under the pact, GM also agreed to pay $60,000 to as many as 4,000 workers who elect to retire between February 1 and May 1, one of many examples in the contract in which GM opted to make lump-sum payments up front in exchange for keeping a lid on its fixed labor costs.
