Are we heading towards the epilogue of a historic movement which will have shaken the American automobile industry? After 44 days of protest, the UAW union announced this Saturday, October 28, a preliminary agreement with Stellantis, three days after a similar agreement with Ford, with a view to ending the strike at the auto manufacturer.
This compromise, found after a month and a half of social conflict which saw many factories blocked across the Atlantic, provides for a 25% increase in base salaries by 2028, the UAW said. It also includes several adjustments including that linked to the cost of living, which will allow a 33% increase in salary, or $42 per hour. Like the one concluded with Ford, any preliminary agreement with the Italian-Franco-American group Stellantis will have to be ratified by a vote of the union members.
“We won a record contract,” influential UAW President Shawn Fain said in a video posted on social networks. “We sincerely believe that we have gotten every penny possible from the company,” he enthused. Indeed, the salary increase provided for by this agreement in principle is lower than the 40% that the UAW demanded when the powerful union started its strike on September 15. But it remains significantly higher than that of 9% initially proposed by Ford in August. The UAW also announced in a statement that “Stellantis workers will return to work during the ratification process of the agreement.”
Strike continues at General Motors
Joe Biden, who was particularly involved in this social conflict, even going so far as to walk the picket alongside employees in September, welcomed this promising progress. “I commend the UAW and Stellantis for reaching, after hard-fought, good-faith negotiations, a historic agreement that will guarantee workers the wages, benefits, dignity and respect they deserve,” he said. the American president in a press release, while the automobile industry alone accounts for nearly 3% of the United States’ GDP.
However, the mobilization is not yet over. At General Motors, the last member of the “Big Three” of American automobile manufacturers (with Ford and Stellantis), no agreement has yet been reached between company representatives and the UAW union. A new factory in Spring Hill, Tennessee, is now affected by a strike movement which therefore continues to grow, while the group published quarterly results better than expectations. “We are disappointed by the UAW’s action in light of the progress we have made,” General Motors spokesman David Barnas said. “We have continued to negotiate in good faith with the UAW and our goal remains to reach an agreement as quickly as possible,” he added. The last manufacturer will inevitably be under pressure in the coming weeks, while its two main competitors should return to more stable economic activity shortly.
This is the first time that the “Big Three” automobile companies have been targeted by a strike at the same time in the United States. The latter, linked to the development of the next collective agreements, mobilized before the agreement at Ford nearly 45,000 employees in total, out of the 146,000 enrolled at the UAW.