The United Auto Workers (UAW) and Ford Motor Co. in Dearborn announced they have reached a tentative agreement on a new contract after 41 days with workers on the picket lines.
Ford workers will return to work while the agreement goes through the ratification process. The work stoppages at select General Motors Co. and Stellantis plants continue.
“We are pleased to have reached a tentative agreement on a new labor contract with the UAW covering our U.S. operations,” says Jim Farley, president and CEO of Ford. “Ford is proud to assemble the most vehicles in America and employ the most hourly autoworkers. We are focused on restarting Kentucky Truck Plant, Michigan Assembly Plant, and Chicago Assembly Plant, calling 20,000 Ford employees back to work and shipping our full lineup to our customers again.”
Union gains in the deal are valued at more than four times the gains from the 2019 contract and provide more in base wage increases than Ford workers have received in the past 22 years. The agreement grants 25 percent in base wage increases through April 2028, and will cumulatively raise the top wage by over 30 percent to more than $40 an hour, and raise the starting wage by 68 percent, to more than $28 an hour.
The lowest-paid workers at Ford will see a raise of more than 150 percent over the life of the agreement, with some workers receiving an immediate 85 increase increase immediately upon ratification.
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. It also includes an historic right to strike over plant closures, a first for the union.
“For months we’ve said that record profits mean record contracts,” said Shawn Fain, president of the UAW, in a video to his membership. “And UAW family, our Stand Up Strike has delivered. What started at three plants at midnight on Sept. 15, has become a national movement. We won things nobody thought possible. Since the strike began, Ford put 50 percent more on the table than when we walked out. This agreement sets us on a new path to make things right at Ford, at the Big Three, and across the auto industry. Together, we are turning the tide for the working class in this country.”
Still, membership in the UAW has fallen to 380,000 members this year, down from a peak of 1.5 million members in 1979.
UAW vice president in charge of the Ford negotiations, Chuck Browning, says: “Our union has united in a way we haven’t seen in years. From the Great Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico, our members came together to tell the Big Three with one voice that record profits mean a record contract. Thanks to the power of our members on the picket line and the threat of more strikes to come, we have won the most lucrative agreement per member since Walter Reuther was president.”
