GM contract likely to be ratified by small percentage. Here's what that means for the UAW
After days of uncertainty, it appeared likely late Wednesday the United Auto Workers' new contract with General Motors Co. would be ratified, averting a problematic defeat of a four-and-a-half-year deal union leaders called a "record" they would use to organize employees of foreign-owned rivals down South.
The UAW-GM contract was passing with 53% of members voting yes as of late Wednesday, according to a Detroit News analysis of the known totals. Based on the employment levels at the four facilities yet to have results — Brownstown Battery plant, Customer Care and Aftersales facilities in Lansing and Denver, and a components plant in Lockport, New York — The News determined the pact needed just 121 more yes votes to pass.
Meanwhile, the UAW's tentative deal with Ford Motor Co. appeared poised to pass comfortably; there were too few votes released to determine if the Stellantis NV deal would pass.
The close vote at GM comes after union leaders touted the deal, achieved after a 46-day strike, as a record contract with its 27% compounded wage increases, major reduction in the time it takes to get to the top rate and cost-of-living adjustments. It also comes as the union looks to organize foreign automaker plants across the country.
But the close call means the newly elected UAW leaders, experts say, will have to look inward, evaluate why GM members nearly voted down a deal that's much better than what's been offered in the past and devise how to maintain the union's strong momentum.
“What the GM vote indicates is many workers felt they had real grievances not addressed,” said Harley Shaiken, a University of California-Berkeley professor emeritus who specializes in labor and formerly worked as a GM apprentice and briefly as a UAW consultant. “Those are worth looking into. Some felt left out. Others felt their needs weren’t met.”
Main issues with the deal seem to mostly be held by legacy workers who've been with the company for more than a decade. Their concerns include not enough gains for pensions and not enough in wage increases for workers who are barely making more than they were before GM went bankrupt in 2009.
The narrow passage could lead the union to reexamine its strategy. With UAW President Shawn Fain, who was elected in March, at the wheel, the union publicly and repeatedly released details of what it was looking to achieve in negotiations with GM, Ford and Stellantis. Although sharing details of the offers on the table and union's demands motivated workers on the picket line and offered some leverage at the bargaining table, it also set high expectations.
“They made a lot of bold moves,” Shaiken said. “Much of it worked, but it doesn’t mean all of it did.”
Fain has characterized the gains as the catapult to expand the UAW into non-unionized plants. The close GM vote may be a bump in the road, but the Detroit automaker’s competitors weren’t looking to risk it, with several announcing wage increases and decreasing timelines for workers to get to the top of the pay scale.
“Its biggest endorsement is by Toyota and Honda and Hyundai who all acknowledged that they had to do something immediately,” Shaiken said.
The UAW, in recent weeks, has called on workers at foreign automaker plants to organize with the union.
Marick Masters, a business professor at Wayne State University, noted "that anything and everything will be used against the UAW in terms of organizing," and that includes how the contracts pass at the Detroit Three automakers.
"They will say that the union is divided and they don't necessarily represent all their workers in contract negotiations as shown by the sizeable number that voted against ratification at GM," he said. "But I don't think those will be the focal points of their argument."
Instead, Masters expects the argument by companies looking to prevent organizing will be focused on past UAW corruption that led to convictions of two previous union presidents and other leaders and that the union has "been complicit in things that have led to the demise of the domestic industry."
What happened at GM
After originally appearing that the GM deal was heading toward defeat, workers at large facilities in Texas and Ohio approved the deal on Wednesday.
Workers at GM's Arlington, Texas, plant approved the contract with 60% of production workers voting yes and 65% of skilled trades workers voting yes, according to results posted on Local 276's website. Of more than 3,300 members who voted, 2,051 — or nearly 61% total — voted to approve the contract. Arlington Assembly has more than 5,000 workers building full-size trucks.
Meanwhile, also on Wednesday, workers at three large GM assembly plants voted against the deal with the automaker.
More than 60% of workers at GM's Fort Wayne, Indiana, truck plant voted no, according to results from Local 2209. In Wentzville, Missouri, at the automaker's midsize truck plant, the deal failed with 53.5% voting no, according to results from Local 2250. And at the Lansing Grand River plant — home of the Chevrolet Camaro and Cadillac CT4 and CT5 sedans — the deal failed with 57.7% voting no, according to results from Local 652.
Workers at plants across multiple states also turned the deal down on Tuesday. UAW members at GM's assembly plants in Bowling Green, Kentucky; Spring Hill, Tennessee, and Lansing/Delta Township voted against the proposed deal. So did workers at the automaker's Toledo Propulsion Systems plant and Tonawanda, New York, engine plant.
But in northeast Ohio, members of Local 1112 at the GM and LG Energy Solution Ultium Cells LLC battery plant also overwhelmingly approved the contract with 96% voting yes, according to results obtained by The News.
A significant win for the union was persuading GM to agree to bring its joint-venture battery plant employees into the UAW-GM master agreement. GM's first operating battery plant with LG is next to the automaker's shuttered Lordstown Assembly plant it closed in 2019 after 53 years in operation.
Should the deal be ratified, there would be a six-month window for former Lordstown employees working at the plant on Nov. 26, 2018, to apply to return and work at the Ultium plant. Former workers who transfer from other GM sites would retain their current wages, benefits and seniority.
Johnny Pence, an Ultium worker who started in July 2022, voted yes on the deal but did contemplate his decision. Pence is the grandson of Ali Alli, a longtime, beloved union leader at the GM Lordstown Assembly plant.
Pence makes $22.50 per hour working nights at the plant now. Upon ratification, his pay will go to $26.91 per hour.
"Ultimately, I thought about my future and how I would be under the same contract that my mother was under: health care, retirement, top-tier benefits, things my grandfather Ali Alli fought for four years," Pence said in a statement.
Jeremy Ladd, a GM worker at the Fort Wayne, Indiana, truck plant who's been with the company since 1995, saw both positives and negatives of the deal. Ladd did not want to say if he voted yes or no.
"Right now, I'm kind of feeling frustrated about the division," he said.
Ladd was hearing from other legacy employees that they wanted more gains in the deal and temporary and that in-progression workers wanted to receive a pension instead of 401(k)s.
Ladd called it a "perfect storm where you got the legacy people who want more because they feel they're entitled to more" after sacrificing wage increases to help the company out of bankruptcy more than 15 years ago. "And then we have the new people that feel that they want to come up to our wage, which they deserve, like to have pensions and things like that."
Marc Robinson, principal of consultancy MSR Strategy and a former GM internal consultant who was involved in labor negotiations, called the voting trajectory for the GM contract passing "incredibly good news for the industry."
The situation could be dire, he said, if the deal didn’t pass with another strike potentially doing great harm to supply chains, resulting in more worker sacrifices and reflecting poorly on the union and automaker.
Robinson noted that rejection of an initial tentative agreement at Mack Trucks Inc. resulted in a six-week strike and a new deal, which was ratified Wednesday, that he said didn’t yield much in economic gains.
“There’s no gains the workers got from their six-week strike except lost paychecks,” he said.
It’s a reflection of an empowered labor movement where strikes are becoming the norm rather than the exception. Expect another Detroit Three strike in 2028, Robinson predicted.
But automakers could be seeing disruption even before then. The public nature of the contract talks with the Detroit Three have raised expectations among workers at suppliers, too.
“It sends a signal to the union leadership that they’ve got members who want a lot,” Robinson said of the close GM vote. “Shawn Fain is heavily responsible for that. That helped with getting some of the gains in that contract, but it also made their life difficult and put ratification at risk.”
Voting continues at Stellantis, Ford
Voting is ongoing at Ford and Stellantis locals.
According to incomplete results posted by the UAW, the union's contract with Ford is receiving a 64% yes vote with eight locals left to report.
On Wednesday evening, more than 72% of votes cast by Stellantis workers supported the tentative agreement. Several locals representing workers at large assembly plants, though, still were collecting votes, though employees at Warren Truck Assembly Plant and Sterling Heights Assembly Plant had handily supported the agreement. Two locals representing workers at Mopar parts distribution centers in St. Clair County’s Marysville and in Boston had voted down the deal. Both locations could close under the deal as a part of a consolidation and modernization plan that the automaker says wouldn’t eliminate jobs.
Kurt Kruger, 42, of Toledo, said on Wednesday afternoon that he was preparing to vote later in the day for the tentative agreement with Stellantis. The 22-year UAW member works in quality at the Toledo Assembly Complex that was on strike for 44 days immediately following the expiration of the previous contract a minute before midnight on Sept. 14. Kruger said he thinks the agreement is fair.
“Why would I turn away a contract with so much investment?” he said, noting the deal includes $1.5 billion for Toledo as part of $19 billion in U.S. investments. “Investment is what saves our jobs in the long run.”
He’s also glad to see the gains for supplemental workers and other employees who were lower-paid. Kruger was a temporary part-time worker for 12 years before becoming full-time.
“I’ve got a high school diploma,” he said. “Where else am I going to go make $40 per hour? That’s how we feel.”
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