OAN’s James Meyers
12:08 PM – Monday, October 30, 2023
The United Auto Workers (UAW) union strike is set to end as they have announced a tentative agreement with General Motors (GM).
The Monday announcement ends a nearly seven-week-long strike, one day after the UAW announced it reached a deal with Stellantis and several days after the agreement with Ford.
However, the pacts must be approved by local UAW leaders and later ratified by a simple majority of each automaker’s union-represented workers, which is expected to take several days.
This comes after nearly 13,000 UAW workers went on strike on September 15th, following the expiration of their previous contract with the Big Three. The number increased to almost 40,000 throughout the strike, slowing production for all companies involved.
GM said last Tuesday that the strike would reduce its annual pretax profit by $800 million and they also highlighted that it was costing the automaker group $200 million per week at the time.
If the contracts are approved by the members, it will last for 4 ½ years.
Additionally, union members will get an 11% initial wage increase and a pay bump of 25% over the course of the deal.
The new contract reinstates cost-of-living adjustments, allows workers to reach top level wages in three years instead of eight, and protects workers’ right to strike over plant closures.
This is the first time UAW members went on strike simultaneously at all three companies. In previous strikes, the union would strike at one company to force it into negotiations and then push the other two companies to accept similar terms.
The tentative agreement means that GM employees will now go back to work, similarly to how employees at Ford and Stellantis did after reaching agreements.
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