The UAW released more details Sunday about the record-setting contract it negotiated with Ford. The deal offers 33% raises for veteran workers and a path to 150% pay increases for current temporary workers.
But that’s just the start. It took nearly five hours for UAW President Shawn Fain and other leaders to walk through the list of pay raises, benefit improvements and retirement plus-ups the deal offers for Ford union members – and by extension all 150,000 UAW members at the Detroit Three.
The UAW’s summary of the Ford contract is here.
UAW leaders will repeat the process Nov. 2 when they are expected to release details of the tentative agreement reached Saturday with Stellantis. That deal promises new life for the Belvidere Jeep assembly plant that appeared to be doomed. The agreement commits Stellantis to adding 5,000 new UAW jobs and $19 billion in product investments.
Details of the GM deal will likely come out late this week or early next week. But we know some things already:
The UAW has taken Wall Street’s cheese. That’s one way to sum up the impact of the UAW contract campaign.
Higher wages, bigger company contributions to retirees and contract provisions that give the UAW veto power over plant closings and in Stellantis’ case product investment all point to more cash flowing to workers than to investment funds in the form of buybacks and dividends.
Ford, GM and Stellantis shares barely budged in early Monday trading. Ford and GM remain near three-year lows. Ford and GM shares are down more than 30% since July and have shed a combined $40 billion in market cap. Stellants is less dependent on North America, and its shares are up 27% for the year.
Somewhere in the new contracts there are provisions that will help the automakers offset higher wage and benefit costs over the next 4 ½ years.
Ford will get to offer an unlimited number of buyouts to high-seniority workers, and move UAW workers from Dearborn, Mich. to staff its new EV manufacturing complex in Western Tennessee. Stellantis will get a new mid-size truck factory and a battery plant in Belvidere subsidized by the State of Illinois and possibly the U.S. government.
UAW President Shawn Fain needs to get the Ford and Stellantis deals ratified. And he has to close a deal at GM (see below.)
But already, labor experts say the UAW’s new contracts could lift the fortunes of workers in other industries.
Fain and UAW strategists are looking beyond the Detroit Three, aiming to reclaim the UAW’s former status as the leader of a broader labor movement opposing what Fain calls “the billionaire class.”
In a thread of posts on X.com late Sunday, the UAW noted that its new contracts expire April 30, 2028 – and called on other unions to time their next contracts to expire the same day so that workers across industries could stage a general strike on May Day 2028 if they don’t get better deals.
“We strike on May Day,” UAW lawyer Benjamin Dictor posted.
