After more than six weeks of walkouts, picketing, and fractured negotiations, the United Automobile Workers (UAW) and Ford Motor Company have reached a tentative agreement on a new labor contract.
The deal, announced yesterday (Oct. 25) includes a roughly 25% pay increase over four years, with an immediate 11% wage hike upon ratification. Moreover, it reinstates major benefits lost during the Great Recession, including cost-of-living allowances, and improves retirement plans. There’s also a historic right to strike over plant closures included in the terms—a first for the union.
“We made history,” Shawn Fain, the union president, said in a Facebook livestream. “We told Ford to pony up, and they did.”
The accord will be put forth at a meeting in Detroit on Sunday, and if the council approves, the contract terms will be put to a vote with the company’s 57,000 union workers. Striking Ford workers will go back to work while the tentative agreement awaits ratification.
Recent Comments