Record wage increases
Stellantis reaches agreement with US union
October 29, 2023, 2:55 a.m
After weeks of strike, the US union UAW and Stellantis agree on wage increases for Chrysler. But it’s not just more money. The car company also wants to invest in new plants. Only an agreement with General Motors is still pending.
Chrysler parent company Stellantis and the US union United Auto Workers (UAW) have tentatively agreed on a new labor contract after a six-week strike. Like the agreement reached with Ford on Thursday, this contract has a term of 4.5 years and includes record wage increases, the UAW announced on Saturday (local time).
The agreement includes a 25 percent wage increase for employees and an agreement to reopen the automaker’s assembly plant in Belvidere, Illinois. As UAW Vice President Rich Boyer said in a video address, Stellantis also agreed to build a battery plant adjacent to the existing plant in Belvidere.
In total, the automobile manufacturer has committed to new investments of $19 billion in US operations and to the creation of 5,000 additional jobs. “We look forward to welcoming our 43,000 employees back to work and resuming operations,” said Stellantis.
US President Joe Biden, who expressed solidarity with workers at Stellantis, Ford and GM at the start of the strike, welcomed the agreement between the UAW and the Chrysler parent company. In a statement, Biden said the contract was a testament to the power of unions and collective bargaining, which created essential jobs for the middle class.
No agreement yet with General Motors
The union negotiators had already reached a preliminary agreement with the US car manufacturer Ford this week. Ford employees received an immediate wage increase of eleven percent. Taking compound interest and cost of living into account, the UAW even negotiated a wage increase of around 33 percent over the entire term of the contract. “We told Ford to pay and they did,” UAW President Shawn Fain said in a video post on Facebook.
However, the auto union has not yet been able to reach an agreement with General Motors (GM). Therefore, the UAW announced that it would expand the strike to include General Motors’ largest plant in North America in Spring Hill, Tennessee, with a total of 4,000 employees. “We are disappointed by GM’s unnecessary and irresponsible refusal to reach a fair agreement,” UAW President Shawn Fain said in a statement to Reuters. Economic losses from the UAW strike total $9.3 billion, according to Anderson Economic Group estimates.