by David Shepardson and Joseph White
The American auto union, the United Auto Workers (UAW), reached a tentative agreement on Saturday with Chrysler’s parent company, Stellantis
STLAM.MI, the UAW announced.
The agreement reached with Stellantis follows the broad outlines of that concluded a few days ago by the UAW and Ford FN, including a 25% salary increase over 4 and a half years.
Under the terms of the agreement, a plant of the group in Illinois must also reopen, said Shawn Fain, president of the UAW. The Stellantis factory in Belvidere closed this year, leaving 1,300 employees without jobs.
Shawn Fain promised to reverse this decision and the government of Joe Biden and the state of Illinois offered to guarantee subsidies to modernize the factory. Illinois also acquired 70 acres of land adjacent to the assembly plant.
No compromise has yet been reached between General Motors
GM.N and UAW negotiators.
Shawn Fain said the union would expand its strike at GM’s Spring Hill, Tennessee, plant. “We are disappointed by GM’s unnecessary and irresponsible refusal of a fair deal,” he said in a statement sent to Reuters.
Strikes in the US auto sector in support of wage demands have entered their seventh week.
(Written by Sayantani Ghosh; French version Camille Raynaud)