![]() Ford said average annual pay including overtime and bonuses was $78,000 last year. Top-scale assembly plant workers make about $32 per hour, plus large annual profit-sharing checks. They also want to make sure the union represents workers at joint-venture electric vehicle battery factories that the companies are building so workers have jobs making vehicles of the future. Many say it's time to get the concessions back because the companies are making huge profits and CEOs are raking in millions. Even so, only Ford avoided government-funded bankruptcy protection. ![]() ![]() Wage tiers were created as the UAW tried to help the companies avoid financial trouble ahead of and during the Great Recession. Starting in 2007, workers gave up cost-of-living raises and defined benefit pensions for new hires. In addition to general wage increases, the union is seeking restoration of cost-of-living pay raises, an end to varying tiers of wages for factory jobs, a 32-hour week with 40 hours of pay, the restoration of traditional defined-benefit pensions for new hires who now receive only 401(k)-style retirement plans, pension increases for retirees and other items. She's been there three years and makes $24 per hour as a lower-tier employee, she said. It's just that we deserve more," she said.Īmong about 400 workers on the picket line in Michigan was Adelisa LeBron, 37, who works on the engine line. Outside the Ford plant in suburban Detroit, worker Britney Johnson, 35, who has worked for the company about 3 1/2 years and has yet to reach top union wages, said she'd like higher pay, the return of pensions, and cost of living increases. GM and Ford offered 20% and Stellantis, formerly Fiat Chrysler, offered 17.5%. Instead, the UAW targeted a handful of factories to prod company negotiators to raise their offers, which were far lower than union demands of 36% wage increases over four years. But not all of the 146,000 UAW members at company plants are walking picket lines, at least not yet. Instead of going after one company, the union, led by its pugnacious new president, Shawn Fain, is striking at all three. The strike is far different from those during previous UAW negotiations. "Workers all over the world are watching this," said Liz Shuler, president of the AFL-CIO, a federation of 60 unions with 12.5 million members. The walkout could even be a factor in next year's presidential election by testing Joe Biden's proud claim to be the most union-friendly president in American history. If they last a long time, dealers could run short of vehicles and prices could rise. labor is flexing its might and the companies face a historic transition from building internal combustion automobiles to making electric vehicles. The strikes will likely chart the future of the union and of America's homegrown auto industry at a time when U.S. Members of the United Auto Workers union began picketing at a General Motors assembly plant in Wentzville, Missouri, a Ford factory in Wayne, Michigan, near Detroit, and a Stellantis Jeep plant in Toledo, Ohio. auto workers stopped making vehicles and went on strike Friday after their leaders couldn't bridge a giant gap between union demands in contract talks and what Detroit's three automakers are willing to pay. It was the first time in the union's 88-year history that it walked out on all three companies simultaneously as four-year contracts with the companies expired at 11:59 p.m.
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