General Motors has agreed to raise pay for workers at the GM Silao plant in Mexico by 10 percent following negotiations with SINTTIA – the local Silao union.
According to a report from Reuters, this salary hike is one of the biggest in the automotive sector in Mexico, and comes as a result of rising inflation rates, and serves to help workers recover purchasing power. “This overcomes the two-digit barrier that has not been reached in the automotive industry in many years,” SINTTIA said in a statement.
It’s worth noting that this increase will go into effect on March 25th.
As a reminder, the establishment of the independent SINTTIA union was a tumultuous one. Workers at the GM Silao plant voted in the union in early 2022, ousting the controversial Miguel Trujillo López union following allegations that it did not campaign on behalf of worker interests. The results of the first vote were called into question after Mexican labor officials discovered irregularities in the voting process that would have swayed the results in favor of the existing union, including discarded ballots. A second vote was then arranged with help from American labor officials via the special provisions in the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, which resulted in a victory for SINTTIA.
One of the first things the union did was fight for pay raises, and initially targeted wage increases of 19.2 percent, which would have brought the hourly wage at the facility to 77.15 pesos ($3.81) an hour. However, GM and SINTTIA eventually agreed to an 8.5 percent increase.
As context, there are approximately 6,500 workers employed at the Silao facility, which builds the Chevy Silverado 1500 and GMC Sierra 1500 light-duty pickup trucks. The 26.5 million square foot facility first opened in 1996 and is GM’s largest manufacturing plant in Mexico.
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Comments
Well, I was gonna gripe about a raise to workers in Mexico while laying off workers in the U.S.A. but at a raise that would have taken them to a whopping $3.81 p/hr (which they didn’t receive)…I guess I’ll just sit down and shut up. The sad part is…once again, an American company shops its manufacturing in a low-pay country instead of employing American workers at home. Add to that, the additional costs of shipping, etc., that end up being borne by U.S. customers. PS – what is a “living wage” and the accompanying standard of living in Mexico?
As long as you’re ok with dirt floors three something an hour isn’t bad. I just hope this doesn’t cut into Barra’s salary.
The one side benefit we see as consumers is the Mexico built trucks are cheaper to purchase than the Ft. Wayne built trucks. Oh wait, that’s not true at all. They’re the same price! But yet you’ll hear rhetoric from bean counter Stapleton on the savings from the Chinese built Geo Invasion.
The margins between the two are vastly different and averaged together when presented to the public for a vehicle. Think about it, if they are spending $4 hr for labor (which is usually the most expensive piece of a company’s expense outside of SG&A) compared to $20+hr local, they are saving a ton even with the higher shipping costs.
No Commonsense,
I was hoping someone from gm would take the bait. Sure enough you took it right to the bottom of the lake. All Ford half ton’s are built in the U.S. and all Ram half ton’s are U.S. built. All the trucks are similarly priced. Why aren’t the gm trucks cheaper using your average?
Every Hemi built by Chrysler is made in built in Mexico. I know this for a fact. I have an SRT8 Challenger. The transmissions are not built in the US either, try Canada.
We all pay the shipping costs, the destination charge is an average. My Flint built truck traveled less than 12 miles to the dealer and cost $1650
What are you on about? GM is temporarily laying off employees in Ft. Wayne. I guess you didn’t hear about Mexico shutting down also for two weeks?
I’ve owned at least 10 Cadillacs, 3 Corvettes, 2 Camaro’s, Trans Am convertible, 2 Grand National’s, Buick Turbo T, two 90’s Impala SS’s, Monte Carlo, Firebird, Sunbird Convertible, Cruze, HHR, 3100 pickups, Chevy LUV, Silverado’s, GMC Sierra’s, and other GM vehicles that I have forgotten at the moment. I liked every single one of them.
It truly pains me to say. ……
GM SUCKS