As extensively covered by GM Authority, General Motors and the United Auto Workers (UAW) labor union have been negotiating labor contracts since July 2023. In the midst of the UAW’s increasing demands, the Detroit-based automaker has been clapping back and claiming that the higher pay raises would harm its ability to make proper business decisions.
According to a report from Reuters, the UAW is seeking a minimum 40-percent pay hike over the course of a four-year contract, including an immediate 20 percent increase upon ratification. The labor union backs up these demands by pointing out that the CEOs at the Big Three approved 40 percent pay raises for themselves over four years.
In response, The General stated that the proposal “would threaten our ability to do what’s right for the long-term benefit of the team. We think it’s important to protect U.S. manufacturing and jobs in an industry that is dominated by non-unionized competition.”
It’s worth noting that the UAW did not immediately comment on these claims. Earlier this week, UAW President Shawn Fain pointed out that the current proposals is the “most audacious and ambitious” in decades.
In other UAW-related news, Ultium Cells LLC – the joint venture between General Motors and LG Energy Solution – has claimed that there is not a viable path to include its workers in the national labor agreement. If this were to come to fruition, the workers would likely receive better pay and benefits.
As of the time of this writing, negotiations are currently under way, with the labor union fighting for retiree benefits, cost-of-living adjustments, and unionization of the GM Ultium battery plants, as well as a long list of other items. Notably, the UAW has stated that it isn’t afraid to strike if it doesn’t receive what it perceives as a fair offering.
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Comments
I stand with GM and against the rats in the UAW.
Unions are cancer and need to be purged from our society. Make Union Busting Great Again.
Want fair pay? Go to a right to work state. Negotiate your own pay. The biggest crime of the unions is that when GM doesnt pay you well, you cant go across the street to ford (which in michigan you literally can do!) and sell your competancy for a 30% raise like i can as a field engineer in the south. The unions keep the entry level workers at a low wage, keep them from advancement, job mobility, and if you have a decade or more in the union, make sure you are way over paid and cant get fired for anything short of a fellony. UAW=mob labor
Very few engineers are UAW represented. If Ford, gm, Stellantis etc want you bad enough, they’ll pay you.
Not so, as when you get hired on as a line worker, you start based off the union contract. You also have to follow the contract in terms of your career advancement, so if your an ACE and rock at your job, its hard to advance over another union worker who has seniority. The union also keeps too many people on staff so the corporations dont care about lowballing their pay as theirs always more workers. The UAW prefers it that way. Better to have more, lower paid discguntaled workers paying dues than a few healthy, happy efficient workers.
Neither groups here would i call the good guy in this case, but the UAW is worse. When you combine their contracts with GM, Ford, stellantis, john deer, CaseIH, Agco and caterpillar, the organization that is supposed to protect the working man from the corporations is the biggest corporation of them all
Why does the thumbs up/down zero out when I press on it? Tomg
Tomg, so you can’t vote over and over again and so you know you have voted on it already if you come back to the same article at a different time.
Fire them, hire people who want to work.
Don’t be jealous
What am I supposedky jealous of?
A guaranteed 40% pay increase over 4 years is outrageously ridiculous. But if GM didn’t want the UAW to make such a demand the CEO’s should not have patted themselves on the back and given themselves an outrageously ridiculous 40% pay increase over 4 years.
Let’s do some basic math. That 40% increase amounted to roughly 8 million USD. GM employs some 42,000 UAW workers. If the raise GM’s CEO received had instead passed onto the workers, they’d each get about $190 more a year. Whoop-de-do.
Now, the average UAW salary in just Michigan is a little shy of $32,000 and as a rule of thumb, employees cost 1.25-1.4 times their salary. 0.4*1.25*32*42 equals 672 million dollars. In other words, the UAW wants the GDP of Switzerland.
It was outrageous for top management also, but oh that ok with you huh?
First off, this article was poorly written on that matter by TREY HAWKINS. The CEO’s did not give themselves the raise. The board of directors did and the share holders approved it!
You sound like another government dependent, self loathing, mentally weak, physically soft, scared of everything, offended by anyything, mentally disturbed leftist.
I am on the government dole, social security to be exact. I’m old and kind of weak nowadays, but I’m mentally sharp and not on any meds for mental problems. I am however offended by people like you. trumptards make me ill, not because of your love of the great pumpkin, but because you’re all so stupid.
One more example of anglosphere union and manufacturer not working together because government policy does not help both.
Not getting into the right and wrong of unions, but I’d like 40% off MSRP. Sounds equally unfair.
gm: record profits, profit margins out the ass, gouging consumers at every corner, no rebates, dealer markups, manufactured inventory shortages, execs raking in millions in bonuses each
but its unfair when the worker wants a piece of it. i wonder, how many gm assembly workers and low end office staff can even afford a 80k tahoe or a 90k base corvette.
and yes im fully aware all that will just create more inflation and inflate prices even more but GM is greedy like all of them and went for profits expecting the small guy to just be silent about his cut. those days are over
Didn’t the workers get record profit sharing too?
40% pay increase would follow the workers for a lifetime and we all know the supply has returned and profits are going down.
where do you get that? ATP keeps going up. prices are going up, NOT down. let me not even get into the used market.. the garbage fleet vehicles abused for 70k miles for over new MSRP on dealer lots around here.
MY24 will be another bump in msrp for absolutely no reason for the same my21 stuff we already have.
“profit sharing” is like saying you got rich off a class action lawsuit., here is your 1.45$ enjoy.
Very reminiscent of what happened to the UK auto industry. I anticipate a long drawn out strike with no winners.
The only winners during a strike are the folks running the union as they get their exorbitant salaries regardless of the outcome.
UAW rank and file. Good.
UAW “leadership”. Criminal parasites.
Bye bye high paying union jobs in union states. The UAW just put the final nail in it’s coffin. Sure GM might settle but GM will fast track new product placement in non union areas of the USA and world. So sad 🙁
BS. Look at what Mack truck did in the 80’s. Moved south for cheap labor and found out it’s cheap because nobody wanted to work hard. After 10 years they closed the plant and moved back to Pennsylvania and the UAW.
You realize GM tried “The Southern Strategy” and it didn’t work, right? GM in the US is a ‘closed shop’. All plants are unionized. (Not speaking about JVs or possible RTW state laws that don’t require union membership – I’m just not sure how that works at GM plants in those states.)
The sad fact is that the way GM will run from an unsustainable UAW contract is shift production to China, Mexico and even Canada, where they seem to have a better relationship with Unifor. Then we ALL lose.
Typically, they ask for double the amount of what they really want. It’s all negotiable.
I’d normally agree but imo Fain has upped the rhetoric and demands to point that membership expectations are so high, any agreement less than “outrageous” (his words) will be voted down.
Between the price fueled profits at the automakers and the UAW’s militant new leadership it’s a perfect storm.
Shoot for the moon is the ideology . Funny how same people here complaining about vehicle costs , which are only 5% of the labour cost , are the same ones saying bad union. Auto manufacturers are making profits that haven’t been seen in decades , time to share that with the people who make this happen . A strike is inevitable, but ford is really the weakest of the big 3 currently
The people that made it happen are consumers.
They did share with profit sharing. That’s the point, turns out it’s in the name.
Unfortunately unions have been out of control for years. They really don’t care about the workers. They only care about themselves. They pocket plenty for themselves. Very sad indeed. Cheers
It just places more pressure on the business model to expand manufacturing outside the USA.
Unions have destroyed this countries manufacturer. The fat cats get fatter.
Laughable at best . People criticizing unions when there’s the ridiculous sport players salaries , buy pop for same price as gas , buy made in China clothing made by children labour , embrace ceo salaries as justifiable. Don’t blame the union as much as the society that’s allowed this to happen , just saying . When you can buy a suv that’s 1/4 cost of a house something is wrong , the imbalance of life just keeps becoming more and more lopsided.
Well let me put in simply, the car companies had sold a lot of cars in 1960s. Unions ask for more money, quality of cars went down. Prices higher. Now foriegn cars are better quality. But United States car companies are doing better. How much money do you think people have to buy expensive cars at 100,000 plus. Bottom line nobody is thinking about the car buyer. So you better make a good deal or we will be down to 1 company in the United States. Thank you for your time.
Agree, shutdown US manufacturing, outsource to other countries, but drop price 10-20K. Sales will pick up and profits won’t drop in the long term. Union folk see promises answered and forget that they lose their job security if not actual job as a result of the “audacious” Union “Wins”.
It’s good to see someone use logic on this site.
Pure greed by GM.
So it’s ok to pay Mary Barra $13,900 per hour, screw over all their ‘customers for life’ for every nickel they can get on a new vehicle but not to raise the pay of the people who actually build the vehicles.
Apparently a lot of people on here think that. The disparity between GM management and its blue collar workers is a great example of unbridled capitalism. Capitalism is still better than any of the other economic alternatives, but it needs checks also.
Well loosing 40k per EV made for ford and Gm plus union cost the non union EV company that makes 20% on each unit (1million 2023) will be the winner and keep expanding. I think robotic AI will be the only chance the big three have. Wake up union . Machines do not need representation.
A Chevy Bolt costs 40 grand? Come on man.
True but the point I was making was a general statement of the oem dilemma . Ford has stated publicly they will loose 1 billion a qt in 2023. The new Chevy wt is 80k. The hummer EV is over 100. Bolt was discontinued because it was loosing money on each unit. These are all facts .
But your right msrp to Consumer on the bolt is around 35 to 45.
Nothing to do with what it cost…..
I can’t believe just how dumb the people are thats making comments about getting rid of unions. That tells it all and these folks would work for penny’s on the dollar like a third world country. Mgt should never give themselfs a 40% increase in pay over 4 years when they are already making 240 times more then a worker so that’s ok with these union haters for them to do that and pay there Wallstreet thiefs the rest of the profits available. They didn’t lose anything during that bankruptcy and the only reason the bankruptcy happened was for the samething that’s going on today, mgt not missing a beat and workers had to save the company and mgt and Wallstreet kept taking and taking. And these folks on that thinks these folks don’t work jump your ass in there on a job in fortwayne, or any other job at GM and in being you might last until lunch your all mouth and that’s it. For the folks that think the unions take down everything it is your completely dumb on what a union is and if it went your way and there wasn’t any unions then you wouldn’t even be making min wags the only reason folks without a union make what they make is because of a union tried to unionize in your work mgt will always give you some crumbs that’s the reason your making what your making they pay that to you to keep the union out it’s not because they think you are worth what they are paying you at all. Most red states have the rtw law to make you think you have just what it says, rt to work that’s not hard to figure out of you were interested in finding out why. All red states pay alot less to keep you in poverty and then most get medicaid,Medicare, food stamps ect. I mean look around make a better life for yourself him a damn union these billion dollar companies are making a killing off of your back. Just look at Walmart they don’t pay a living wage hell most still sign up for food stamps and Medicaid, Medicare just so they can take care of there children and tax payers have to make up for all that and that’s only one company. Before you start cutting on the unions you need to educate yourself on how every billion dollar company are screwing you while these to 1% and Wallstreet are moving fat and happy. Educate yourself on how this country started the middle class that’s not hard to find out.
Amen brother, truth spoken. Some people like being lorded over by the rich, not me. I’ll take a union any day over non union.
It’s difficult to take something this poorly written very seriously. Pity really. Cheers!
If GM gave every employee a 10.00 an hour raise, one more week paid vacation, Pensions to all full-time employees starting at their hire in date as temp, sighing Bonus of 17,000.00 and health care to retirees. It would be a no brainer.
Mary made 29 million last year not all cash stock and other bennies included. but still 29 million is a lot of money more than US Presidents.
Current retirees already have Medicare and UAW medical benefit trust. Retirees are the ones that could use a pay raise and cola returned. We don’t get raises or bonuses and we are the ones on a fixed income. We also made concessions.