UAW GM Council Approves Tentative Contract: Details

After more than forty days of contentious labor negotiations and targeted strikes, the UAW has reached a tentative agreement with GM, which was approved by the UAW GM Council on Saturday.

Now that the contract has been reviewed by the UAW GM Council, it will be voted on by the union membership, a process that will take place over the next several weeks.

According to documents published by the UAW, hourly workers will gain more from the tentative GM agreement than from the four contracts that preceded it, with the wage boost surpassing the total from the last 22 years of raises.

Temporary workers hired in 2023 at $16.67 per hour will earn $40 per hour by the end of the contract four years hence, or a 158 percent surge in wages. The UAW also notes “CCA, GMCH, Subsystems, and Brownstown members will see an immediate wage boost from 36 to 89 percent” with production workers earning $42 hourly top rate by 2028 with cost of living adjustments (COLA) figured in.

By 2028, the starting rate for union workers will be $30 per hour, or 70 percent above the 2023 one, and the top rate for employees in the skilled trades will climb 30 percent to $50 per hour.

Hourly workers will also receive 10 percent 401k employer contribution, a $1,500 voucher toward the purchase of a GM vehicle, a tuition assistance increase, profit sharing expanded to temps, Juneteeth as a paid holiday, Skilled Trades $1.50 tool allowance, the right to strike over plant closures and outsourcing, and a $5,000 ratification bonus.

Salaried members also got a raise as well as COLA guarantees, with general wage increases (GWIs) of 25 percent by September 30^th, 2027. The COLA increases suspended in 2011 have now been restored as well, with quarterly adjustments based on the federal Consumer Price Index or CPI.

The salaried agreement also gives these workers access to disciplinary letters within three days, the right to advance notice of schedule changes, the transfer of the salaried agreement with GM to any new purchaser of a GM facility or branch as a condition of sale, and maintenance of a favorable Merit and TeamGM Funds allocation process.

Additionally, GM has agreed to invest significant sums in three of its plants to equip those facilities to build EVs.

The investments include $391 million in the GM Fairfax plant in Kansas, which currently produces the Chevy Malibu and Cadillac XT4; $1.25 billion in EV production capacity at the Lansing Grand River Plant where the Chevy Camaro, Cadillac CT4, and Cadillac CT5 are produced; and $300 million in the Tonawanda Engine Plant where the 6.2L V8 LT2 engine for the Corvette Stingray is built, to update it for EV drive unit manufacture.

In a livestreamed Facebook statement on Saturday, UAW president Shawn Fain said that “we need to organize the unorganized,” adding that “we need unions everywhere to rediscover the power of the strike.” He added that “we just fought and struck in ways we’ve never done before, and we won big. Part of our strength came from all three contracts expiring at once and taking on all three companies at once.”

He further declared that “our goal is to spend the next few years organizing auto workers across this country,” specifying Toyota – which recently gave its workers their third raise in a year – Honda, Volkswagen, Hyundai and Tesla as being in the crosshairs of an aggressive push toward “record contracts” for their workers.

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