United Auto Workers Reject Contract Deal With Fiat Chrysler

Members at large FCA assembly plants in Toledo, Ohio, and Sterling Heights, Mich., on Tuesday, September 29, 2015 rejected a four-year contract deal with the automaker.

But the leadership couldn’t control the rank and file at Fiat Chrysler. “I worked 18 years at the Detroit News so I know how it feels and I hope it does not come down to that”. It’s been frustrating. The union’s supposed to be there to help us.

Workers at an assembly plant in Belvidere, Ill., were to be the last to vote on Wednesday, but by the newspaper’s calculations, the deal mathematically could no longer pass.

The Kokomo area factories are prime targets if the union opts to strike, because they make engine and transmission components used in numerous company’s most popular US models.

Veteran UAW autoworkers have not had a base wage increase in a decade. While the Treasury Department ordered that the 25 percent cap be restored when the 2011 contract expired, the White House has given the UAW and FCA the green light to ignore this mandate.

But key details – particularly regarding the pay tier system and health care changes – weren’t disclosed by either the company or the union.

In Toledo, 87 percent of production workers and 80 percent of skilled trades workers at the plant where the Jeep Wrangler and Jeep Cherokee are built voted against the contract, according to a person briefed on the results who is not authorized to release them publicly.

The rebellion by FCA workers blindsided the UAW apparatus, the political establishment and the corporate-controlled media, which thought it could rely on its labor police force to prevent resistance from workers. He said that in recent years, Facebook and Twitter have been assets to organizations like labor unions because they can help rally, motivate and inform workers quickly. Such risky illusions are being encouraged by mid-level union officials, including those associated with Labor Notes and the Autoworker Caravan group, which oppose workers breaking with the company-controlled UAW.

A Fiat Chrysler spokeswoman would not comment Wednesday night. Such isolated strikes have nothing to do with a real mobilization of the working class and would be aimed at reviving the credibility the UAW and reasserting its authority over workers. “Now that this has been overwhelmingly turned down, they are going to move on to Ford or GM”.

Now, Detroit’s profits are robust thanks to strong sales of the trucks and sport utility vehicles UAW members build, and union members told Williams earlier this year to demand an end to a so-called two tier wage system, in which recently hired workers earned about $19 an hour, while workers hired before 2007 earned base wages of $28 an hour. The contract also allowed the company to shift a few auto production to low-wage Mexico, replacing it with new trucks and SUVs that carry higher price tags to cover higher USA wages. But workers, as well as politicians, felt double-crossed when news emerged that the company would move the Cherokee instead.