Ford reaches deal with auto workers

The new deal at Ford is structurally similar to the GM pact and a Fiat Chrysler-UAW contract ratified two weeks ago, which both call for an end to the two-tiered wage system that paid newer workers much less than veteran UAW auto workers. The Union reported that 55.4% of the GM workers including 58% of the production workers voted in favor of the same four-year deal.

After those meetings, the UAW’s global Executive Board will determine the next steps. But any changes to the national contract can only affect skilled trades workers, the UAW said.

The pact will go to a worker ratification vote as early as next week. It also offers 4,000 workers $60,000 to take early retirement. The agreement came even before union members at General Motors has ratified their own agreement.

GM workers would keep the outgoing contract’s profit sharing structure of $1,000 per $1 billion in GM North American profit.

UAW members of several General Motors plants have voted in approval of the new contract with the automaker.

The Council is scheduled to meet in Detroit on Monday. The GM proposed contract is similar, except that it includes an $8,000 bonus. But it is believed its terms are closer to those of the GM agreement than the deal at Fiat Chrysler. GM will pay out that incentive to as many as 4,000 UAW production workers. The last strike, in 2007 against GM, lasted two days.

The company, in a statement, said, “Working with our UAW partners, we have reached a tentative agreement for the next four years for our employees and our business”. That would match Tier 1 workers, who also are getting their first wage increases in more than a decade: 3 percent raises in the first and third years of the contract, with lump-sum bonuses in the second and fourth years.

Also Friday, the contract passed with 53 percent in favor at a factory with about 3,500 workers outside of Lansing, Michigan, according to the union local’s website.

He said he’s hoping the deal would secure products and jobs in the United States.