UAW Reaches Tentative Deal with Ford

The pressure now falls on Ford plant leaders who will meet on Monday in Detroit to talk terms of the agreement.

Getting the GM deal approved in one round of voting contrasts with the situation at Fiat Chrysler, where the pact was initially rejected. The UAW didn’t give a timeline for ratification.

A new, four-year contract remains on the table for General Motors employees after they failed to finalize the deal. If UAW’s national council approves it, roughly 53,000 Ford workers nationwide would be asked to ratify it – in a week or so.

The union said Friday night that 55.4 percent of GM workers overall voted in favor of the deal, including 58 percent of production workers. It includes $9 billion in new investments and limits on outsourcing jobs. That factory also builds the Taurus sedan, whose future is uncertain.

Top-tier workers would get their first pay raise in a decade.

The Ford deal is richer for union workers than the other two deals with automakers. In addition to the $10,000 signing bonus – which is $8,500 for ratification and $1,500 advance profit-sharing payment – it does not change Ford’s profit-sharing plan that shares $1 with workers for every $1 million in company profits. The agreement passed with strong support from both veteran workers, who will get their first wage increase in 10 years, and younger workers, who will get better health care coverage and a path to wage parity in three to six years, depending on their hire dates. “Our members will have the final word, and we look forward to the conversation in the days ahead”. Temporary employees will receive $2,000.

“These are generous agreements”, Harley Shaiken, a labor professor at the University of California at Berkeley, said in an interview.

Like at FCA and GM, Ford workers will receive 64 holidays over the course of the four-year pact, including the restoration of Easter Monday. “We reminded the company time and again that our members deserve to share in its success”.

“We’re extremely proud of the job your committee did for UAW members in the face of hard-line negotiations at the company”, Williams and Settles wrote in the joint letter.