On October 30 the President of the United Auto Workers (UAW), Shawn Fain announced the suspension of the union’s six-week strike against the “big 3” auto giants – Ford, General Motors (GM) and Stellantis (the owner of Chrysler, Dodge and Jeep brands).

If the tentative agreements (TAs) are approved by the members, the strike will be over. If the workers vote them down, the strike will continue. Voting will take place over the next three weeks by UAW members, including 57,000 members at Ford, 43,000 at Stellantis and 46,000 at GM.

Ford settles first

The UAW’s “Stand Up” rolling strike won its first settlement with Ford on October 25 This pressured Stellantis and GM to quickly agree to similar terms.

President Biden hailed the agreements on October 30, praising the UAW and the importance of unions to the economy.

The new four-and-a-half-year contract includes an immediate pay rise of 11 percent, and totaling 25 percent over the length of the agreement.

Key gains

While not every demand of the union was won, there are many significant gains and no concessions. Here are some highlights from  the Ford  Agreement as explained on the UAW website.

“Our lowest-paid members will see a 150 percent raise through this agreement. That’s not a typo. Temps hired this year at $16.67 will earn over $40 per hour in base wages by the end of this agreement, over $42 an hour with estimated COLA [Cost-Of-Living-Allowance].

“With COLA, by 2028, we’ll have a top rate of over $42 an hour for production, and over $50 for skilled trades, an over 30 percent raise. By the end of this agreement, our starting rate will be pushing $30 an hour with COLA, nearly a 70 percent bump from today.”

In their previous contract – which ran between 2019 and 2023 – workers at the Big 3 received a 6 percent wage increase every year.

Newly hired workers will start earning the companies’ top wage more quickly. At Ford, GM and Stellantis, full-time employees will make the top payafter three years on the job. Under the previous contracts, it took eight years to reach the highest tier. The deals also provide permanent jobs for temporary workers and boost retirement incomes.

The deals provide a path for workers at electric vehicle (EV) battery plants to earn the same wages as other UAW members under the national bargaining agreement. There are also five payments of $500 each for GM current retirees and surviving spouses.

The union demand for a 32-hour work week was dropped.

The UAW website goes on to claim:

“This wasn’t a backroom deal hammered out by the President or Vice President. From the International Executive Board and the President’s Office to the UAW Ford Department, to our national negotiators, our National Ford Council, our local leadership, and our rank-and-file members, everyone played a role in securing this victory. We went into this round of bargaining with the goal of addressing decades of concessions and givebacks. We know that the Stand Up Strike will go down in history.”

The employers’ mouthpieces are not happy with the UAW’s victory. The November 1 headline on The Wall Street Journal, asked: “UAW Deal Shows Unions Are Winning. How Long Will It Last?”

The newspaper continued, “The United Auto Workers’ tentative deals with Detroit automakers mark the latest union victory in a year of multiplying strikes and sizable gains in a robust labor market.”

Three key lessons

In an article posted on the September 24 Jacobin, Jane Slaughter, a co-founder of Labor Notes in Detroit, explained:

“One lesson is that member power does not have to start from a supermajority: that’s unlikely. UAW members are on strike today, with inspiring levels of rank-and-file energy, because four years ago a small group of activists founded a new reform caucus. That caucus, Unite All Workers for Democracy (UAWD), boldly took advantage of an unexpected opportunity, organized like crazy, won elections, and went on to lead the union. Their international president consistently hammers home the message that the UAW’s fight this fall is a fight for the whole working class.

“If UAWD had not existed and organized hard, this current fight that has so much potential to change the stakes for the entire labor movement would not be happening.”

Slaughter continued:

“When the Justice Department began investigating the UAW for corruption, a few longtime activists saw the opening. In 2019, they founded UAWD and began a campaign — which seemed quixotic at the time — to change the UAW’s constitution so that members could vote directly for top officers. Since the union’s founding in the 1930s, convention delegates had chosen the officers. From the 1940s until this year conventions were tightly managed by the aptly named Administration Caucus, founded by Walter Reuther. The process for amending the constitution is byzantine, but in a short time UAWD was approaching its goal of getting the required fifteen locals representing 79,000 members on board to call a special convention. Then COVID-19 hit, canceling local union meetings and closing plants.

“UAWD rebounded, though, and was soon making its views known to the Justice Department: the way to clear out corruption was to let the members vote.”…

“Eventually the Justice Department’s monitor said he would let UAW members decide whether they wanted to decide. In fall 2021, they voted whether to keep the old convention system or switch to one-member-one-vote. Turnout was light — only 14 percent of the 400,000 members and 600,000 retirees, indicating both the high degree of member cynicism and the sorry state of the union’s address book — but the direct elections option won with 63.6 percent.”…

 “They got UAWD members elected as convention delegates and managed to turn the 2022 convention from a ceremonial snooze fest and rubber stamp to a locus of debate. The convention raised strike pay and had it start on a strike’s first day instead of its eighth — ensuring the union’s $800 million strike fund could be used to make the decision to strike less painful for members.

“UAWD, which by this time included both factory workers and members from the union’s newer higher-ed locals, then nominated seven people for a slate called UAW Members United to run for the fourteen-member executive board. Again, members campaigned hard, taking road trips around the Midwest and holding Zoom events in addition to all their other tactics….

“At this point, the Administration Caucus woke up and threw everything it had into holding on to the presidency. [Shawn] Fain [the current UAW President] was finally elected [representing the reform ticket] by a slim margin in March 2023 and sworn in just hours before the union’s scheduled bargaining convention.”…

“UAWD did not represent a supermajority of the members and only a bare majority of those who voted. Yet Fain and his allies on the board and in the rank and file believed they could win over and activate members who had been uninvolved, skeptical, or even despairing about their union.”…

“The results have been stunning. Members at the Big Three, whether they voted for UAWD or for no one, are thrilled that their president is actually sharing the union’s demands, speaking to them regularly via Facebook Live (and responding in real time to comments in the chat), and calling out the CEOs who make up to $14,000 an hour, with class-struggle language seldom heard outside a Bernie Sanders rally. The excitement on the picket lines and the creativity of the slogans and tactics members are inventing haven’t been seen in the union in many decades. Members have rediscovered respect for their union and for themselves as autoworkers and union members.”…

“That brings up a second lesson, which is for workers to grab their chance even if they’re not completely ready. In a perfect world, UAWD would have grown through the years to represent a majority of well-organized members, proving itself through practice at the local level. Instead, a random corruption investigation, initiated during the Donald Trump years, changed everything.

“Lesson three, then, could be that it’s worthwhile to keep the spark of reform alive even when it’s tiny.

“Now UAWD is helping workers develop into organizers. It’s shown them how to call ten-minute meetings in their plants and how to organize practice pickets, flying squadrons, and overtime refusals. Leaders are well aware that despite the tremendous victory of winning at the top, their work to transform the union is just beginning. We can learn from UAWD how to seize the moment. Reform caucuses are an essential part of a winning labor strategy.”

The challenges remain as the auto bosses will push back. The Fain leadership team has announced plans to support organizing at the nonunion plants such as Tesla in California, and at the European and Asian auto makers [US plants].

Toyota recently announced after the settlements, it would give its production workers a $3 an hour wage increase.

The UAW victory gives the rank and file everywhere more hope and higher expectations of winning good contracts and organizing their own unions.

Fain has called on other unions to have their contracts expire on the same day as the UAW’s – April 30, 2028: “so that together we can begin to flex our collective muscles.”