UAW strikes roll on
The United Auto Workers strike has been underway for nearly four full weeks and the latest deal denial showed workers aren’t budging on many of their demands.
Yahoo Finance’s Pras Subramanian reports:
As United Auto Workers’ (UAW) negotiations with the Big Three — GM, Stellantis, and Ford — roll on, union members at Mack Trucks (VOLV-B.ST) made a bold move to reject a tentative deal with company management. This comes as Canada’s auto union, Unifor, says GM is making negotiations difficult, as a big deadline looms for tonight.
Late on Sunday, the UAW announced workers voted to reject a tentative agreement its negotiators made with the truckmaker with a 73% “no” vote, prompting workers to strike at 7 a.m. ET on Monday. “I’m inspired to see UAW members at Mack holding out for a better deal, and ready to stand up and walk off the job to win it,” UAW president Shawn Fain said via the UAW’s X account. The union has 4,000 workers at Mack Trucks plants in Pennsylvania, Florida, and Maryland,
In a letter to Martin Lundstedt, CEO of Volvo North America Trucks (which owns Mack), Fain stated the trucking company’s demands are similar to those of the Big Three, including cost of living allowances (COLA), wage progression, job security, pension, health care, and other issues.
“We clearly demonstrated our commitment to good faith bargaining by arriving at a tentative agreement that was endorsed by both the International UAW and the UAW Mack Truck Council,” Mack Trucks CEO Stephen Roy said. Roy added that he was “surprised and disappointed” by the vote to reject the deal, which included a 19% pay hike, a $3,500 ratification bonus, increased retirement benefits, additional vacation time, and a decrease in time for wage progression to top pay.
Meanwhile in Canada, the country’s Unifor auto workers union said GM (GM) was “resisting” a number of important elements that the union secured with Ford (F), with a strike deadline looming Monday night at 11:59 p.m ET.
Unifor, like the UAW in the US, uses a “pattern agreement” with one automaker to use as a template for the others. Unifor chose GM as its second target after Ford, to hammer out issues it has with the Detroit-based automaker using concessions gained from its Ford deal.
