NEW YORK — The picket lines are gone at the three Ford plants where workers have been on strike for nearly six weeks in some cases. But the strike at the company isn’t quite over, and there’s no immediate end in sight for the strikes at General Motors and Stellantis.
The United Auto Workers union announced a tentative deal with Ford Wednesday night and said workers would be returning to work “soon,” though at this point neither the company nor the union have given details of when that return to work will occur.
What the union won
The four-and-a-half year contract tentatively agreed to by the union and the company will raise workers’ pay by 11% right away and by at least 25% in total by the time it expires, though it hasn’t quite taken effect yet.
And it includes a return of the cost-of-living adjustment (COLA) to protect workers from rising prices by giving them additional raises based on the government’s inflation reading. The union agreed to give that up in 2009 when GM and Stellantis predecessor Chrysler were in bankruptcy and Ford was losing billions and starved for cash.
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When the COLA is combined with the guaranteed pay hikes, members could receive pay increases of more than 30% during the life of the contract, taking the hourly wage for most workers above $40 an hour, or more than $83,000 a year, not counting overtime and profit-sharing.
And pay increases will be even greater for some workers who were being paid at a lower pay tier. Isaiah Goddard is one of those workers. He’s been getting $17 an hour working at Ford’s Rawsonville Component Plant in Ypsilanti, Michigan. His pay will increase 85% to more than $30 an hour, before the…
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