Ford UAW Workers Narrowly Approve Contract, UAW Executive Board Ratifies GM Deal
A week before Thanksgiving, the United Auto Workers and all of the domestic automakers know they will enter the holiday season without having to worry about a strike.
According to the Detroit News, the UAW announced late Friday that their members at Ford approved a proposed contract by a narrow 51.4-percent margin.
That news followed closely the union’s announcement that its International Executive Board considered ratified its contract with General Motors. It will go into effect starting next week. That deal had been delayed because, although the overall vote was in favor of the contract, almost 60 percent of skilled trade members of the UAW at GM voted against it.
The news from the UAW’s Ford and GM departments follows the union’s ratification last month of a contract with Fiat Chrysler that had been revised from an earlier rejected proposed contract.
The contract vote at Ford went down to the wire, but it was finally ratified because of overwhelming, 70-plus-percent approval at late-voting Local 600, which represents 5,900 workers at the Dearborn Truck and Dearborn Stamping plants.
In a statement, UAW President Dennis Williams said, “Our UAW members have ratified the national agreement after a long process and much debate. The voice of the majority has secured a strong future that will provide job security and economic stability for themselves and their families.”
Ford’s executive vice president for manufacturing and labor affairs, John Fleming said, “This agreement provides a good foundation for Ford Motor Company, our employees and our communities as we work together to create an even stronger business in the years ahead.”
At GM, the UAW’s National GM Council, which includes ranking officials from all UAW locals and shops, met Friday morning to discuss the 2015 contract. That followed a two week review looking into why the contract, which had been approved by a majority of GM UAW members a month ago was voted down by members in the skilled trades. Following that meeting, the union’s International Executive Board met and ratified the contract.
According to UAW bylaws, a rejection of a contract by skilled trades members can be overruled by the executive board if the board finds that those members who voted against the contract did so for reasons that are not unique to their job classifications. Skilled trades workers opposing the deal expressed concerns over local contract agreements, reclassification of trades, numbers of apprentices, outsourcing, manpower reductions, and a lack of cost of living increases and buyouts in the national contract. The UAW’s hierarchy deemed those concerns to not be unique to the skilled trades and considered the contract ratified.
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UAW members must be the hardest-to-please people on the planet. They get job security and even more lush compensation (the envy of 99.44% of the blue collar world), and barely half approve the deal? I suspect the "nay" vote comes from those who wanted a strike to get a vacation; after all, the eventual signing bonus would cover any lost pay.