Fiat Chrysler Reaches Proposed Tentative Agreement With UAW

Steph Willems
by Steph Willems

If you’ve followed the news lately, that headline could easily include the term “scandal-plagued” twice. Fiat Chrysler, currently pursuing a merger deal with Groupe PSA while battling a racketeering lawsuit filed by General Motors, has inked a tentative four-year labor deal with the United Auto Workers — a union facing the biggest scandal in its history.

At least in this latest round of bargaining, the UAW didn’t have its former president, Gary Jones, lurking in the background under a cloud of suspicion. Jones resigned as president, and then from the union altogether, late last month after the board moved to oust him.

Thus far, FCA hasn’t said much about the proposal signed Nov. 30th, though the UAW has released snippets of its contents. GM, the first Detroit Three automaker to sit across the table with the UAW’s bargaining team, set the tone for deals to follow, providing a pathway to full-time employment for temporary workers, wage increases, jacked bonuses, and no changes to healthcare coverage. Ford followed suit last month.

While the FCA deal was expected to be a more difficult one to reach, it’s possible that the racketeering lawsuit, in which GM claims FCA bribed UAW officials to go easy on them during the last round of bargaining, coupled with the impending merger, helped the union draw concessions from its bargaining partner.

“Our UAW Bargaining Committee worked diligently, over many months, during the General Motors strike and Ford negotiations to maintain productive negotiations with FCA,” said UAW Vice President and UAW-FCA Department Director Cindy Estrada in a statement.

“The pattern bargaining strategy has been a very effective approach for the UAW and its members to negotiate economic gains around salary, benefits and job security. In addition to the $4.5 billion in major investments previously announced, negotiators secured an additional $4.5 billion for a total of $9 billion of investments adding 7,900 jobs during the contract period.”

Full details of the agreement won’t be released until the UAW-FCA National Council meets on December 4th to look over the proposed document and decide whether it’s good enough. After that, the deal goes to members for ratification. That vote would begin December 6th.

Acting UAW President Rory Gamble, who’s currently embarking on a clean-up operation aimed at avoiding federal oversight of the union (which is still a possibility, one federal prosecutor claims), hailed the tentative deal.

“FCA has been a great American success story thanks to the hard work of our members,” Gamble said. “We have achieved substantial gains and job security provisions for the fastest growing auto company in the United States.”

[Image: Fiat Chrysler Automobiles]

Steph Willems
Steph Willems

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  • Jeff S Jeff S on Dec 03, 2019

    Good that the workers are getting more but in the long run this will not last as more production is automated and more production is moved overseas. This of course will happen regardless if the workers get more. There will be more mergers and consolidations globally in the automotive sector.

    • Lorenzo Lorenzo on Dec 03, 2019

      I wouldn't worry about overseas production. Import duties might negate the labor cost advantage, but many low labor cost countries don't have the parts production to support assembly. There's a reason Mecedes and BMW have US assembly plants: assembly labor is cheaper than Germany, and the supply chain is ample. Those two actually export more US made models to world markets than they do from Germany.

  • Jeff S Jeff S on Dec 04, 2019

    Mercedes and BMW are in a whole different league than smaller compact cars and crossovers. For smaller less expensive vehicles it is still cheaper to make them in Mexico, China, Thailand, and India, Eventually the trade will be settled and the import duties will go down or in some cases eliminated. Even if vehicles are not produced overseas more automation will eliminated many of the higher paying auto jobs.

  • CanadaCraig You can just imagine how quickly the tires are going to wear out on a 5,800 lbs AWD 2024 Dodge Charger.
  • Luke42 I tried FSD for a month in December 2022 on my Model Y and wasn’t impressed.The building-blocks were amazing but sum of the all of those amazing parts was about as useful as Honda Sensing in terms of reducing the driver’s workload.I have a list of fixes I need to see in Autopilot before I blow another $200 renting FSD. But I will try it for free for a month.I would love it if FSD v12 lived up to the hype and my mind were changed. But I have no reason to believe I might be wrong at this point, based on the reviews I’ve read so far. [shrug]. I’m sure I’ll have more to say about it once I get to test it.
  • FormerFF We bought three new and one used car last year, so we won't be visiting any showrooms this year unless a meteor hits one of them. Sorry to hear that Mini has terminated the manual transmission, a Mini could be a fun car to drive with a stick.It appears that 2025 is going to see a significant decrease in the number of models that can be had with a stick. The used car we bought is a Mk 7 GTI with a six speed manual, and my younger daughter and I are enjoying it quite a lot. We'll be hanging on to it for many years.
  • Oberkanone Where is the value here? Magna is assembling the vehicles. The IP is not novel. Just buy the IP at bankruptcy stage for next to nothing.
  • Jalop1991 what, no Turbo trim?
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