- The United Auto Workers and General Motors have agreed to an agreement ending collective bargaining talks between the union and the Detroit automakers.
- GM is the final Detroit automaker to reach an agreement with the union following historically contentious talks.
- The four-and-a-half-year tentative contracts still need to be ratified by members at each automaker.
DETROIT – The United Auto Workers and General Motors have agreed to a deal that ends collective bargaining talks between the union and Detroit automakers following more than six weeks of targeted U.S. labor strikes, sources told CNBC.
GM is the final Detroit automaker to reach an agreement with the union following historically contentious talks. Tens of thousands of workers across the country are on strike.
Two sources familiar with the GM-UAW talks said talks were held late last night and into the early hours of the morning to reach an agreement. News of a deal was first reported on Monday via Bloomberg.
Spokesmen with the UAW and GM declined to comment Monday.
Ford Motor Co. reached a tentative agreement with the union on Wednesday, followed by a deal with Chrysler-parent Stellandis on Saturday.
The four-and-a-half-year tentative contracts still need to be ratified by members at each automaker. The headline economy of contracts, such as a 25% wage increase, was modeled after Ford’s initial contract.
Members of the United Auto Workers, or UAW, Local 230 and their supporters picket in front of the Chrysler Corporate Parts division in Ontario, California on September 26, 2023.
Patrick D. Fallen | AFP | Good pictures
The raises and benefits collectively boost wages to more than $40 an hour, including a 68% increase in starting wages to more than $28 an hour, the union said of the Ford and Stellandis contracts.
Those agreements reinstated cost-of-living adjustments, shortened the eight-year path to peak wages to three years and allowed the right to strike against plant closings.
The GM deal fits with those improvements, sources told CNBC.
The strikes cost GM, Ford and Stellantis billions of dollars in total production. Ford said Thursday that the strike has cost the union $1.3 billion and that if the deal is approved by members, labor costs will increase by about $850 to $900 per vehicle produced.
GM said Tuesday’s strike cost about $800 million.
The proposed agreements mark a record for the union, which has been more confrontational and strategic during negotiations than in recent history.
The union began negotiations with all three automakers simultaneously, breaking with recent history of UAW leaders negotiating with each automaker separately, selecting a lead company to focus efforts on, and crafting the rest of the contracts from a lead tentative agreement.
It was not immediately clear how much the labor contracts would increase labor costs for companies, which argued that complying with all of the union’s demands would hurt their competitiveness and even long-term viability.
Deutsche Bank recently estimated the contract’s overall cost overrun at Ford at $6.2 billion over the contract’s term; $7.2 billion at GM; and $6.4 billion in Stellantis.
