DETROIT — Voting on a tentative contract agreement between General Motors and the United Auto Workers union that ended a six-week strike against the company appears too close to call after the latest tallies at several GM factories were announced Wednesday.
The union hasn’t posted final vote totals yet, but workers at several large factories who finished voting in the past few days have turned down the four- year-and-eight-month deal by fairly large margins. However, a factory in Arlington, Texas, with about 5,000 workers voted more than 60% to approve the deal in tallies announced Wednesday.
The vote tracker on the UAW’s website Wednesday shows the deal ahead by 958 votes. But those totals do not include votes from GM assembly plants in Fort Wayne, Indiana; Lansing Delta Township, Michigan; and a powertrain plant in Toledo, Ohio, which all voted against the agreement, according to local union officials.
In most cases the vote tallies ranged from 55% to around 60% against the contract.
In Lockport, members of United Auto Workers Local 686 spent Wednesday casting their “yes” or “no” vote to ratify UAW’s proposed contract with GM.
Reactions were mixed among voters who went to the union hall on Walnut Street.
For 26-year employee Matt McKee, the deal is bittersweet. The “tier” system, which treats employees of assembly facilities and component plants differently, is being modified but not eliminated. Workers’ pay will be equal among facilities, but in the proposed contract, retirement benefits including health insurance and pension are still not in the cards for workers at component plants.
“I do think it’s a good deal,” McKee said. “I do want my pension, but Rome wasn’t built in a day.”
Local 686 president Mike Delucas described the end of unequal pay as “life changing” for GM workers in Lockport.
As for retirement benefits for component plant workers, Delucas said, GM is pledging a 10% non-matching contribution to their 401K plans. On average, that’s $8,600 a year.
McKee sees that young workers will have everything his generation had at the beginning of their careers, before benefits were conceded in negotiations in 2008.
“We’ll have good wages, extra week of vacation, everything,” he said.
McKee and Delucas both predicted the deal will be ratified nationally.
It wasn’t clear what would happen next, but local union officials don’t expect an immediate walkout if the contract is voted down.
Voting continues at Ford through early Saturday, where the deal is passing with 66.1% voting in favor so far with only a few large factories still counting.
The contract was passing overwhelmingly at Jeep maker Stellantis, where voting continues until Tuesday. The union’s vote tracker on Wednesday showed that 79.5% voted in favor with many large factories yet to finish.
In the contracts with all three automakers, long time workers will get 25% general raises over the life of the deals with 11% up front. Including cost of living adjustments, they’ll get about 33%, the union said.
The contract took steps toward ending lower tiers of wages for newer hires, reducing the number of years it takes to reach top pay. Many newer hires wanted defined benefit pension plans instead of 401(k) retirement plans. But the company agreed to contribute 10% per year into the 401(k) instead.
At other factories, local union officials said that longtime workers at GM were unhappy that they didn’t get larger pay raises like newer workers, and they wanted a larger pension increase.
Tony Totty, president of the union local at the Toledo powertrain plant, said the environment is right to seek more from the company. “We need to take advantage of the moment,” he said. “Who knows what the next environment will be for national agreements. The company never has a problem telling us we need to take concessions in bad economic times. Why should we not get the best economic agreement in good economic times?”
At a GM pickup truck factory in Flint, Michigan, which voted 51.8% against the contract, worker Tommy Wolikow said more senior workers should have gotten bigger raises because newer hires and temporary workers got a lot more. “This wage thing, it’s just not cutting it,” he said. Still, he said the contract is close and he’d go for it with a few small additions.
Wolikow, hired by GM in 2008, said he was happy with a 10% annual company contribution to his 401(k) plan rather than a defined benefit pension.
Thousands of UAW members joined picket lines in targeted strikes against Detroit automakers over a six-week stretch before tentative deals were reached late last month. Rather than striking at one company, the union targeted individual plants at all three automakers. At its peak last month about 46,000 of the union’s 146,000 workers at the Detroit companies were walking picket lines.
Of the four GM plants that went on strike, workers at only one, Arlington, Texas, approved the contract. Workers in Wentzville, Missouri; Lansing Delta Township, Michigan; and Spring Hill, Tennessee; voted it down.