Employees type a picket line outdoors the Ford Motor Co. Kentucky Truck Plant within the early morning hours on October 12, 2023 in Louisville, Kentucky. This week, a majority of employees on the plant voted no on the tentative contract deal.
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Luke Sharrett/Getty Pictures
Employees type a picket line outdoors the Ford Motor Co. Kentucky Truck Plant within the early morning hours on October 12, 2023 in Louisville, Kentucky. This week, a majority of employees on the plant voted no on the tentative contract deal.
Luke Sharrett/Getty Pictures
Autoworkers at Ford’s Kentucky Truck Plant in Louisville, Ky., voted no on the contract settlement reached by the United Auto Employees union.
In response to vote trackers on the UAW’s web site, 54.5% of the 4,118 ballots solid in Kentucky — Ford’s largest plant — had been no votes, the outcomes confirmed Monday. The plant, which builds Ford’s F-Sequence Tremendous Responsibility pickup vehicles amongst different fashions, is estimated to make use of 8,700 employees.
This means that the street forward for the UAW will not be as clean as union management had hoped for, after reaching file agreements with all three main automakers following a six-week auto strike.
GM employees in Flint additionally voted no
This comes after one other loss final week, when 52% of the three,425 ballots solid at Basic Motors’ Flint Meeting plant had been additionally no votes. Roughly 4,700 employees at that plant construct Chevy Silverado and GMC Sierra pickup vehicles.
By most measures, the contracts have been beneficiant. They supply employees with a 25% wage improve and in some circumstances extra by 2027, value of dwelling allowances and improved retirement contributions.
However even with these historic beneficial properties, they do not carry employees again to the place they had been earlier than 2007, when wages and advantages had been slashed amid robust financial occasions.
Most employees should vote in favor
Solely by 2027, will the highest wage at every of the Massive 3 attain the place it was 20 years in the past, when adjusted for inflation, and not one of the carmakers conceded to the union’s calls for to carry again pensions and retiree well being care.
”There have been quite a lot of beneficial properties,” says Kentucky Truck Plant employee Jenn Thompson, who voted no. ”However there have been just some issues that I might have preferred to have seen on this contract that did not make it,” together with retiree well being care.
Regardless of these setbacks, a majority of the union members total nonetheless assist the contracts, with about 10,000 ballots solid up to now at GM and 25,000 at Ford.
A majority of employees at every of the Massive 3 should vote in favor of ratifying the contracts for them to take impact. UAW President Shawn Fain has repeatedly known as the employees the union’s highest authority.
Ought to any of the contracts fail to achieve a majority of sure votes, negotiators must return to the bargaining desk.
Lastly tallies on the Massive 3 automakers are anticipated this week and subsequent.
— Louisville Public Media reporter Jacob Munoz contributed to this report.
