The United Automobile Workers union reached a tentative agreement on a new labor contract with Stellantis, the parent company of Chrysler, Jeep and Ram, a person familiar with the matter said Saturday.
The agreement comes three days after the union and Ford Motor announced a tentative agreement on a new contract. Both deals include many of the same or similar terms, including a 25 percent general wage increase for UAW members as well as the possibility of wage adjustments to the cost of living as inflation increases.
The tentative agreement with Stellantis would require approval by the union council that would oversee negotiations with the company, and then ratification by UAW members.
The deal with Stellantis means General Motors is the only company not to have struck a deal with UAVs yet
The union’s contract with the three automakers expired on September 15. Since then, the union has called on more than 45,000 autoworkers from the three companies to walk off the job at factories and 38 spare-part warehouses across the country.
The most recent escalation of the strike at Stellantis came on Monday when the UAW asked workers to go on strike at the Ram plant in Sterling Heights, Michigan, which makes the popular 1500 pickup trucks. The strike has halted production of Jeep Wranglers and Jeep Gladiators at a plant in Toledo, Ohio, and 20 Stellantis parts warehouses.
For decades, the union has negotiated similar contracts with all three automakers, known as pattern bargaining. Like the contract with Ford, the temporary Stellantis deal would raise top UAW wages from $32 an hour to more than $40 over four and a half years. This would allow employees to earn approximately $84,000 per year working 40 hours per week.
Stellantis, GM and Ford began negotiations with the UAW in July. The companies have sought to limit increases in labor costs because they already have higher labor costs than automakers like Tesla, Toyota and Honda that operate nonunion plants in the United States.
The three big US automakers are also trying to control costs, investing tens of billions of dollars to develop new electric vehicles, build battery plants and retool factories.
Stellantis, which is based in Amsterdam, was created in 2021 by the merger of Fiat Chrysler and French automaker Peugeot. The company’s North American business, based near Detroit, is the most profitable.
Stellantis recently surprised analysts by reporting far stronger profits than GM, the largest US automaker by sales. Stellantis earned 11 billion euros ($11.6 billion) in the first half of the year while GM earned about $5 billion.
noam scheiber Contributed to the reporting.
