AFL-CIO

By Larisa Manescu - Common Dreams, October 30, 2023

WASHINGTON - The United Auto Workers has announced tentative agreements in their contract negotiations with the “Big Three” Automakers: Ford, Stellantis, and General Motors.

Wins from the tentative agreements:

• All three agreements will increase base wages by 25% through April 2028;
• Ford’s deal creates a pathway to allow workers at future battery plants, including the new EV complex in Tennessee, to join the union and be included in the master agreement;
• Stellantis’ deal will reopen the idled Belvidere Assembly Plant in Illinois and add a new battery plant in Belvidere;
• General Motors battery production workers will be included under the master UAW contract.

Tens of thousands of UAW workers have been on strike across the U.S. since the UAW contract expired on September 16. The Sierra Club, alongside many in the environment movement, has loudly echoed the demands of auto workers to ensure that the clean energy transition is a just transition.

Next, the tentative agreements for each automaker must be voted on and ratified by UAW members.

In response, Sierra Club Executive Director Ben Jealous released the following statement:

“As UAW President Shawn Fain has said from the start, ‘Record profits mean record contracts.’ For workers and further ensuring a just transition to clean energy, these tentative contracts are truly historic.

“The transformation of the auto sector – and the economy more broadly – to meet U.S. climate commitments represents a generational opportunity to build an economy that works for everyone. This work will not be easy, but in negotiating historic contracts, UAW has reminded the world what is possible!”

By Laura Clawson - Daily Kos, October 30, 2023

“Record profits mean record contracts” sounded like an aspirational slogan as the United Auto Workers went on strike against the Big Three automakers. But it’s what the union made happen over a six-week strike that now ends thanks to a tentative agreement with General Motors. Ford and Stellantis had agreed to tentative deals in recent days. Workers still need to ratify those contracts, but workers are back on the job at Ford and Stellantis and will be heading back to work at GM.

The union made big gains on pay and ending the two-tier system that left newer workers making much less than their longer-tenured coworkers. But that’s not all: The agreements offer both hope for a more just clean energy transition and a rebuttal to the top Republican talking point about the strike.

By Jake Johnson - Common Dreams, October 26, 2023

Nearly six weeks into its historic strike against the Big Three U.S. car manufacturers, the United Auto Workers late Wednesday announced a tentative contract deal with Ford that includes significant wage increases and cost-of-living adjustments that were scrapped during the 2008 financial crisis.

In a statement, the UAW's leadership said the gains achieved in the deal amount to four times what workers received in the 2019 contract that recently expired. Ford's original proposal for a new contract included wage increases of just 9% while the union demanded a 46% boost, pointing to the automakers' surging profits over the past decade.

The tentative deal calls for a 25% general wage increase over four years, including an 11% boost in the first year. The UAW said the top wage under the tentative agreement would rise to more than $40 an hour over the life of the contract and the starting wage would jump to over $28 an hour—a 68% increase—thanks to cost-of-living adjustments.

By Jane Slaughter - Labor Notes, October 26, 2023

Since 1979, union auto workers have endured round after round of concessions. That era is over. On Wednesday, the 41st day of the union’s Stand Up Strike against the Big 3, Auto Workers (UAW) President Shawn Fain announced a deal with Ford. The contract gains are substantial.

The union added the straw that broke the camel’s back this week when it hit General Motors’s and Stellantis’s two biggest moneymakers, SUV and truck assembly plants in Texas and Michigan, on Monday and Tuesday. Workers at Ford’s top cash cow, Kentucky Truck, had gone out October 11.

Ford caved on Wednesday rather than see the next domino fall at “the Rouge,” its F-150 plant in Dearborn, Michigan, which builds the country’s best-selling truck.

Throughout, the union’s strategy has been to play the Big 3 automakers against each other. The strike began September 15 with just one plant at each company called out. The union has escalated weekly, with negotiators rewarding a company that had made concessions to the union, by sparing it more strikes, and punishing those tardy to the table.

By Jeff Schuhrke - In These Times, October 26, 2023

Forty days into their nationwide Stand-Up Strike, the United Auto Workers (UAW) yesterday reached a tentative agreement with the first of the Big Three automakers. On Wednesday night, UAW President Shawn Fain and Vice President Chuck Browning announced that a deal had been reached with Ford — with Browning calling it ​“the most lucrative agreement per member” in several decades and Fain hailing it as ​“a historic agreement.”

“We won things nobody thought possible,” Fain said in a video message. ​“Since the strike began, Ford put 50% more on the table than when we walked out. This agreement sets us on a new path to make things right at Ford, at the Big Three and across the auto industry. Together, we are turning the tide for the working class in this country.”

The tentative agreement comes after the Stand-Up Strike expanded to include 6,800 workers at Stellantis’ Sterling Heights Assembly Plant in Michigan on Monday and then 5,000 workers at General Motors’ Arlington Assembly Plant in Texas on Tuesday.

“Ford knew what was coming for them on Wednesday if we didn’t get a deal. That was checkmate,” Fain said.

Illustrating how the innovative tactic of simultaneously striking at all three automakers pits the companies against each other, the pressure is now on GM and Stellantis to also reach a deal as Ford strikers will return to work.

As Browning explained, ​“The last thing [GM and Stellantis] want is for Ford to get back to full capacity while they mess around and lag behind.”

Last month, Ford also was the first of the Big Three to settle with Unifor, the Canadian autoworkers’ union.

By Phoebe Wall Howard, Eric D. Lawrence, and Jamie L. LaReau - Detroit Free Press, October 25, 2023

Top UAW officials told local union leaders Wednesday evening by phone that the union has a potential deal with Ford Motor Co. to end the strike against the automaker, the Detroit Free Press confirmed.

UAW President Shawn Fain and UAW Vice President Chuck Browning, who led negotiations with Ford, posted a 10-minute video on X at 8:27 p.m. to make the news official.

"The Stand Up Strike is working," Fain said on the video posted on the site formerly known as Twitter. By closing down additional plants at Stellantis and GM this week, “Ford knew what was coming for them Wednesday, if we didn’t get a deal. That was checkmate.”

The tentative agreement includes an 11% wage increase the first year and totals 25% over a 4.5-year contract, plus a $5,000 ratification bonus and cost-of-living adjustments, according to two sources familiar with the deal but not authorized to speak publicly.

Additional details of the tentative agreement were not immediately available, but negotiators for the United Auto Workers union and Ford had a good meeting on Wednesday afternoon, sources told the Free Press.

By Simon Evans - Carbon Brief, October 24, 2023

Electric vehicles (EVs) significantly cut lifecycle greenhouse gas emissions in almost all circumstances and are the key technology for decarbonising road transport.

While not having a car has even larger climate benefits, many peoples’ ability to go car-free is limited by their circumstances and the availability of alternatives.

This means EVs are “likely crucial” for tackling transport emissions, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

EV sales are growing fast, accounting for one in every seven cars sold globally in 2022 – up from one-in-70 just five years earlier.

Yet EVs are also being subjected to relentless hostile reporting across mainstream media in many major economies, including the UK.

Here, Carbon Brief factchecks 21 of the most common – and persistent – myths about EVs.

• FALSE: ‘An EV has to travel 50,000+ miles to break even’
• FALSE: ‘VW’s e-Golf becomes more environmentally friendly only after 77,000 miles’
• FALSE: The ‘electric Volvo C40 needs to be driven around 68,400 miles to cut carbon’
• FALSE: ‘Electric vehicles have little or no CO2 advantage over the car you already drive’
• FALSE: ‘Climate change is accelerating because of the ban on combustion-engines’
• FALSE: ‘Old bangers are the green motorist’s choice’
• FALSE: ‘EVs simply displace carbon emissions from roads to distant power stations’
• MOSTLY FALSE: ‘Electric cars are not green machines’
• INCOMPLETE: ‘Electric vehicles alone can’t solve climate change’
• FALSE: ‘EVs are [low-mileage] runabouts…[that] take a long time to pay off their carbon debt’
• FALSE: ‘Synthetic petrol could displace electric vehicles’
• FALSE: ‘Hydrogen cars are more sustainable than EVs’
• FALSE: ‘Sales of electric vehicles appear to be slowing’
• FALSE: ‘Electric cars could soon be more expensive to drive than their petrol equivalents’
• FALSE: ‘There are insufficient raw materials…for all vehicles to be EVs’
• FALSE: The lifetime of EV batteries is ‘horribly uncertain’
• FALSE: ‘Electric vehicles can explode – petrol ones only do it in movies’
• FALSE: ‘Under Biden’s electric vehicle mandate, 40% of US auto jobs will disappear’
• FALSE: ‘Electric car revolution at crisis point’ due to ‘charging point shortage’
• FALSE: ‘Britain’s creaking power grid cannot cope with charging electric cars’
• FALSE: ‘How your super heavy EV produces MORE pollution than petrol and diesel cars’

By Keith Brower Brown - Labor Notes, October 24, 2023

General Motors CEO Mary Barra started her day boasting to company investors how much car sales and revenues have recently climbed.

Two hours later, Auto Workers reminded her who made those revenues happen. The Auto Workers (UAW) struck GM’s most profitable plant, the massive Arlington Assembly, just outside Dallas.

On grounds stretching across 250 acres, the 5,000 workers at Arlington make every GM model of full-size SUV, like the Tahoe and Escalade. According to an industry analyst at Benchmark, it’s “the most profitable auto plant in the world,” producing about 30 percent of GM revenue.

They join 6,800 workers at the top Stellantis moneymaker, Sterling Heights Assembly near Detroit, who struck their plant yesterday. Of the 146,000 Big 3 UAW members fighting for a contract, about 46,000 are now on strike.

By Sharon Zhang - Truthout, October 24, 2023

On Tuesday morning, General Motors (GM) announced their latest quarterly revenue, reporting billions of dollars in profit and beating Wall Street expectations.

In response, just hours later, 5,000 workers at GM’s largest and most profitable plant walked out, joining over 40,000 other workers who are picketing as part of the United Auto Workers (UAW) historic “Stand Up Strike” in its fifth week.

The surprise strike began after GM announced that it made over $3 billion in profit in the third quarter of 2023. The company said that the strike is costing it $200 million a week. But the company has still seen success in the first nine months of the year, reporting $8.9 billion in adjusted income, an increase of 11 percent over the same period last year — a year in which GM saw record earnings.

Workers walked out from Arlington Assembly in Texas, where they make SUVs like the Chevrolet Tahoe, GMC Yukon and Cadillac Escalade, which are among the biggest moneymakers for GM.

“As we’ve said for months: record profits equal record contracts,” said UAW President Shawn Fain. “It’s time GM workers, and the whole working class, get their fair share.”

By Union Jake and Adam Keller - The Valley Labor Report, October 24, 2023