Detroit — The United Auto Workers’ lead negotiator with Stellantis NV expressed hope that an agreement could be reached this week “if we keep on pressing and keep our heads down.”
The Detroit-based union’s unprecedented strike against all three Detroit automakers reached its 24th day on Sunday. There are 25,300 members on strike across the country among 146,000 workers at the Detroit Three.
Despite the optimism, gaps between the sides remain, said John Morgan, the union’s lead negotiator at Stellantis, head of the “people who work” subcommittee and shop committeeman at Local 7 that represents employees at the Jefferson North Assembly Plant in Detroit. Some of the union’s highly publicized demands at the automaker have been withdrawn, including for a 32-hour workweek.
But other work-life balance initiatives remain under discussion, Morgan said. At Stellantis, intermittent absenteeism primarily under the Family and Medical Leave Act has been the center of many conversations. FMLA requires employers to allow for unpaid leave for qualified medical and family reasons.
The company wants to award or provide a bonus for “presenteeism,” or good attendance, but Morgan said the union is pushing against policies seeking to reduce FMLA absences it thinks could affect negatively workers who show up.
“Don’t punish people who come to work,” he told The Detroit News during a rally in Detroit focused on supplemental workers. “There are mechanisms already that they have to respond to abuses of FMLA. Why don’t you use those?”
He cited an example as the company’s ability to investigate circumstances in which it believes FMLA is being used improperly.
Stellantis declined to comment on the state of negotiations beyond a letter sent to employees on Friday by Mark Stewart, chief operating officer in North America, that characterized “good momentum,” but acknowledged “gaps that still need to be closed.”
Supplemental workers
Planned and unplanned absenteeism, including tardiness, at Stellantis was at approximately 23% in 2022, according to a previous proposal to the union. The company uses lower-paid supplemental workers to fill in those absences.
They start at $15.78 per hour, and have higher health-care expenses than their full-time colleagues, plus no dental or vision coverage. Stellantis’ workforce has the highest percentage of supplemental or temporary workers among the Detroit Three, 12%.
Mubarak Mozeb, 32, of Hamtramck is a supplemental worker of three years at the Jefferson North Assembly Plant on Detroit’s east side, which makes the Jeep Grand Cherokee and Dodge Durango SUVs.
He said he often works 60 hours a week at the plant and then five to six hours more doing home renovations, equipment maintenance or working in a restaurant to get by. He, however, said he hasn’t been scheduled to work at JNAP the past three weeks.
“Many workers like myself are jumping from paycheck to paycheck,” he said. “A lot of us are jumping from job to job. Imagine working 10 hours at a factory, heading downtown to bus tables until one o’clock in the morning, then having to decide if it’s worth going to sleep, because you’re going to get up in three hours for the next shift.”
Other supplemental workers also said they have been scheduled for fewer hours. If a deal that doesn’t convert supplementals isn’t reached, Tenisha Hodges, 45, of Detroit will have been one for three years in January at JNAP. She said she wasn’t scheduled to work last week and is scheduled to work three days this week, despite working a full-time schedule ahead of the contract expiration.
“When I first started making $15.78 an hour, I was doing 10 hours a day, and then I would leave at three in the morning to go and do Amazon Flex for another five hours,” she said. “Coming to the plant, you have the idea that financially, you’re going to be OK … just to find out it’s not how it used to be.”
Ben Duell Fraser of Ann Arbor, known as rapper Canuck, performed his “No Justice, No Jeeps” song at the rally. He said he also had observed reductions in shifts among his supplemental colleagues at the Mack Assembly Plant adjacent to JNAP that also builds Grand Cherokees. He noted supervisors were stepping in for some roles where he is in the paint shop because there weren’t enough people who knew how to do the job.
“They’re essential,” he said, “and the supplementals get the worst end of the stick: They work the hardest jobs and get the worst treatment.”
Stellantis is recalling full-time seniority employees across its U.S. manufacturing operations from an inverse layoff that affected hundreds of employees in the spring, according to a statement provided by spokesperson Jodi Tinson.
“As a result,” the statement said, “the company will schedule supplemental employees in accordance with the provisions of the” company’s 2019 bargaining agreement.
JNAP had been on “critical status” since early July, which had been scheduled to expire Oct. 2. That allows the company to run plants for a certain period of time seven days a week and with overtime.
Morgan said critical status is one policy “we’re trying” to remove “totally” from the contract.
“They should have to work with the local union” on determining to use overtime, he said. “Our members want to spend time with their families. Especially since COVID, they want to have that.”
UAW President Shawn Fain, who Sunday morning was traveling back from a rally in Chicago where Ford Motor Co. employees are on strike, on Friday said all three Detroit automakers had made commitments to convert supplemental and temporary workers, though specifics weren’t shared. Ford’s proposal is the most generous with a $21 per hour wage, extending profit sharing to them and a commitment to convert current temps with at least 90 days to full time. GM and Stellantis were offering a $20 per hour starting wage.
Financial security
Also a key issue in the talks is product allocation, said Rich Boyer, UAW vice president for the Stellantis Department. Stellantis has sought the ability to close or sell 18 facilities, from its Auburn Hills headquarters, which it could lease back, to Mopar parts distribution centers across the country it wants to consolidate and make more efficient.
The Mopar consolidation wouldn’t result in a decrease to job counts, according to the company, but Boyer two weeks ago said roughly 5,400 jobs across its footprint could be at risk. There’s been some movement, he said without providing specifics, particularly around powertrain workers and investments for battery trays and other EV components.
The union also wants a solution for the former Jeep Cherokee plant in Belvidere, Illinois, that the company idled in February in response to EV costs. Boyer previously said a proposal included building a battery plant there, resuming operations at its stamping plant and opening a Mopar distribution center there.
“I want a vehicle in Belvidere,” Boyer said on Sunday.
The remark comes after a last-minute move by GM on Friday to hold off the strike from expanding to its full-size SUV plant in Arlington, Texas. The company agreed to include its joint ventures’ electric-vehicle battery manufacturing workers in its master agreement with the UAW.
Details of how inclusion would look remain sparse, and GM’s statement on Friday did not acknowledge the move. Neither Morgan nor Boyer had seen the details of the agreement.
GM’s Ultium Cells LLC plant in northeast Ohio’s Warren is operating and has been organized by the UAW. Stellantis and Ford don’t have a U.S. workforce in this category yet. They have battery plants coming in the future, though the union still would have to organize them.
Still, “you can negotiate for anything,” said David Nacht, a labor and employment attorney in Ann Arbor. “Given that you’ve got a Democratic administration in the state and federal governments aligned with the UAW and aligned with electric vehicles, the unionization of battery plants is inevitable (at the Detroit Three). It’s a Kabuki dance of the broader economic, political and structural environment.”
Morgan and Boyer said they were optimistic Stellantis would adopt the pattern.
“It’s huge,” Morgan said about GM’s move, adding about Stellantis: “They need to follow.”
As for other issues, such as the desire for workers hired after 2007 to have pensions, the request is “very tough,” Morgan said. Stellantis has said it’s offered more than $1 billion in contributions to retirement funding and “significant improvements” to its 401(k) contribution. Ford said it has increased 401(k) contributions. Previous GM offers included payments to active and retired UAW members.
“There are enhancements of the 401(k),” Morgan said. “Retirement security is important. There are ways to do it (with a 401(k)), but you have to do your homework.”
Speaking on the matter, Boyer told rally attendees: “Ten hours a day, you get injured, and your hands are sore, your feet are sore, your elbows hurt, your shoulders are shot, and they say you don’t deserve a pension. Yeah, right. You deserve that and more.”
The move by GM on Friday really suggested the three companies are “all within reach” of agreements with the UAW, said Marick Masters, a management professor at Wayne State University.
“They’ve already won a good contract” looking across the proposals, he said. “If they can get to close to 30% (wage increase), including COLA, a little more for the retirees, this EV stuff and the right to strike (over plant closures), I don’t know what else the union could hold out for.”
The union’s targeted “stand-up strike” of all three Detroit automakers began on Sept. 15 with walkouts at GM’s Wentzville mid-size truck and commercial van plant in Missouri, Ford’s Bronco and Ranger Michigan Assembly Plant in Wayne, and the Stellantis Jeep Wrangler and Gladiator plant in Toledo, Ohio.
The UAW has since expanded the walkout to 38 GM and Stellantis parts distribution centers across the country, and most recently to Ford’s Explorer and Lincoln Aviator plant in Chicago and GM’s Chevrolet Traverse and Buick Enclave plant in Delta Township outside Lansing.
The workers on strike are receiving $500 per week from the union’s Strike and Defense Fund. In response to the work stoppages, GM also has laid off 2,175 employees at feeder plants and sites that use components at plants on strike. Ford, likewise, has laid off 1,800 workers. Stellantis also has laid off several hundred employees. These workers, too, are receiving $500 per week if they don’t receive unemployment benefits, the union has said.
The strike fund was at more than $825 million ahead of the strike. It remains “healthy,” said Margaret Mock, the UAW’s secretary-treasurer, though she didn’t have an exact figure to provide.
“We’re going to be fine,” she said, noting to workers on strike: “We know it’s hard,” but movement like GM’s on Friday “signals our strength is in holding the line.”
A few dozen UAW members and their supporters attended the supplemental workers rally at the Manz Playfield near the Detroit Assembly Complex, which includes JNAP and Mack. Also among the attendees were members of the Detroit City Council, including President Mary Sheffield, and UAW Region 1 Director LaShawn English.
Event organizer Lynda Jackson, recording secretary for Local 7, said the event was meant to counteract feelings of division among workers in different classifications.
“Being a part of the first tier twos, I felt that wedge,” Jackson said. “Every contract negotiation, there are efforts seeking to divide us. We want them to know they’re not in this by themselves”
Mack Trucks pact rejected
Also on Sunday, the UAW declared it would go on strike at 7 a.m. Monday against Volvo Group-owned Mack Trucks Inc. after about 73% of members in Pennsylvania, Maryland and Florida rejected a tentative agreement, signaling the high expectation of the union’s members in expected gains in a contract. The talks cover 3,900 Mack Trucks workers.
“I’m inspired to see UAW members at Mack holding out for a better deal,” Fain said in a statement, “and ready to stand up and walk off the job to win it.”
In a statement, Mack President Stephen Roy said the company was “surprised and disappointed that the UAW has chosen to strike, which we feel is unnecessary. We clearly demonstrated our commitment to good faith bargaining by arriving at a tentative agreement that was endorsed by both the International UAW and the UAW Mack Truck Council.”
The tentative agreement differed based on location and job. For many Mack employees, though, it included about a 19% wage increase, including a 10% raise upon ratification, over five years, one additional year than their previous contract. There was a $3,500 ratification bonus and increased 401(k) contribution. It reduced the length of time to the top wage by one year to five years.
It doesn’t include reinstating pensions, a cost-of-living adjustment or a shorter workweek, some requests the union had made of the Detroit Three. Ford and Stellantis have agreed to reinstating COLA that was suspended in 2009. Fain on Friday indicated GM was close to doing so.
“The UAW called our tentative agreement ‘a record contract for the Heavy Truck industry,'” Roy added, “and we trust that other stakeholders also appreciate that our market, business and competitive set are very different from those of passenger car makers.”
Across the northern border, Canadian autoworkers union Unifor published a video with President Lana Payne on X, formerly known as Twitter, that its GM bargaining committee “has been working all through the weekend to secure a great contract for all of you.”
It comes ahead of that union’s Monday night deadline to reach a deal with GM. Unifor last month ratified a three-year deal with Ford with wage increases of 10% the first year, 2% the second year and 3% the final year. It also had COLA and reduced the amount of time an in-progression employee needs to reach the top pay scale to four years from eight.
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