![]() In a letter Friday, Mark Stewart, Stellantis’ chief operating officer, told employees that the company’s offer to the union would make it financially feasible to employ workers into the next generation. Outside analysts say that when wages and benefits are included, Detroit Three assembly plant workers now receive around $60 an hour while workers at Asian automaker plants in the U.S. They also contend that too lavish a UAW contract would saddle them with expenses that would force up the retail prices of vehicles, pricing Detroit automakers above competitors from Europe and Asia. The automakers’ argument is that they will be absorbing enormous capital expenses in the coming years to continue to build combustion-engine vehicles while at the same time designing electric vehicles and building battery and assembly plants for the future. The companies have rebuffed the union’s demands as too expensive. Under its proposal, Ford said it calculated that average annual pay, including overtime and lump-sum bonuses, would rise from an average of $78,000 a year last year to more than $92,000 in the first year of a new contract. All offered contract-ratification bonuses but rejected the shortened work week the UAW requested. But it proposed lump sums to cover inflation. Stellantis (formerly Fiat Chrysler) offered 14.5% wage increases over four years, without lump sums in the wage package. GM has offered 10% as well, with similar lump sums. ![]() What have the companies proposedĪ contract offer from Ford proposed a cumulative 10% pay raise over the course of the four-year contract, plus several lump-sum payments, including $6,000 to cover inflation. The CEOs of all three major automakers earn multiple millions in annual compensation. They’ve collectively posted net income of $164 billion, $20 billion of it this year. Over the past decade, the Detroit Three have emerged as robust profit-makers. Still, full-time workers have received profit-sharing checks ranging this year from $9,716 at Ford to $14,760 at Stellantis.įain himself has acknowledged that the union’s demands are “audacious.” But he has argued that the richly profitable automakers can afford to raise workers’ pay significantly to make up for what the union gave up to help the companies withstand the 2007-2009 financial crisis and the Great Recession. Though top-scale assembly workers earn $32.32 an hour, temporary workers start at just under $17. For years, the union gave up general pay raises and lost cost-of-living wage increases to help the companies control costs. Their health benefits are less generous, too. ![]() Currently, UAW workers who were hired after 2007 don’t receive defined-benefit pensions.
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