Sunday, October 6

What to Know About the Automakers’ Deals With the U.A.W.

The United Automobile Workers union reached a tentative agreement with General Motors on Monday, following similar deals in recent days with Ford Motor and Stellantis, the parent company of Ram, Chrysler and Jeep.

Together, the agreements are expected to end the union’s six-week strike of the Big Three Detroit automakers.

Here’s what to know about the gains for employees, the next steps in the bargaining process and the union’s aims for workers at other automakers.

The agreements for workers at all three automakers include a 25 percent pay increase over the next four and a half years and a provision for a cost-of-living adjustment so that inflation doesn’t wipe out the wage gains.

At Ford, the starting wage would increase 68 percent, while the top rate would rise 33 percent, to more than $42 an hour from $32. The tiered wage system, which allows the companies to pay newer workers much less than seasoned workers, was eliminated at two plants. Temporary workers would make 150 percent more over the course of the agreement, and retirement pay would be boosted for current retirees, members with pensions and members with 401(k) plans.

Full details have yet to be released for G.M. and Stellantis, but the benefits are expected to mirror those in the Ford agreement.

Councils for Stellantis and G.M. still need to decide whether to send the agreement to members. (Ford’s council approved the tentative contract on Sunday.) Then the agreements must be ratified by a majority of union members at each of the automakers. When workers reached an agreement to end their strike against G.M. in 2019, they took nine days to ratify it.

Striking workers at all three automakers have begun or will soon begin returning to work while the agreements are being considered for ratification.

Shawn Fain, the president of the U.A.W., announced this month that G.M.’s battery plants, which it owns through a joint venture, would be covered by the national labor contract reached by the two sides. The union also said its agreement with Ford would make it relatively easy for workers at the company’s battery plants to join the U.A.W.

Mr. Fain has also said he wants to organize workers at car and battery plants owned by Tesla, which dominates the fast-growing electric car market, and foreign-owned automakers like Toyota, Honda and BMW.

Many established and newer companies have built or are building plants in Southern states like Kentucky, Tennessee and Georgia, partly to take advantage of federal incentives authorized by the Inflation Reduction Act. BMW, which has a plant in Spartanburg, S.C., broke ground on a new battery plant in the state in June.

The U.A.W. has not successfully organized any plants owned by a major automaker in the South, though it does represent workers at facilities for multiple heavy truck manufacturers. Ford and G.M. also own auto plants in Kentucky, Tennessee and Texas where the U.A.W. represents workers.

“When we return to the bargaining table in 2028, it won’t just be with the Big Three,” Mr. Fain said on Sunday. “It will be the Big Five or Big Six.”