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Stellantis raises wages in the United States. Don’t tell Landini

7 months ago babelfish

Stellantis raises wages in the United States. Don't tell Landini

Like the hypothesis of an agreement between Ford and the US unions, the one in Stellantis also provides for wage increases valued at more than four times higher than those provided for in the 2019 contract. The workers also obtained the rescue of plants destined for decommissioning

If in Italy trade unionists complain that Stellantis is deaf to their requests, in the United States the dispute has taken a completely different turn. After less than two months of strike by the blue collar workers which also involved Ford and General Motors , in fact, the group born from the merger between FCA and PSA announced that it had reached a provisional agreement with the US union Uaw (United Automobile Workers) for the renewal of the employment contract.

WHAT DOES THE AGREEMENT BETWEEN STELLANTIS AND THE US TRADE UNIONS INVOLVE?

The deal restores key entitlements lost during the 2007 recession, including cost-of-living allowance and three-year salary progression, as well as eliminating pay splits between young and old. Improves pensions for current retirees, for workers with pensions and for those with a 401 plan. “We have achieved what we were told was impossible to achieve only weeks ago,” announced the head of Uaw and the fuse of the protest Shawn Fain .

THE INCREASES

The agreement provides for base salary increases of 25% until April 2028 and will increase, thanks to the revaluation mechanism, cumulatively by 33%, to above $42 an hour. In detail, the wage for the lowest paid entry-level workers will increase by 67%, exceeding $30 an hour. Stellantis' lowest-paid workers, i.e. temporary workers, will see a raise of more than 165% over the life of the agreement. Some Mopar workers will receive an immediate 76 percent raise upon ratification.

END OF THE STRIKE?

Stellantis workers will return to work while the agreement undergoes the ratification process which includes a referendum of all Stellantis workers in the USA. This can only happen after the Stellantis National Council of the Uaw has examined and approved the proposed agreement.

THE CHANGE TO THE INDUSTRIAL PLAN

But that is not all. The multinational has in fact agreed to reactivate the assembly plant in Belvidere, Illinois, which closed earlier this year after having built Chrysler products for over half a century, by localizing the production of a medium-sized truck.

“We saved Belvidere – announced the Uaw leader who, as well as with the Big Three, had to fight with the union leaders, who were initially opposed to such a claim -. We got a new vehicle for the factory, it will be a medium-sized truck, and we will have two shifts. In addition to the vehicle commitment, Stellantis will also add more than 1,000 jobs at a new battery plant, also in Belvidere.” Fain assures that these new jobs are not temporary. These are contractual commitments and Uaw promises more battles if Stellantis does not keep its word given to the workers.

From the first announcements it seems that two other sites that Stellantis had announced it wanted to close will instead receive new investments while one will even increase jobs: “Pledges of new products have been obtained that save all the workers at Trenton Engine – says the secretary of Uaw – and they also increase employment in Toledo, for over $19 billion in total new investments in the United States.”

The US president, Joe Biden , also intervened in the ongoing negotiations between the builders and the workers, expressing his solidarity with the working class and supporting the need to find a solution as soon as possible for the drafting of the new collective labor agreement. “Not only have we obtained the right to strike against the closure of the plants: we have also obtained the right to strike for lack of investments, a historic first for the union,” said Fain. “At Stellantis, in particular, we not only won a record contract, but we began to turn the tide of the war against the American working class.”

FIOM'S COMMENT

“In addition to the salary issue – they underline from Fiom (a delegation had gone to support their US counterparts – the union therefore manages to get its hands on Stellantis' industrial plan: the fired workers of the Belvidere Assembly Plant (where Stellantis built the Jeep Cherokee KL ) will be rehired. Eight months ago, Stellantis had decided to close the Belvidere Assembly Plant, putting 1,200 workers on the street."

This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/primo-piano/stellantis-aumenta-i-salari-negli-stati-uniti/ on Mon, 30 Oct 2023 10:03:42 +0000.