UAW reaches deal with GM, ending auto strike with big win for workers
The last domino has fallen, with UAW and GM reaching a deal to end the auto industry strike. Now, tentative deals have been met with all three auto companies, which means the strike is over.
The deal has not yet been confirmed by either GM or UAW, but it was first reported by Bloomberg and has been widely reported since. It comes just two days after GM workers walked out of the Cadillac Lyriq plant at Spring Hill Assembly in Tennessee.
As a result, we have even fewer details than with the last deals with Ford and Stellantis. In both of those cases, UAW posted a video going over some details of the deal, but in this case, they have not yet posted a similar video.
Bloomberg reports that the deal is “broadly similar” to the first two deals. GM has the most unionized workers of the Big Three, and retirement benefits were particularly in focus, so we’ll have to see what other specifics come out of that deal when it’s revealed.
But the basic details likely include a 25% increase in pay for all workers – which is a larger raise than all combined wage raises between 2001-2022 – plus cost-of-living adjustments. These cost-of-living adjustments used to be part of union contracts but were given up during the economic downturn, which started in 2008 and took until now for the workers to get back.
One unique part of the GM deal that we already know about is that GM has agreed to bring all US GM joint-venture battery plants under the union master agreement. This represented a “leapfrog” in negotiations from GM, putting the company in front of others in terms of their offer to UAW, but then GM ended up being the last to come to a final agreement.
And batteries were an important win for UAW because in discussions over this strike, interviewers have repeatedly tried to get UAW President Shawn Fain to badmouth electric vehicles and blame them for wage or job problems, but Fain has never taken the bait. Instead, he has always insisted that the UAW is looking for a “just transition” to electric vehicles that ensures workers still get treated fairly as the industry is upended.
Previously, battery workers had been paid significantly less than other manufacturing workers, though UAW had made progress on that front even before the strike began.
The deal with Stellantis also included a boost to electric vehicles. UAW got Stellantis to promise to reopen a shuttered plant in Belvidere, Illinois, and further to commit to building a new battery factory at the same site, which should add approximately 1,000 battery jobs that previously had not been planned.
While we don’t know the details of this deal yet, the process to approve it is likely to be the same. The deal needs to be finalized by union leadership, who will then present it to all union members by publishing it online and via Facebook livestream. Then meetings will be held, and the deal will be voted on by each local chapter.
But, in previous deals, UAW has directed workers to go back to work right away once the tentative agreement has been reached in a show of good faith that everyone wants to end this strike quickly. Leadership is confident that these deals are good enough that they will be ratified by members when the time comes and that everyone is eager to get back to work.
Unions have been having a bit of a moment in the US in the last couple of years as frustrated workers have started demanding more. The US has seen upticks in union membership, strike activity, and union popularity, with unions reaching their highest approval rating since polls began in 1965.
Several successful strikes have happened across the US economy, and UAW seems to want to bring this momentum forward into the future. To this end, UAW has invited other unions in America to align contract expirations around the same time frame, so as to inspire broader labor action.
The contracts UAW negotiated are expected to last 4.5 years until April 30, 2028. This is the day before May Day, also known as International Workers’ Day, a day that commemorates the early labor movement in the US, but is more celebrated overseas than it is here. It seems clear that UAW is targeting much bigger labor action across the economy in the future.
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GreenPower Motor Company says it’s received three orders for 11 of its BEAST electric Type D school buses for western state school districts in Arizona, California, and Oregon.
GreenPower hasn’t made the sort of headline-grabbing promises or big-money commitments that companies like Nikola and Lion Electric have, but while those companies are floundering GPM seems to be plugging away, taking orders where it can and actually delivering buses to schools. Late last year, the company scored 11 more orders for its flagship BEAST electric school bus.
As far as these latest orders go, the breakdown is:
- seven to Los Banos Unified School District in Los Banos, California
- two for the Hood River County School District in Hood River, Oregon
- two for the Casa Grande Elementary School District in Casa Grande, Arizona
Those two BEAST electric school buses for Arizona will join another 90-passenger BEAST that was delivered to Phoenix Elementary School District #1, which operates 15 schools in the center of Phoenix, late last year.
“As school districts continue to make the change from NOx emitting diesel school buses to a cleaner, healthier means of transporting students, school district transportation departments are pursuing the gold standard of the industry – the GreenPower all-electric, purpose-built (BEAST) school buses,” said Paul Start, GreenPower’s Vice President of Sales, School Bus Group. “(The) GreenPower school bus order pipeline and production schedule are both at record levels with sales projections for (2025) set to eclipse the 2024 calendar year.”
GreenPower moved into an 80,000-square-foot production facility in South Charleston, West Virigina in August 2022, and delivered its first buses to that state the following year.
Electrek’s Take
Since the first horseless carriage companies started operating 100 years ago (give or take), at least 1,900 different companies have been formed in the US, producing over 3,000 brands of American automobiles. By the mid 1980s, that had distilled down to “the big 3.”
All of which is to say: don’t let the recent round of bankruptcies fool you – startups in the car and truck industry is business as usual, but some of these companies will stick around. If you’re wondering which ones, look to the ones that are making units, not promises.
SOURCE | IMAGES: GreenPower Motors.
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While some recent high-profile bankruptcies have cast doubt on the EV startup space recently, medium-duty electric truck maker Harbinger got a shot of credibility this week with a massive $100 million Series B funding round co-led by Capricorn’s Technology Impact Fund.
It’s been a rough couple of weeks for fledgling EV brands like Lion Electric and Canoo, but box van builder Harbinger is bucking the trend, fueling its latest funding round with an order book of 4,690 vehicles that’s valued at nearly $500 million. Some of the company’s more notable customers including Bimbo Bakeries (which owns brands like Sara Lee, Thomas’, and Entenmann’s) and THOR Industries (Airstream, Jayco, Thor), which is also one of the investors in the Series B.
Other prominent investors include Tiger Global, the Coca-Cola System Sustainability Fund, and ArcTern Ventures.
As for what makes Harbinger such an attractive investment prospect, Dipender Saluja, Managing Partner of Capricorn Investment Group’s Technology Impact Fund explains that, “Harbinger has demonstrated a remarkable ability to reach significant milestones far quicker than other EV companies … the market has been impressed by their ability to develop large portions of the vehicle in-house to drive down unit costs, while remaining capital efficient.”
The company plans to use the funds to ramp up to higher-volume production capacity and deliver on existing orders, as well as build-out of the company’s sales, customer support, and service operations.
“Harbinger is entering a rapid growth phase where we are focused on scaling production of our customer-ready platform,” said John Harris, co-founder and CEO. “These funds catalyze significant revenue generation. We’ve developed a vehicle for a segment that is ripe for electrification, and there is a strong product/market fit that will help fuel our upward trajectory through 2025 and beyond.”
The company has raised $200 million since its inception in 2021.
SOURCE | IMAGES: Harbinger.
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There is no state more associated with cars and car culture than Michigan – and the state that’s home to the Motor City has just taken a huge step into the future with the deployment of its first-ever all electric police vehicle.
The 2024 Ford Mustang Mach-E patrol vehicle is assigned to the Michigan State Police State Security Operations Section, and will be to be used by armed, uniformed members of the MSP specializing in general law enforcement and security services at state-owned facilities in the Lansing, MI area.
“This is an exciting opportunity for us to research, in real time, how a battery electric vehicle performs on patrol,” says Col. James F. Grady II, director of the MSP. “Our state properties security officers patrol a substantially smaller number of miles per day than our troopers and motor carrier officers, within city limits and at lower speeds, coupled with the availability of charging infrastructure in downtown Lansing, making this the ideal environment to test the capabilities of a police-package battery electric vehicle.”
The MSP’s Precision Driving Unit is nationally renowned for its annual Police Vehicle Evaluation, which our own Scooter Doll participated in last year, driving the then-new Chevy Blazer EV Police Pursuit Vehicles in a game of “cops and robbers.”
In those tests, the EVs have impressed – but the MSP has been hesitant to commit to a BEV until now. “We began testing battery electric vehicles in 2022, but up until now hybrids were the only alternative fuel vehicle in our fleet,” said Lt. Nicholas Darlington, commander of the Precision Driving Unit. “Adding this battery electric vehicle to our patrol fleet will allow us to study the vehicle’s performance long-term to determine if there is a potential for cost savings and broader applicability within our fleet.”
Michigan joins other states like Wisconsin and California in deploying electric patrol cars and saving big money on fuel and maintenance, with many more out there and many more to come.
SOURCE | IMAGES: Michigan State Police.
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