General Motors became the last car company to agree to a tentative deal with the United Auto Workers, ending the nearly seven-week-long strike, Reuters reported. The news came one day after the UAW said it had reached a deal with Stellantis, parent company of Chrysler and Jeep, and several days after Ford.
The strike has roiled the auto industry, costing each of the Big Three automakers hundreds of millions of dollars each week in lost production and throwing cold water on the industry’s shift to electric vehicles. Autoworkers were extending their walkout to include new GM factories, including an engine plant in Spring Hill, Tennessee, when the news broke that a deal had been reached.
Previously, the UAW has succeeded in getting GM to agree to put its future EV factories under the union’s master agreement. Autoworkers were calling for a “just transition” to plug-in vehicles that ensured that unionized workers would be the ones building the cars of the future.
The UAW said the strike “will go down in history as an inflection point in our union, and for our movement,” in a post on X (formerly Twitter). The union also said it chose an expiration date of April 30, 2028, because it allows them to strike on May Day, or International Workers’ Day.
“We invite unions around the country to align your contract expirations with our own so that together we can begin to flex our collective muscles,” the union said.
The terms of the deal were not immediately available. For reference, the Stellantis deal closely resembled Ford’s terms, with a 25 percent wage bump for union workers over the life of the four-year contract.
