Ford, UAW Reach Tentative Labor Agreement

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The Facts

  • The United Auto Workers (UAW) union and Ford Motor Company reached a tentative labor agreement Wednesday night, potentially ending the six-week auto workers' strike — the longest of its kind in 25 years — if a majority of Ford's 57K union members ratify the deal.

  • The deal will reportedly see wages raised by 25% over the next four-and-a-half years to a top pay of $40 per hour, includes an immediate 11% pay bump, and improves retirement benefits for current retirees, workers with pensions, and those with 401(k) plans.

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The Spin

Narrative A

This agreement is more than generous, given that the UAW's original demand of 40% would have doubled Ford's labor costs and crushed their competition with foreign companies. While it's true that workers deserve fair pay while their bosses make millions of dollars, it's wrong to make a direct comparison between the thousands of factory workers and the far smaller number of executives. If GM's CEO were to give her entire $29M salary to every worker, for example, it would only add pennies to each rank-and-file worker's paycheck.

Washington Post

Narrative B

Dividing a CEO's million-dollar salary by the number of employees is a nice gimmick, but it doesn't touch the heart of the issue at hand. The truth is that these three car companies made a combined $21B in profit in just the first half of this year. Meanwhile, first-time workers would likely have to be paid $25 per hour to have the same buying power that less than $10 dollars did in the early 1990s. While an agreement is good news, it shouldn't be forgotten that, given the impact of inflation in recent years, the UAW's original demand was actually quite fair.

NPR Online News

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