Ford workers ratify historic 2023 UAW contract with 69.3% support for wage hikes, benefits
Phoebe Wall Howard, Detroit Free Press
Updated 5 min read
Ford workers passed a labor contract late Friday called "historic" by negotiators on both sides of the wage fight, marking an official end for the automaker to costly disruption that began two months ago with targeted strikes against the Detroit Three.
With preliminary vote totals reported on the Ford UAW tracker site by 9:10 p.m., the contract has been ratified by 69.3%, or 26,697 of the 35,522 votes cast. In the end, 11,825 UAW members voted no on the Ford deal. The contract represents about 57,000 UAW members employed at Ford.
Tony Richard, co-chair of the UAW-Ford national negotiating committee, told the Detroit Free Press late Friday: “I feel we made historical gains for our UAW members. It’s been awhile since we were able to get these type of gains. The timing was right. Then we left it to the members and the members have decided. We went with the flow.”
Richard, who as president of UAW Local 600 in Dearborn represents approximately 9,000 Ford employees, has been with Ford for 47 years. He began as an assembler on the line at Dearborn Assembly in 1977.
He said his members feel good, adding: “They’re glad we were able to come together and get this resolved.”
Voting concluded with ballots cast by a handful of Ford sites around the country, including workers from the Dearborn Truck Plant, where the bestselling F-150 pickup is built. They voted to ratify the contract with 78.7% of the vote, or 2,697 of 3,496 votes cast. The plant employs 5,114 hourly workers, according to Ford data available Friday.
The UAW said it planned to release the official vote total for all 56 Ford sites early Saturday. Mathematically, ratification passed immediately upon getting results from Dearborn Truck.
Ford and the labor union declined to comment Friday prior to the official vote tally and UAW news release.
While Ford was the first to reach a tentative agreement, workers at General Motors voted more quickly to ratify. Ford has the most UAW members employed among the Detroit Three. Worker totals fluctuate depending on season and production schedules.
Where the vote failed
The Kentucky Truck Plant in Louisville, which builds the Super Duty pickup, Ford Expedition and Lincoln Navigator, was the only Ford vehicle production site to reject ratification. It failed by 370 votes. Of 4,118 total votes cast, 54.5%, or 2,244, voted no. Nearly 9,000 workers walked out on strike, and fewer than half of them voted.
UAW Local 862 President Todd Dunn blamed low turnout on "apathy and complacency" based on an assumption ratification would be approved. He also said Friday that inaccurate social media posts led people astray, and legacy workers felt too little was offered for retirement. In one unit, Dunn told the Free Press, only 10% of the workers voted because they indicated they didn't think their support was needed.
The only other Ford site to vote down the contract was Lakeland HVC, a parts and accessories depot in Davenport, Florida, with 30 total votes cast.
Gains in the deal are valued at more than four times the gains from the last UAW contract in 2019, and provide more in base wage increases than Ford workers have received in the past 22 years, the UAW said in a news release.
Ford contract: Wages, benefits improve
The Ford-UAW agreement includes: cumulatively raising the top wage by more than 30% to more than $40 an hour; raising the starting wage by 68%, to more than $28 an hour; and reinstating major benefits lost during the Great Recession, including cost-of-living allowances (COLA). The deal also kills different pay rates, or tiers, for workers and improving retirement benefits for current retirees, workers with pensions and those with 401K plans.
UAW President Shawn Fain and UAW Vice President Chuck Browning posted a letter on the union website that said:
"Our lowest-paid members will see a 150% raise through this agreement. That’s not a typo. Temps hired this year at $16.67 will earn over $40 per hour in base wages by the end of this agreement, over $42 an hour with estimated COLA.
Lower-tiered members at Sterling Axle (in Sterling Heights) and Rawsonville (in Ypsilanti) will see immediate raises ranging from 53% to 88%. A member with three years' seniority at those facilities will, upon ratification, go from $18.96 to $35.58.
With COLA, by 2028, we’ll have a top rate of over $42 an hour for production, and over $50 for skilled trades, an over 30% raise. By the end of this agreement, our starting rate will be pushing $30 an hour with COLA."
Workers at Stellantis, which owns Chrysler, Dodge, Jeep and Ram, are expected to wrap up voting shortly. That tentative contract represents about 43,000 UAW workers.
Marick Masters, an expert on labor relations who teaches at the Mike Ilitch School of Business at Wayne State University in Detroit, said: "Ratification of these contracts is a milestone in the UAW's attempt to reshape its future. The UAW secured the ratification of record contracts and, in the process, has restored its commitment to pay closer attention to the rank and file in a more democratic fashion."
Shortly after the UAW announced these tentative agreements, Toyota, Honda and Hyundai announced pay raises for their nonunion U.S. workers.
