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Stellantis NV’s tentative agreement to end the six-week strike by the United Auto Workers includes $19 billion in new investment, such as reviving an idled assembly plant and building a new battery plant in Illinois, the union said Thursday.
Stellantis will restart its idled assembly plant in Belvidere, Illinois in 2027. The plant, which at one point employed 5,000 workers, will run two shifts to build a mid-size pickup truck, according to a UAW summary of the deal, which still has to be voted on by the company’s roughly 43,000 union members. Stellantis also plans to build a $3.2 billion battery plant in Illinois with a still to be determined partner that will employ 1,300 people when it opens in 2028, the UAW said.
Stellantis agreed to a “card check” process to make it quicker and easier for new workers at battery joint ventures to unionize, according to UAW President Shawn Fain. And if they do, they will then be covered under the existing master agreement.
All employees who work for the battery joint venture will be employed by Stellantis and leased to the joint venture, an arrangement that allows the factories to be covered under the union’s master agreement, Fain and UAW vice president Rich Boyer said in a livestreamed address Thursday evening.
“Having this work under our national agreement is critical to the future of our industry and the union,” Fain said, because it allows the union to fight for higher battery pay in the next round of talks. “Wherever this industry goes, the UAW’s going with it, and we’re bringing the standards we fought for to the EV transition.”
The union needs to organize factories making EV parts because plants making engines, transmissions and other parts for today’s conventional vehicles will eventually be phased out in favor of plants making batteries, electric motors and other components.
Current UAW members at Stellantis who transfer into battery jobs will bring their current pay, benefits and seniority along with them, Fain said. New hires at the battery joint ventures will start at 75% of the maximum pay rate under the national agreement, or about $26 an hour.
So far, only the Ultium battery plant in Ohio that’s jointly owned by General Motors Co. and South Korea’s LG Energy Solution Ltd. is unionized. Starting pay has been $16.50 an hour but workers ratified a deal in August that raises wages by $3 to $4 an hour.
The UAW also won the immediate conversion of thousands of temporary workers, and any new temp workers will be converted to full time after nine months, Fain said.
Among the Detroit Three, Stellantis has the highest proportion of temporary employees, accounting for about 12% of workers.
The UAW also ended decades-old wage tiers for workers at the company’s 38 parts distribution centers, who make lower pay than vehicle production workers, Boyer said. That means an immediate raise of as much as 76% for some workers, he said.
In exchange, the union agreed to let Stellantis consolidate the centers into regional Amazon-like hubs.
“It wasn’t an easy choice or decision, but we took the consolidation plan, which came with a guarantee of job security,” he Boyer said.
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