DETROIT (Michigan News Source) – At the beginning of Wednesday, the majority of General Motors Employees seemed to oppose the new contact, but the tide turned as of noon.  

According to the most up to date voting numbers, nearly 55% of the total votes cast are in favor of accepting the GM offer.  

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Still, votes from several prominent assembly plants including GM’s Fort Wayne, Indiana truck plant, Wentzville, Missouri, and the Lansing Grand River plant have opposed the new contract proposal. 

United Auto Workers President Shawn Fain highlighted a number of the improvements proposed under the new contract. 

• Our lowest-paid members will see a 158 percent raise through the life of 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 COLA.
• Our CCA, GMCH, Subsystems, and Brownstown members will see an immediate wage boost from 36 to 89 percent. A current GMCH member with 3 years of service, for instance, will see their hourly wages jump nearly $17 overnight.
• 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 percent raise. By the end of this agreement, our starting rate will be over $30 an hour, a 70 percent bump from today.
  And just as importantly, we did it together. From the International Executive Board and the President’s Office to the UAW GM Department, to our national negotiators, our National GM Council, our local leadership, and our rank-and-file members, everyone played a role in securing this victory.

He also added how these record breaking contracts were accomplished. 

“We went into this round of bargaining with the goal of addressing decades of concessions and givebacks,” Fain said about the contract. “We know that the Stand Up Strike will go down in history. For months we have insisted that “Record Profits Mean Record Contracts,” and after standing together, we made good on that demand. While we may not have won everything we wanted, we won more than most people thought was possible. This contract will not only change lives now, but it lays the foundation for even bigger gains in the future. That is why we both whole-heartedly endorse this tentative agreement.”

Leading up to the tentative agreement with GM, the UAW had staged several surprise walkouts on the Big Three Automakers, including the GM Arlington Assembly, with 5,000 members leaving at once. 

Voting continues until 4 pm on Thursday, November 16.