The United Auto Workers and General Motors struck a significant deal Friday amid the still-ongoing autoworkers strike, granting workers a huge win as both sides look to the electric vehicle future.

What You Need To Know

  • The United Auto Workers and General Motors struck a significant deal Friday amid the ongoing autoworkers strike, reaching an agreement on battery plant worker representation

  • The new deal, UAW President Shawn Fain said, states that GM's battery plants — and their workers — will be covered under the master agreement with the union

  • The agreement staved off a potentialy costly strike at GM's Arlington, Texas assembly plant, which is the home for "every new full-size" SUV in GM's product lineup around the world

The agreement ensures that battery manufacturing plants will be subject to the union’s master agreement with GM, nailing down a major sticking point that workers are seeking to have matched by the rest of the big three. It also ensured that one of GM’s largest plants, whch produces SUVs sold around the world, wouldn’t be shut down by striking workers.

UAW President Shawn Fain announced the agreement during a Facebook Live stream from the union’s headquarters in Detroit.

“We were about to shut down GM’s largest money-maker in Arlington, Texas. The company knew those members were ready to walk immeidately. And just that threat has provided a transformative win,” Fain said, referring to GM’s Arlington Assembly, which the manufacturer says “is home to every new full-size [internal combustion engine] powered SUV in GM’s product lineup sold around the world,” and has more than 5,000 employees.

The master agreement between UAW and GM is what it sounds like: the bible of the deal between UAW’s workers and the manufacturer. Making battery plants subject to the deal ensures that workers in those plants will be represented by the union and covered by the benefits the union has negotiated.

“We’ve been told from months that this is impossible. We’ve been told the EV future must be a race to the bottom, and now we’ve called their bluff,” Fain said. “The plan was to draw down engine and transmission plants and permanently replace them with low-wage battery jobs, and we had a different plan.”

When reached for comment, a spokesperson for GM declined to directly address battery cell manufacturing.

"Negotiations remain ongoing, and we will continue to work towards finding solutions to address outstanding issues," the manufacturer said. "Our goal remains to reach an agreement that rewards our employees and allows GM to be successful into the future.”

The union’s plan worked at GM, Fain said — and Ford and Stellantis (the manufacturer of Dodge, Ram, Chysler, Jeep, Fiat and Alfa Romeo brands) are next. The plan now, he said, is to draw those other two members of American auto manufacturing’s Big Three in line with GM.

“We’ve been very careful about how we escalate this stirke, and we have designed this strategy to incrase pressure on the companies — not to hurt them for its own sake, but to move them to get them to say yes, when they want to say no. Today is a perfect example of that,” Fain said.

The union, he said, has been “crystal clear” about how the companies catch a strike and how they avoid a strike — and to avoid one, they need to make a deal, as GM did Friday.

“We’re not going to wait around forever. We’re not here to start a fight. We’re here to finish one,” he promised.