Follows the pattern set by Ford.

UAW reaches tentative agreement with Stellantis, leaving only GM without a deal (wxyz.com)

 

GM made a similar offer.

 

I was wrong. I was sure Stellantis would be the last person standing.

 

I thought GM would settle first.

They put out big product/plant investments this summer.

After the 2019 strike I thought Mary Berra didn't want to play the game again.

Guess she wants to lose more money from Arlington.

 

Ford is in the least lavish financial situation. They were more likely to settle first.

 

I am glad they came to an agreement for product at Belvidere.

 

You know that was the plan all along right? They do this every time around negotiating time. Idle/slow plants to make it look like they're gonna kill them and then throw a bone during the talks saying they're not shutting them down now

 

Ram mid-sized to Belvidere Assembly.

Dumb reporting though.

Stellantis had plenty of $$$ to survive.

They wanted the bad public relations gone.

UAW announces tentative agreement with Stellantis. Here are key provisions

The deal comes after Stellantis and GM made new offers that match a 25% raise included in Ford's tentative agreement reached earlier this week.

www.detroitnews.com

 

Survive what? A strike? They tried that in 1950. It didn't work well for them. They never recovered their 2nd place status that was lost to Ford.

 

Ram mid-sized to Belvidere Assembly.

Dumb reporting though.

Stellantis had plenty of $$$ to survive.

They wanted the bad public relations gone.

UAW announces tentative agreement with Stellantis. Here are key provisions

The deal comes after Stellantis and GM made new offers that match a 25% raise included in Ford's tentative agreement reached earlier this week.

www.detroitnews.com

Survive what? A strike? They tried that in 1950. It didn't work well for them. They never recovered their 2nd place status that was lost to Ford

 

It'll be interesting to see what, exactly, is in the new contract.

 

Here are a few details: UAW announces tentative agreement with Stellantis. Here are key provisions

 

Yup. It was surprising to me to report last week that Dundee has more new product than the 1.6 Peugeot engine. I wonder if there's any chance Hurricane Six will also end up at Trenton after all. It IS two plants and there's plenty of room in both, though one side's been converted to warehouse. Another interesting thing might be big trucks and Wagoneers at Belvidere instead of Warren, and Warren gets refitted for new product instead. They've been overdue for renovation for a long time.

 

I’m glad some people got a dose of reality during this process. There was no way this strike was going to last more than 2 months and Stellantis was not going to aggressively shut down several of their U.S. plants.

 

It sure looks like they are still going to shut down Trenton when the Pentastar is finished, though that might be a couple of years of single shifts, and Belvidere was starting to look more "for the chop" since they had so many plans for it. They will still be centralizing and closing PDCs (though the rapid expansion of PDCs didn't make any sense to me so I can't object) and sell/lease the HQ (though prices are very low right now). No idea why they don't just rent space themselves through a broker if that's the plan. They need to control the people who move in, I'd think.

 

Any new midsize from Stellantis right now will be Unibody unless Stellantis has had something secretly in the works for 5 years.

 

It’s ok, it’s coming “in 3 years”.

 

I'll buy a Warren Truck build Power Wagon. Must be blue though.

 

Generally speaking about the PDCs I agree Dave. In theory it SHOULD have improved part distribution times. But if everything is perpetually backordered save for production, having a bunch distribution centers males no sense whatsoever.

What MIGHT be smart is if OEMs partner with Amazon to integrate PDCs into the 700000 warehouses they have per state. But that almost certainly would never fly

 

I'm not even sure having a whole bunch of PDCs works because financially, the last thing you want is piles of parts all over the place. Central PDC at Romeo was a fine idea - from there things fly everywhere. But that level of logistics is beyond my expertise, so who knows... except that they had it one way, made it another, and now are changing it back...
Amazon used to have a major central distribution center to reduce stock but now that they are pretty much the only store for many people, it's another story.

 

Good link. DetNews has the most complete story.

 

Except nothing about retirees...

 

Just read that Stellantis made 17 billion last year in profits. When added to the 12 billion in the first 6 months of this year, no wonder the UAW wanted a piece...

29 billion in 18 months is a lot.

 

Just read that Stellantis made 17 billion last year in profits. When added to the 12 billion in the first 6 months of this year, no wonder the UAW wanted a piece...

29 billion in 18 months is a lot.

Doesn’t that profit provide the UAW members with jobs, benefits and profit sharing payments? It also provides capital to build or improve facilities, ensuring jobs.

This article states the recent labor strikes by the UAW and UNIFOR cost GM, Ford and Stellantis 3.2 billion dollars in lost revenue: Stellantis says UAW strike cost it less than $800M in net income

 

They still owe a ton of money ..

Stellantis Total Liabilities 2014-2023 | STLA

Stellantis total liabilities from 2014 to 2023. Total liabilities can be defined as the total value of all possible claims against the corporation. <ul style='margin-top:10px;'> <li>Stellantis total liabilities for the quarter ending June 30, 2023 were <strong>$84.381B</strong>...

www.macrotrends.net

.

 

That's solely because, rather than paying off debt, they are buying back their own stock.

 

It's the "you're lucky to have a job", mentality, Dave. It's what management tries to instill in people when work conditions are not so good, and they'd rather intimidate people than make it a better workplace. Been there, too many years.

 

Yup. If you want job creators at Chrysler, in most years you have to go quite a few levels below the executive suite. Remember how the company’s best sellers were created. The resurgence of the 1990s came largely from Francois Castaing’s enabling the work of other people below (path cleared by Bob Lutz). 1960s? a group of relatively new engineers and such creating the Valiant and a whole bunch of stuff that went along wtih that, coupled with experienced but not high-ranking engineers who pushed engine tech to the limits. Look at the company's big hits and you see who actually created them... Duster was drawn by regular designers, not the head of design, based on an idea by the assistant head of Plymouth design. Road Runner was from a product planner and again a bunch of engineers and designers.

The best engine people, including say Viper's Dick Winkles, worked cooperatively with UAW technicians.

Sorry. Won't beg for a job and say thank you to the guy making 100x what I do for graciously “creating” it “for me.” If someone needs something done and is willing to pay me what I'm willing to take, it's mutually beneficial. The real job creators are as Adventurer55 pointed out the people who innovate and push forward and create things, most of the time.

There are obviously exceptions. Walter Chrysler famously turned around company after company. Thomas Edison, despite recent propaganda, really did create and innovate on a daily basis, and without him, Edison General Electric would never have been built. (Tesla himself said he stood on Edison's shoulders and never claimed Edison hadn't invented the things he clearly did; Tesla himself would be stunned by today's anti-Edison propaganda.) But on the whole? Does anyone think the executives at FCA US actually create the cars or any new technologies? Or are they merely there to try to direct and support the real job creators?

 

Yup. If you want job creators at Chrysler, in most years you have to go quite a few levels below the executive suite. Remember how the company’s best sellers were created. The resurgence of the 1990s came largely from Francois Castaing’s enabling the work of other people below (path cleared by Bob Lutz). 1960s? a group of relatively new engineers and such creating the Valiant and a whole bunch of stuff that went along wtih that, coupled with experienced but not high-ranking engineers who pushed engine tech to the limits. Look at the company's big hits and you see who actually created them... Duster was drawn by regular designers, not the head of design, based on an idea by the assistant head of Plymouth design. Road Runner was from a product planner and again a bunch of engineers and designers.

The best engine people, including say Viper's Dick Winkles, worked cooperatively with UAW technicians.

Sorry. Won't beg for a job and say thank you to the guy making 100x what I do for graciously “creating” it “for me.” If someone needs something done and is willing to pay me what I'm willing to take, it's mutually beneficial. The real job creators are as Adventurer55 pointed out the people who innovate and push forward and create things, most of the time.

There are obviously exceptions. Walter Chrysler famously turned around company after company. Thomas Edison, despite recent propaganda, really did create and innovate on a daily basis, and without him, Edison General Electric would never have been built. (Tesla himself said he stood on Edison's shoulders and never claimed Edison hadn't invented the things he clearly did; Tesla himself would be stunned by today's anti-Edison propaganda.) But on the whole? Does anyone think the executives at FCA US actually create the cars or any new technologies? Or are they merely there to try to direct and support the real job creators?

Keep in mind that management has to put the final ok on anything produced.

 

Or are they merely there to try to direct and support the real job creators directly support shareholder values above all else?

Fixed that for you. I jest, but generally there are a bit too many of those "leaders" around these days. I hope that STLA and UAW will move on cooperatively with this agreement, and maybe they can "uncancel" those cancelled auto show events? That last part I doubt, but my guess is they will have reveals that still coincide with those shows (if they truly did have reveals ready for them).

 

If the Dodge brothers were so happy, they wouldn't have started their own company.

 

It's an interesting question, because I think they did want to make their mark.
I think there were three issues they had with Ford:
1) Ford really wanted to build terrible cars with safety and performance shortcuts; the Dodges fought with him over that.
2) Ford treated employees absolutely dismally. The Dodges treated them with respect - paid more, had in-house medical, provided insurance and pensions, and, above all, didn't pay thugs to beat the crap out of them and didn't force them to go to approved churches
3) Ford himself was clearly phasing reliance on the Dodges out, as he built massive-for-the-time factories which eliminated the need to buy from the Dodge Brothers.

I assume you meant "their own CAR company" since Dodge Brothers existed before Ford... I only say that for any onlookers who weren't aware that Dodge Bros. entered the auto trade largely via Ransom Olds and the first truly mass-produced car in the world (i.e. using an assembly line), the Curved Dash Olds. The Dodges were a supplier for Olds and learned a lot about cars that way, so when Ford approached them after two bankruptcies, they made it happen. And probably regretted it, seeing what a **** Henry Ford became.

 

According to news sources Toyota gave their employees a raise on the back of this new deal.

 

Yes, a bit over 9%. UAW got 10%-11%.
When I worked briefly in HR for a national company, I saw the policy. It was basically, in order of wages:

a) Non-union region: pay just above average wages (to get "better" employees)
b) Union region, non-union plant: pay just below union wages, above non-union average (same rationale as (a))
c) Union plant: duh.

There were numbers in there but I don't remember them after something like 30 years. This is pretty much the way most reputable companies operate. No different from supermarket pricing - I worked for Pathmark when we were the cheapest, and we had five or six zones depending on our competition. No reason to give Zone 1 prices to a store that had no competition.

Many of our stores had no competition because they were built in slum areas and food deserts. They were all open 24/7/363 (closed for New Years Eve and Christmas day). Theft increased rather dramatically around 1 am - 4 am in the slum-area stores because the company never wanted to invest in the kind of security they'd need - and lone cashiers are hardly about to stop someone wandering off with an entire display of product! But overall those stores were immensely profitable because no competition and crazy high volumes. Literally four times the average for a supermarket in those days (early 1980s).

That's a bit off-topic.

Those who are screaming about price hikes should know better, too, because it's not like any one automaker can raise prices for the industry. This will come out of profits and maybe a little will come off exec comp, which skyrocketed as everyone else took cuts. There won't be job losses because they automate whatever they can anyway, and whatever they can't, they can't.

There's been a tremendous amount of research in this sort of thing over the years but it all gets screamed over in the media by ignorant reporters, ideologues, and blowhards. For a time I was interestd in this sort of thing and read the research. I should have made a bibliography for future use but didn't. It's there. JSTOR is your friend. CNBC most definitely is not.

 

Toyota isn't stupid, they know what's coming. They did what REAL executives with real minds do. Get out in front of it. American auto companies are constantly blinded by their we know more then anyone attitude. That's why Toyota is the auto company many can only wish they were. If they'd pay attention, maybe more could be like them.

 

I don’t know the wage comparison between Toyota and the big 3, but it’s no surprise that Toyota would give their people a raise. It’s a market adjustment most likely to keep their pay in line with what the other automakers are paying, to keep their people from jumping ship. We do this in my industry, look at what other employers are paying, based on experience tiers, and adjust pay accordingly.

 

Toyota got complacent too, and fell behind most others. Then a new leader took over and kicked butt. But they never really lost track of the essentials.