Will the 3rd Time be the Charm for John Deere and UAW Vote?
UAW workers are heading back to the voting booth today with a 3rd contract presented before them. Will this be the one that gets 10,100 people back to work, or will the strike continue?
It has now been a little over a month (Oct 14) since the workers took to the picket lines. With John Deere reporting record profits and the CEO receiving a 160% pay increase, the first vote (before the strike started) had nearly 90% of the workers voting no on that deal. On November 2, workers went to the polls for a second time and things turned out much closer with a 55% yes, 45% no, result.
John Deere has called the contract "groundbreaking" and has laid out the points of the contract on their website. The contract continues to include the 10% immediate pay increase with increases continuing through the 6-year contract.
The UAW said in a statement, "John Deere and Company has made a last, best and final offer to the UAW negotiating team that includes modest modifications to the last tentative agreement presented for ratification on November 2nd. As a result, the UAW will present the Company’s offer for ratification and, as has been the case throughout the bargaining process, will support the outcome as determined by our members."
The UAW Local 838 posted on their Facebook page the modified deal with 29 pages of the contract with the majority of modifications revolving around the Continuous Improvement Performance Plan, known as CIPP. You can see the full details in the Facebook post, but the basics of the CIPP are performance-based goals.
Will the 3rd time be the charm for the contract to be ratified?
With the last vote being 5% away from being ratified, it won't take much of a swing to get the vote passed. On that Facebook post from UAW Local 838, there are 47 thumbs up, 52 angry/laughing faces. Does this predict the vote? Probably not. But it does line up with that 55%/45% margin from the last vote.
The messages to I-Rock 93.5 remain split. With workers (wanting to remain anonymous) saying "they would like to go back for one more round of negotiations" as they think there are some key pieces that still need to be worked out. While others say they "hope this contract passes" as they've taken part-time jobs. One striker simply says, "Cross those fingers".
With the last vote being so close, and this one perhaps being even closer, the full results might not be known tonight. However, on the November 2 vote, word leaked out that it wasn't going to pass. So we may have a good idea tonight if there will be a 600 person swing in the vote and 10,100 people will be heading back to work, or if the strike will continue into the holidays.
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