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The United Auto Workers (UAW) union and Ford have reached a tentative agreement<\/a> to end the union\u2019s six-week strike against the automaker. Last month, workers at Ford, GM, and Stellantis factories walked off the job in targeted work stoppages timed just as the large automakers shift to producing more electric vehicles than ever before.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The strike has roiled the auto industry, costing each company hundreds of millions of dollars each week in lost production and throwing the industry\u2019s shift to electric vehicles on ice. An agreement with Ford puts more pressure on GM and Stellantis to strike a deal with the union.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n According to preliminary reports<\/a>, Ford agreed to a 25 percent increase in wages, plus cost of living increases, that will bump the pay increase over 30 percent to over $40 an hour. The deal is still subject to approval by the union\u2019s membership.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u201cBetween wage increases, COLA [cost of living adjustments], annual bonuses to retirees, and other economic gains, there is more value for our members in each individual year of this agreement than the entirety of the 2019 agreement,\u201d UAW vice president Chuck Browning said in a video<\/a>. \u201cThis deal puts more money on the table than the 2019 agreement four times over.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u201cWe are pleased to have reached a tentative agreement on a new labor contract with the UAW covering our U.S. operations,\u201d Ford CEO Jim Farley said in a statement<\/a>. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n Farley said now that they had a tentative deal, the company was focused on restarting its plants in Kentucky, Michigan, and Chicago, as well as calling 20,000 Ford employees back to work \u201cand shipping our full lineup to our customers again.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Like other automakers, Ford is spending tens of billions of dollars on the EV transition, including the construction of four new EV battery plants in Tennessee, Kentucky, and Michigan. Three of the four factories are joint ventures with a Chinese battery company.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n As joint ventures, the battery factories will be managed by new entities created by Ford and its partner, SK On, and won\u2019t be subject to the terms of a deal with UAW. But the UAW says the transition to electric vehicles needs to be \u201cjust\u201d and powered by union labor. EVs are assumed to need fewer workers to assemble, fueling anxiety by union members about future job losses as more of Ford\u2019s lineup becomes battery-operated.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The UAW has succeeded in getting at least one automaker to agree to its terms around EV factories: this week, GM CEO Mary Barra said the company agreed to put its future factories under the union\u2019s master agreement.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n