Jobs Dispute Driving Stellantis, UAW to Court

Automaker Stellantis continued its counterpunch to the United Auto Workers union with eight more lawsuits filed on October 4 against the union and 23 of its local chapters. These follow a suit filed October 3 against UAW and the local representing Stellantis’ Los Angeles Parts Distribution Center, which voted to request strike authorization from the UAW’s International Executive Board.

Although the two sides completed a new labor agreement in 2023, the UAW claims the automaker is violating that contract. Stellantis is charging that the UAW is seeking to initiate an unlawful strike against the company.

According to Stellantis, the October 4 lawsuits instigated a meeting between the automaker and the union on October 5, during which the UAW proposed a renewal of the Jobs Bank program for workers at the Belvidere (Ill.) Assembly Plant.

That Jeep assembly plant employed up to 5,000 workers as recently as 2017, but Stellantis closed it in February 2023 – which became a point of negotiation in the agreement settled last October. The contract established the possibility of reopening the plant as soon as 2025, to assemble a new Ram pickup and possibly electric vehicle batteries.

“In our 2023 contract, we won major gains, including a commitment to reopen an idled assembly plant in Belvidere, Illinois, and to build the Dodge Durango in Detroit. We also won the right to strike over those commitments, if we have to,” UAW president Shawn Fain stated last month. “Now, Stellantis wants to go back on the deal. As a united UAW, we intend to enforce our contract, and to make Stellantis keep the promise.”

The union states that the automaker was “unreceptive” to the idea of reopening the Belvidere plant in the October 5 meeting; while Stellantis maintains that “plans for Belvidere have been delayed – not cancelled.” Its position is that the contractual commitment to invest there are contingent on market conditions, and the UAW is threatening the 2023 labor agreement by agitating for a strike.

“The decisions that are being taken to protect the company and its employees from a highly volatile market and slowing EV adoption cannot be a matter of legitimate dispute,” it stated.

The current dispute started when the union filed an unfair labor practices complaint against Stellantis with the National Labor Relations Board in September.

As for the Jobs Bank, the automaker rejected the idea as a return to “prebankruptcy terms and conditions that would jeopardize the company’s future.”

The Jobs Bank was a project started by General Motors in the 1980s “and adopted by Ford and Chrysler due to pattern bargaining,” Stellantis explained. It guaranteed that UAW employees would be paid a majority of their potential hourly wages, even if their positions were suspended or eliminated. According to Stellantis, it “generally prohibited the Detroit automakers from laying off employees.”

“The company understands that this situation is extremely unsettling for its Belvidere employees, which is why it agreed during 2023 negotiations to place these employees on temporary layoffs, which provide 74% of pay and full healthcare benefits,” Stellantis stated. But it emphasized that it will not reestablish “contract provisions” that contributed to bankruptcy filings by both Chrysler Corp. and General Motors within recent memory.