Workers type a picket line outdoors the Ford Motor Co. Kentucky Truck Plant within the early morning hours on October 12, 2023 in Louisville, Kentucky. This week, a majority of employees on the plant voted no on the tentative contract deal.

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Luke Sharrett/Getty Images

Workers type a picket line outdoors the Ford Motor Co. Kentucky Truck Plant within the early morning hours on October 12, 2023 in Louisville, Kentucky. This week, a majority of employees on the plant voted no on the tentative contract deal.

Luke Sharrett/Getty Images

Autoworkers at Ford’s Kentucky Truck Plant in Louisville, Ky., voted no on the contract settlement reached by the United Auto Workers union.

According to vote trackers on the UAW’s web site, 54.5% of the 4,118 ballots solid in Kentucky — Ford’s largest plant — have been no votes, the outcomes confirmed Monday. The plant, which builds Ford’s F-Series Super Duty pickup vehicles amongst different fashions, is estimated to make use of 8,700 employees.

This signifies that the highway forward for the UAW is probably not as clean as union management had hoped for, after reaching report agreements with all three main automakers following a six-week auto strike.

GM employees in Flint additionally voted no

This comes after one other loss final week, when 52% of the three,425 ballots solid at General Motors’ Flint Assembly plant have been additionally no votes. Roughly 4,700 employees at that plant construct Chevy Silverado and GMC Sierra pickup vehicles.

By most measures, the contracts have been beneficiant. They present employees with a 25% wage improve and in some instances extra by 2027, price of dwelling allowances and improved retirement contributions.

But even with these historic good points, they do not deliver employees again to the place they have been earlier than 2007, when wages and advantages have been slashed amid powerful financial instances.

Most employees should vote in favor

Only by 2027, will the highest wage at every of the Big 3 attain the place it was 20 years in the past, when adjusted for inflation, and not one of the carmakers conceded to the union’s calls for to deliver again pensions and retiree well being care.

“There were a lot of gains,” says Kentucky Truck Plant employee Jenn Thompson, who voted no. “But there were just a few things that I would have liked to have seen in this contract that didn’t make it,” together with retiree well being care.

Despite these setbacks, a majority of the union members general nonetheless assist the contracts, with about 10,000 ballots solid up to now at GM and 25,000 at Ford.

A majority of employees at every of the Big 3 should vote in favor of ratifying the contracts for them to take impact. UAW President Shawn Fain has repeatedly referred to as the employees the union’s highest authority.

Should any of the contracts fail to succeed in a majority of sure votes, negotiators must return to the bargaining desk.

Finally tallies on the Big 3 automakers are anticipated this week and subsequent.

— Louisville Public Media reporter Jacob Munoz contributed to this report.