As UAW and GM reach tentative deal, Memphis workers now playing 'waiting game'

With a tentative deal between General Motors and the United Auto Workers (UAW), it’s a hurry-up-and-wait game now for the employees still on strike at Memphis’ Pleasant Hill Road facility.

“It’s a waiting game now,” union official Betty Jenkins said.

After nearly 50 days since the strike began nationally, the labor union and General Motors came to a tentative agreement early Monday morning.

The ACDelco Parts Distribution Center, located at 5115 Pleasant Hill Road, has been on strike since Sept. 22. There are approximately 180 UAW workers at the facility. It is one of 18 distribution plants that have been part of the UAW standup strikes with more than 25,000 UAW workers on strike.

Jenkins said for now the union employees will have to wait until they hear more about the tentative agreement from their regional representatives. The union will then have to vote on the deal before it is finalized locally, and staff can go back to work. She expects that process to take up to a week and a half.

On Saturday, Oct. 28, workers at the Spring Hill plant outside Nashville, joined the strike. The plant is responsible for the production of the Cadillac XT5 and XT6 models along with the all-electric Lyriq SUV. Between January and August 2023, the Spring Hill plant has been responsible for approximately 6% of all General Motors production.

Jenkins said with Spring Hill joining in the strike, it was only a matter of time until a tentative deal was reached. Jenkins has been at the ACDelco Parts Distribution Center since 2007 and said this has been the longest strike she’s been involved with. The current strike passed the previous 40-day mark last week.

She said what made the labor strike unique this time around was seeing all the “Big Three” auto manufacturers involved in union negotiations. However, she felt that once Ford and Stellantis had reached their respective agreements, there was pressure on General Motors to do the same. The strategy to bring the Arlington, Texas, and Spring Hill plants into the mix only helped put pressure on General Motors and speed up that process, she said.

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Jenkins said until the union votes on the new tentative deal, the UAW workers will continue rotating on 4-hour shifts outside the Pleasant Hill Road facility and receiving $500 weekly strike pay.

Details around the tentative agreement between General Motors and UAW mirror the Ford deal and include a 25% wage increase that would see General Motors employees making close to $42 an hour by the end of the 4⅟₂-year contract in 2028.

Earlier this month, General Motors released its Q3 earnings report which included a net income of $3.1 billion. Since the standup strike began the company has lost nearly $200 million a week in the third quarter. (Those figures do not include profits lost from the Arlington and Spring Hill plant strikes.)

The 660,000-square-foot Memphis distribution center opened in 1999 and has more than 200 employees. The union staff are represented by the UAW Local 2406. According to the General Motors website, the facility handles nearly 331,700 orders monthly.

In January, General Motors announced a $14 million investment to build a new automated storage and retrieval system at the Memphis facility. Installation on the new network was expected to finish in October, prior to the strike beginning.

Neil Strebig is a journalist with The Commercial Appeal. He can be reached at neil.strebig@commercialappeal.com, 901-426-0679 or via X/Twitter,@neilStrebig

This article originally appeared on Memphis Commercial Appeal: UAW, GM reach tentative deal: What it means for Memphis workers