Rank and file members of the United Auto Workers continue voting this week on tentative contracts with Ford, Stellantis, and General Motors.
Ford's local unions are the furthest in the voting process, and of the 24,511 votes cast so far, more than 63% are in favor of ratification.
But at Ford's Kentucky Truck plant, more than 57% of the production worker vote was not to ratify. A slim majority of production workers at Ford's Louisville Assembly plant also voted not to ratify.
UC Berkeley professor emeritus Harley Shaiken noted that fewer than half of the production workers at the Kentucky plant cast ballots, which could have slanted the results.
"In a contract year with unprecedented surprises through negotiations, it shouldn’t come as a shock that there would be a few surprises in the ratification," he said.
Just over half of GM's Flint Assembly plant workers and Romulus Engine Plant workers also voted not to ratify, along with 56% of union members at Pontiac Stamping, and 54% at Marion Metal Center.
But so far, of the 10,679 GM workers who have cast ballots, 56% are in favor of ratification.
Only one assembly plant owned by Stellantis has voted on the tentative contract, and that's the currently idled Belvidere, for which the union won a future product commitment from the company. There, 81.5% of workers voted in favor of ratification, and 18.5% against.
