Stellantis is contesting the strike authorization vote held last week by UAW Local 186, representing employees at the Denver Parts Distribution Center (PDC), and will include a grievance procedure violation in the lawsuit it intends to file on Tuesday against the UAW and the UAW Local.
According to the agreed upon language in the 2023 UAW-Stellantis Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA), the procedure for strikable grievances has three steps, each giving the company a specific number of days to respond. The UAW educated its members on this process during one of its recent Facebook Live updates. It is unclear whether the Local chose to ignore the UAW education on its own or the UAW International instructed the Local to violate this process. Either way, the process wasn’t followed.
A strike authorization vote at a given facility can only take place after the parties have fulfilled the requirements of all three steps. In the case of the Denver PDC, UAW members voted before completing step three, making any strike action taken as a result of the vote illegal.
The Denver lawsuit will be one of two additional lawsuits Stellantis will file on Tuesday against the UAW and various UAW locals for not honoring its contractual obligations, ignoring the clear language in Investment Letter 311 giving the company discretion to make business decisions and violating the CBA by calling for a mid-contract strike based on pending grievances. The company remains undeterred from seeing this litigation through to conclusion and fully intends to seek monetary damages.
SOURCE: Stellantis
