Mechanics from 56 dealerships engaged in the strike when it started. Over the course of eight weeks, several dealerships indicated they no longer wanted to be part of the NCDC. That ended up dropping the number of participating dealerships to 35 before the strike came to an end Sunday.
A little over 300 members voted, according to union spokesman Ronnie Gonzalez. The union did not provide an exact vote breakdown.
In an update posted to its website, Local 701 urged members who participated in the work stoppage but now have a ratified agreement to report to work Monday.
“This will help to facilitate the return-to-work process and give everyone a chance to have one meeting with their specific dealer,” the update said. “This will help ensure everyone is on the same page.”
Local 701 took issue with several previous iterations of the four-year work contract. One of the holdout arguments of the strike pertained to how stores planned to contribute to the union's health and welfare fund.
All outstanding issues were resolved, Gonzalez wrote in an email to Automotive News. The 35 striking dealerships joined another 55 so-called defector dealerships that had made an agreement with the union and approved it before the previous four-year contract expired at the end of July.
The agreement reached Sunday is essentially that defector agreement, but with very minor differences, Gonzalez said.
The contract did not contain “most favored nation” language of any sort, Gonzalez said — another of the union’s stipulations. A “most favored nation" clause is finance jargon that means a first party will be entitled to terms as favorable as a second party is getting in certain circumstances.
In 2017, union members went on strike for more than seven weeks during similar contract debate with the dealerships.
