Education and training remain a priority

Worker education has long been a UAW tradition. During this set of negotiations, your negotiators remained dedicated to that tradition by winning and maintaining a wide array of education and training opportunities and rejecting management's insistence on eliminating or limiting our potential for learning. Your negotiators secured adequate funding to ensure all joint training activities are supported.

A first: Entry-Level workers win tuition assistance

(See the contract language, page 164.)
Your bargaining team understands that Entry-Level workers have the same desire to continue their education as other workers. That’s why they worked hard to win language that expands the Tuition Assistance Program (TAP) to include Entry-Level workers, who now qualify for up to $5,000 per calendar year of tuition assistance for degree-related courses and up to $2,200 for job-related course work. Your negotiators also rejected efforts by the company to limit the eligible degrees to those only related to manufacturing.

The committee was also successful in maintaining the current level of TAP offerings and benefit levels for traditional employees.

New curriculum to be delivered

(See the contract language, page 421.)
Your negotiators won a commitment from the company to implement a curriculum that helps UAW-represented workers understand the role of our union as an institution, the competitive challenges faced by the company and the nation as a whole.

Union involvement in launch

(See the contract language, page 502.)
Your bargaining committee addressed the problem of workers not being fully involved in the training for vehicle launches. New language allows union training personnel to be fully involved in all phases of the launch training process, from initial planning to training implementation.