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Detroit 3 and UAW set for showdown over tiered wages

This week, thousands of United Auto Workers will converge on Cobo Center in Detroit for the Special Convention on Collective Bargaining, an every-four-year event that lets members tell UAW leaders what the negotiating priorities should be during contract negotiations. This is where a lot of sand and a lot of lines start coming together in preparation for contract negotiations between the UAW and the Detroit 3 automakers, which will happen later this year. Number one on the UAW agenda is the end of the two-tier wage system created in 2007 to help the automakers get through bankruptcy; veteran workers are paid the Tier 1 rate of around $29.00 per hour, new hires are paid the Tier 2 rate of between $15 and $20 and get about half the benefits of Tier 1. Tier 2 hiring has been an undoubted success for the automakers, allowing them to keep factories in the US and hire more workers. By agreement, it is capped at a certain percentage of each automaker's workforce, and while the union's ultimate position is to get rid of the dual-scale system entirely; one leader said Ford could easily afford the $335 million it would take to convert all its workers to Tier 1 out of its $6.9 billion in 2014 North American profit, and General Motors could do the same out of the $5 billion it is handing to investors through the (admittedly forced) share buyback. Other delegates say that at the very least they'd be happy with enforcement of the current caps in the new contract. The automakers, conversely, would welcome expansion of the Tier 2 ranks. Including benefits, import automakers pay workers "in the high $40 range" per hour, according to an analyst, while Ford and GM pay about $59 in wages and benefits per hour. More Tier 2 workers on the rolls would let those two companies get labor cost parity with the competition. Fiat-Chrysler pays wages closer to the imports because of special exceptions in its UAW contract that allow unlimited Tier 2 hiring; those exceptions will end on September 14 and bring FCA into line with the other domestics, unless the new contract maintains them. FCA CEO Sergio Marchionne is opposed to the two-tier system, having called it "almost offensive." One analyst says the UAW might win a sizable pay raise for Tier 2 and a small increase for Tier 1, but the keystone issue will be how the hiring matrix can help the automakers keep overall wages in line with the imports.

V8-powered 2022 Ford F-150 Raptor R spied testing alongside Ram TRX

Spy photographers captured Ford engineers testing what appears to be a 2022 F-150 Raptor R alongside a Ram TRX this week, giving us a sneak preview of the first major battle in the coming war for super-pickup dominance.  Ford has remained tight-lipped about the Raptor R's performance specs. We know only that it will be powered by a V8 (likely a variant of the 760-horsepower, supercharged 5.2-liter unit from the Ford Mustang Shelby GT500), and that it's due to break cover some time later this year. Given that the 702-horsepower Ram TRX will be the Raptor R's only competition (and pretty much the only reason it exists in the first place), Ford's decision to benchmark the fast Ram is a bit of a no-brainer.  The Blue Oval's performance engineers have years of practice when it comes to building high-performance off-road trucks, so despite Ram's first-strike advantage and Hellcat trump card, the TRX might actually be the underdog in this fight. Why? Well, based on what we've seen of the EcoBoost-powered 2021 Raptor so far, it should weigh at least 500-600 pounds less than the TRX, and while we expect that gap to shrink with the addition of the bigger engine, it's likely that it will still favor Ford, and perhaps significantly.  While the larger, supercharged V8 will certainly weigh more than the EcoBoost V6, it's still an all-aluminum engine (all SRT motors are based on cast-iron blocks) and Ford still has the advantage of its lightweight body panels. There will likely be more to the Raptor R's chassis modifications than a new set of engine mounting points, since the existing Raptor was not engineered to handle an 800-horsepower engine, but even with the chassis modifications necessary to handle that power, we expect the Raptor R to be the featherweight of the two.  Since Ford plans to get the Raptor R into production for the 2022 model year, we shouldn't have to wait much longer to find out just exactly how it shapes up against Ram's big dinosaur. Stay tuned. Related video: This content is hosted by a third party. To view it, please update your privacy preferences. Manage Settings.

More 2015 Ford Mustang pricing information leaks [UPDATE]

The big news this morning was that the 2015 Ford Mustang would start at $24,425, including its destination pricing. The big news this afternoon is, well, bigger.
Mustang6G.com has come up with what it claims is pricing info for the entire Mustang line, rather than just the V6. That means we know all about the EcoBoost and GT prices now, which, when combined with the dealer order sheets we reported on last week, gives us our clearest look yet at how the Mustang can be outfitted (we're still a bit short on pricing info for some standalone options, like paint premiums and such).
The base EcoBoost starts at $25,995, while the GT rings up at $32,925.