MEXICO CITY—U.S. automaker General Motors has agreed a 8.5 percent wage hike with a new, independent union at its pick-up truck plant in the central Mexican city of Silao, labor representatives said on Thursday, one of the highest recent raises in the country’s auto industry.
The deal with union SINTTIA also marks the first major raise since the start of a new trade deal, the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA), which aims to reduce the vast wage gap between U.S. and Mexican workers.
“It’s a victory, a step in the right direction,” said Gaspar Rivera Salgado, director of the Center for Mexican Studies at the University of California Los Angeles. It remains to be seen if such raises can be easily duplicated, he added.
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