The UAW reached similar deals with the other members of the Big Three automakers, Ford Motor Company and Chrysler.
The UAW agreed to a long-term contract, which protected automakers from annual strikes, and it gave up the right to bargain over some issues in exchange for extensive health, unemployment, and pension benefits; expanded vacation time; and cost-of-living adjustments to wages.
The strike lasted 113 days and was ultimately undermined by settlements reached with Ford and Chrysler, who agreed to wage increases from 18 to 18.5 cents.
The first scheme of its kind in a mass-production industry, COLA pegged a workers wage to the cost-of-living index of the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
[4][5] The third round was negotiated by Emil Mazey, secretary-treasurer of the union and achieved a thirteen-cent-an-hour increase in wages from the Chrysler Corporation.
[6] After World War II, health and welfare had become critical issues in labor contracts across industries, and Reuther chose pensions and company-funded medical care as the focus of his bargaining in 1949.
Since inflation in the postwar economy had reduced the significance of the $32 a month benefit from Social Security, the issue of pensions had become more important than ever.
[8] The automakers were principally concerned with negotiating a longer contract to protect the manufacturers from annual strikes, avoid the costs of undergoing negotiations each year, and give control over long-term scheduling of production, model changes, and tool and plant investment.
It was during this strike that Reuther coined the phrase "too old to work and too young to die," referring to financially unsupported retirees.
The Treaty, along with other gains made by the union over the next decade moved autoworkers in America into the middle class, with wages since the war nearly doubling and home ownership becoming common among laborers.