(Bloomberg) -- General Motors Co. moved closer to ratification of its tentative agreement with the United Auto Workers after employees at the company’s Arlington, Texas, plant voted in favor of the deal.

The vote looked tenuous after workers at a large pickup truck plant in Ft. Wayne, Indiana, rejected the pact by a more-than-60% margin. But the Arlington ballot and victories at smaller facilities mean that the union had climbed to 54% approval with voting concluded at most of its plants.

Ratification would mark a big win for GM and union negotiators after the sides in late October reached a deal to end a costly and drawn-out strike. The terms include a 25% hourly pay raise plus cost-of-living allowances through April 2028.

With support from GM’s Arlington workers, the few remaining plants yet to post results on the union’s website would need to overturn a difference of almost 2,500 votes to reject the tentative agreement. Most of those sites are small parts distribution facilities, which employ workers who get a minimum 48% wage increase in the new deal.

The only major plant not on the union’s list is an SUV plant in Lansing. That plant’s union local said 61% of its workers rejected the deal, suggesting there were about 500 more votes against the contract than for it.

There are five remaining parts facilities that have not reported results. Other parts plants have overwhelmingly approved the deal because workers there saw starting hourly pay go from as low as $16.25 to $25.12 and top pay from $25 to $35.88.

GM has 46,000 union workers, but not all of them vote. Union workers at Ford Motor Co. and Stellantis NV are voting more strongly in favor of their contracts so far. A UAW spokesman did not return messages seeking comment. 

Sticking Point

Pensions were a sticking point for older workers. Tony Totty, president of UAW Local 14 at a Toledo engine plant, said that while workers got 25% raises, pension benefits were only improved by 9.4%, leading older workers to vote it down, he said.

“The deal is better for someone who doesn’t yet work here than it is for someone who worked here 30 years because there isn’t enough in the pensions,” Totty said in a phone interview.

In Arlington, the pension increase was also key for older workers, said Keith Crowell, shop committee chair for Local 276, which represents hourly employees there. Workers of all seniority levels were hoping for retiree health-care plans, he said.

On Tuesday, 97% of 1,200 workers in the Ultium Cells LLC Ohio joint venture battery plant, which is co-owned with Korea’s LG Energy Solution, voted to approve the deal. The tentative agreement must be ratified to include those workers in the Master Agreement on which the vote is being held.

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