The United Auto Workers strike against the Big Three—Ford, General Motors, and Stellantis—expanded over the weekend. Another 7,000 workers are now walking off the job in plants for Ford and GM. UAW President Shawn Fain prepared his rank-and-file for war, and he appears motivated to get most, if not all, of the demands his union is seeking from the big automakers. Ford was initially not targeted in the last expansion of the strike, which some felt was a sign that negotiations were on a better footing, but that died over the weekend. UAW is now hitting Ford in what appears to be the first simultaneous strike of the Big Three (via Reuters):
The chief executives of GM and Ford blasted United Auto Workers leaders on Friday, and UAW chief Shawn Fain responded in kind, hours after the union escalated the strike that is now in its third week.
Fain on Friday expanded the first-ever simultaneous strike against the Detroit Three, ordering workers to walk off the job at Ford's Chicago assembly plant and GM's Lansing, Michigan, assembly plant. He said Stellantis was spared after last-minute concessions by the Chrysler parent.
"It’s clear that there is no real intent to get to an agreement," GM CEO Mary Barra said late Friday, while Ford CEO Jim Farley said the union was holding a deal "hostage" over a dispute over future electric vehicle battery plants. The UAW responded on social media that neither CEO had attended bargaining this week.
“And yet, Barra and Farley made a combined $50 million dollars last year,” the union added.
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The union and the companies remain far apart on key economic issues and the CEO statements suggested they are not close to resolving many sticking points. Fain has stuck with a demand for 40% pay hikes over a four-year contract, a position supported this week by President Joe Biden. The companies have offered pay hikes of about 20%.
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Rather than the hammer blow of a mass walkout it has wielded historically, the UAW is strategically playing the companies against each other, using reprieves from expansion of work stoppages as encouragement with different automakers the last two weeks.
Workers on Friday walked out of the Ford assembly plant in Chicago that builds the Ford Explorer and Lincoln Aviator SUVs, as well as the GM plant in Lansing that makes the Chevy Traverse and Buick Enclave SUVs.
Regarding the car parts market, customers are going to start seeing shortages. The union is asking for a massive salary increase of around 40 percent over the next four years, which they claim the manufacturers can afford due to their healthy profits. The Big Three, in turn, wants to use those profits to ramp up production and development of their electric line of cars, which is cost-heavy. The union isn’t buying that explanation, and they want some of the concessions they sacrificed during the 2008 financial crisis back into this new contract.
Biden joined the picket line. He was there for a cup of coffee and then left because Joe can’t hang anymore. The union has a strike fund that’s close to a billion dollars, so they can hold the line for quite some time as talks drag on.
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