Less than 24 hours after autoworkers at America's Big 3 car manufacturers began a history-making strike, one automaker has taken action as a result of the work stoppages that followed a failure to negotiate a contract agreeable to the UAW and car companies.
Ford Motor Company announced Friday afternoon that roughly 600 employees were being laid off at a Michigan assembly plant — one being targeted with union picketers amid the strike — due to the interruption to the normal workflow caused by the worker walkout.
As CNBC explained of the news, the current UAW strike did not shut down the entire manufacturing and assembly process for Ford. There were still other parts of the process going on, even inside the plant currently surrounded by picketers, but because the still-running portion of the line relies on products and work by UAW members, the not-on-strike workers are unable to carry out their work — triggering the layoffs.
What's more, the UAW strike could trigger additional layoffs in the days ahead elsewhere in the supply chain and manufacturing ecosystem used by the Big 3 automakers, sending additional ripples through the economy as workers who may not have had anything to do with the decision to strike find themselves laid off as a consequence of the dispute.
CNBC added that Ford's initial layoffs will remain until a deal is reached and the strike comes to an end. Until then, laid-off employees would just be standing around unable to work.
BREAKING: @Ford announcing layoffs related to @UAW strikes @Lebeaucarnews reports$F pic.twitter.com/DXP0GQ9oIz
— CNBCOvertime (@CNBCOvertime) September 15, 2023
Earlier on Friday, and despite saying in previous weeks that he didn't think a strike was likely nor was he worried about a walkout, President Joe Biden came down on the side of union members who are striking — more or less — as a result of his economic and energy policies.
While triggering inflation not seen in four decades which led to negative real wages for more than 24 consecutive months for American workers and sending costs soaring some 16 percent since taking office, Biden has also sought to force a clean energy transition that would necessitate a reduction in the number of workers employed to manufacture "green" vehicles.
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