Big 3 bargaining is a big deal for the UAW – and labor

 Next up: the United Auto Workers.

Following Starbucks (where 3,000 workers had a work stoppage at 150 locations), Los Angeles hotels (where 6,000 workers went on strike), Hollywood (with 11,500 writers hitting the bricks, before 160,000 TV and movie actors joined in their own walkout), and finally, the Teamsters (who reached a tentative agreement with UPS after months of preparation to strike), the UAW is enthusiastic as the Sept. 14 expiration of its automakers contract approaches.

“It feels like it’s strike summer,” UCLA Labor Center director Kent Wong told The Guardian. “There’s tremendous energy within the labor movement, and there’s tremendous energy on the strike lines.

“We are coming out of more than three years of pandemic where people felt that economic inequality has grown,” Wong continued. “Many workers were called essential workers, but they often felt they weren’t respected or appreciated, yet at the same time they have seen all this outrageous corporate greed.”

Before bargaining officially began July 13 at Stellantis (formerly Chrysler), July 14 at Ford, and July 18 at General Motors, UAW President Shawn Fain days before dropped the customary, ceremonial handshake with automaker executives to start negotiations. Instead, the 54-year-old electrician – who started at a Chrysler plant in Kokomo, Ind., before working in the union for decades – and other international leaders started a new tradition: member handshakes. At three Michigan assembly plants, leaders shook hands, talked to workers, and collected “United for a Strong Contract” pledge cards.

If autoworkers are encouraged by the energy, solidarity and the Teamsters settlement, they also must be reassured by 71% public approval – the highest level since 1965.

However, the rank and file must also have noticed GM’s July announcement that the corporation had exceeded expectations in the 2^nd quarter, increasing profits 39% to $3.2 billion on revenues of $44.75 billion – its highest revenues since its 2009 bankruptcy. Last year, all three corporations reported hefty profits: operating incomes of $9.2 billion (Ford), $13 billion (GM), and $15.2 billion (Stellantis).

Last month, GM investors were told that the company intends to cut expenses by $3 billion in the next few years – three times its earlier plan.

“These companies have been extraordinarily profitable, and our members have created incredible value for these companies during some really hard and dangerous years," said UAW President Shawn Fain. “They can afford our demands, and we expect them to pony up.

“GM executives have closed 31 plants over the last 20 years and are now enriching themselves through joint-venture battery plants that get billions from the federal government in taxpayer subsidies but pay poverty wages,” he continued. “It’s long past time for GM to pony up, end tiers, pay their employees competitive wages that keep up with the cost of living, and provide everyone the ability to retire with dignity.”

The Big 3 got billions in taxpayer subsidies since the auto bailout during the 2008 recession – plus union givebacks to help the company.

“We took concessions in hard times,” Fain said. “Business has been booming for the last decade, and these companies have made record profits. And this is our time to get our fair share of the pie.'”

Many factories have far more temporary workers than ever, people paid $16.67/hour without retirement benefits or scheduled raises, and with just two to five paid days off a year.

“They’ve made a quarter of a trillion dollars in North American profits over the last ten years,” Fain said, “and they can afford to make things right for our members.”

Besides pay, several issues remain at the forefront of negotiations, the UAW says, such as “Alternative Work Schedules,” the mandatory shifts dealing with speedups that have workers clocking in for six 10-hour days a week or five or six 12-hour days a week.

The union wants to:

* eliminate the hated two-tier wage system where people working side by side get much different wages and benefits, depending on their start dates;

* reinstate COLA (Cost of Living Adjustments);

* address widespread injuries on the job and their long-term effects – especially facing company chatter about cuts to retiree health-care benefits and pensions;

* protect job security amidst the industry drift to electric vehicles; and

* improve pensions.

 

Like the Teamsters, the UAW seems emboldened by a more militant leadership, with former “insurgents” at the top setting a determined, if not combative, tone.

UAW Secretary-Treasurer Margaret Mock, elected off working the line at Stellantis’s Warren truck plant, said that the union is ready, referring to the financial impact of the UAW's 40-day strike at GM in 2019 – $3 billion – and to the UAW's $825 million strike fund.

“We will go the distance to win what we deserve,” she said, “even if it means staying out.”

Fain wants to convey the UAW’s resolve.

“September 14 is a deadline, not a suggestion,” Fain said. “The UAW once set the standard for the working class in this country. Those days are not over.

 “What we do in this moment will be remembered for generations,” he told members in Michigan. “This is our defining moment, as a union, as working people.”