‘Stand up!’ UAW says, starting strike at Big Three

Early on the morning of Sept. 15, the United Auto Workers launched a historic simultaneous strike against all three of the biggest automakers after the union’s previous four-year contracts expired, and the first of a potential series of work stoppages started at a General Motors plant in metro St. Louis, a Stellantis plant in Toledo, and a Ford plant in Wayne, Mich.

It’s an unprecedented action since in its eight-decade history, the UAW has never threatened to target all three companies at once. During contract years, it’s always picked one to bargain with and set a pattern for the others.  The UAW’s last strike in the auto industry was against General Motors in 2019, when 46,000 workers pounded the pavement for 40 days, costing GM $3.6 billion.

 

The UAW’s “Stand up” strategy harkens to its effective “Sit down” strikes in the 1930s, and its targeting approach of a gradual escalation “will keep the companies guessing,” UAW President Shawn Fain said. “It will give our national negotiators more leverage and flexibility in bargaining. And if we need to go all out, we will. Everything is on the table.”

 

Indeed, some in the companies had started preparing for rumors that the UAW would initially call for strikes at some of the Big Three’s 60 parts plants. (Ford had started stockpiling key parts and training management as scabs at 23 parts centers in 15 states.) That tactic remains possible since that could force the companies themselves to shut down assembly and lay off workers (who’d then receive jobless benefits instead of strike pay from the UAW’s $825 million strike fund). But then then union pivoted and instead targeted three assembly operations.

 

GM’s Wentzville, Mo., assembly plant has about 4,100 workers in Local 2250 making Chevrolet Colorado trucks and GMC Canyon trucks plus Express and Savana vans; Stellantis’ Toledo plant has more than 5,200 hourly workers in Local 12 making Jeep Wranglers and Jeep Gladiators; Ford’s Michigan plant in Wayne, Mich., has about 4,600 workers in Local 900 making Bronco SUVs and Ranger trucks, but only workers in final assembly and the paint shop went on strike.

 

If the 146,000 UAW members at the Big Three -- 97% of whom authorized a work stoppage -- eventually strike all three companies’ operations, it would be the country’s second-largest strike in more than 25 years (after the ongoing SAG-AFTRA work stoppage).

 

                                                                           ISSUES

The UAW is seeking a 36% wage increase over four years to make up for years of falling pay, rising corporate profits and ballooning executive compensation. Consumer prices have gone up 18% since the UAW signed its last contract; starting pay at the Big Three is about $10/hour lower than what they would be had they kept up with inflation since 2007, the UAW says.

 

The union also seeks restored pensions for newer hires, the elimination of two tiers of compensation dividing workers by seniority, better Cost of Living adjustments (COLA), job security and a just transition to manufacturing electric vehicles. Further, the union wants to be present in 10 joint-venture EV battery plants like those in Indiana, Kentucky, Michigan and Tennessee. (In December, workers at Ultium Cells in Warren, Ohio, voted 710 to 16 to unionize with the UAW.)

 

“Our communities and our country deserve good, safe living-wage union jobs,” Fain said.

 

All three companies rejected calls to drop tiers, offered “deficient” COLA proposals, and seek concessions on profit-sharing.

 

Weeks before, with little progress in bargaining, the UAW filed Unfair Labor Practice charges for automakers failing to negotiate in good faith by dragging out talks “with the goal of forcing the union to swallow a milquetoast contract at the last minute,” as Fain said.

 

Within days, however, the Big Three presented a flurry of 11^th-hour counter-proposals, which the UAW rejected. In the hours before the contract’s expiration, Ford, General Motors, and Stellantis proposed wage increases of 20%, 18% and 17.5%, respectively, over the course of a four-year contract.

Better, but not enough, Fain said.

 

"We're living in a time of stunning inequality throughout our society," he said. "We're living in a time where our industry is undergoing massive transformations, and we're living in a time where our labor movement is redefining itself." 

 

AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler agreed, noting that there have been more than 200 strikes this year in the United States. "It's because the economy is broken,” she said. “Workers are fed up.”

 

Workers don’t want to go on strike, she added, "but they will if they have to in order to reach a fair deal."

 

Part of the reason that 75% of Americans support autoworkers in negotiations with the Big Three, according to a recent Gallup poll, may be because people see that automakers are making colossal profits.

Ford, GM and Stellantis reported a combined $250 billion – a quarter of a trillion dollars – in North American profits from 2013 to 2022, and in the first six months of this year alone, the three companies reported a combined $21 billion profit.

 

Plus, the UAW adds, “CEO pay is up 40% in four years. Autoworker wages increased only 6% in that time – while inflation is up 18%.”

 

                                                          LEAVING WORKERS BEHIND

“The Big Three have closed or spun off 65 plants in the last 20 years,” Fain said. “The automakers have not yet promised job security in our ongoing negotiations. I have traveled across the country, meeting displaced workers who've had to pick up and move their families when plants shut down recently in Belvidere, Ill., Lordstown, Ohio, and Romeo, Mich.”

 

By itself, Stellantis’ “idling” its Belvidere plant, near Rockford, could cost 1,200 jobs. It’s as if the auto industry is ignoring how vital the UAW has been for its survival.

“In 2007-2009, the Great Recession turned the auto industry upside down,” the union said. “To save it,

autoworkers took massive cuts to their wages and benefits when the companies introduced ‘tiers,’ worse pay for the same work. Pensions were eliminated. Post-retirement healthcare vanished for new hires. Jobs were cut. The companies got billions in taxpayer bailout dollars, while autoworkers took deep cuts and made life-changing sacrifices to keep the industry alive.

 

But Ford has reportedly arranged a $4 billion line of credit to withstand a strike. For its part – while the corporations are turning to banks – the union is rallying supporters. Last week, the Teamsters announced that they won’t deliver Ford, GM or Stellantis vehicles during the strike.

 

“We are preparing to strike these companies in a way they have never seen before,” Fain told UAW members on Sept. 13. “Be ready to stand up against corporate greed. Let's stand up and make history together."

 

Auto industry’s transitions might benefit from federal, state actions

Besides the months of talks between the United Auto Workers and the Big Three, recent action by government may be helping the auto industry’s adjustment to economic changes, from the electric-vehicle transition to a new relationship with the UAW.

 

President Biden on Sept. 1 announced a $15.5 billion package “primarily focused on retooling existing factories for the transition to electric vehicles” and stressed the importance of “supporting good jobs and a just transition to EVs.”

 

The package of assistance is making available $2 billion in grants and up to $10 billion in loans for conversion projects that keep jobs in communities where auto facilities operate, and the Department of Energy also plans for $3.5 billion in funding to expand domestic manufacturing of batteries and related materials for EVs and the U.S. electric grid.

 

Concerning the financial bridge that the federal package could be, UAW President Shawn Fain said, “The UAW supports and is ready for the transition to a clean auto industry. But the EV transition must be a just transition that ensures auto workers have a place in the new economy. [The] announcement from the Department of Energy echoes the UAW's call for strong labor standards tied to all taxpayer funding that goes to auto and manufacturing companies.”

 

Here in Illinois, Gov. Pritzker is seeking a replacement manufacturer for the Belvidere facility that Stellantis “idled” in February. Pritzker has been meeting with industry in the United Kingdom and elsewhere, and this month, he announced that Chinese EV battery maker Gotion will build a new $2 billion EV lithium battery plant in Illinois.