UAW President Fain on not endorsing Biden: ‘We expect actions not words’

Miranda Nazzaro
Sun, September 17, 2023



United Auto Workers (UAW) President Shawn Fain said Sunday he has not endorsed President Biden for the 2024 election because the union “expects actions, not words” from the president.

Asked on CBS’s “Face the Nation” what it will take to endorse Biden, Fain said, “Our endorsements are going to be earned. We’ve been very clear about that, no matter what politician.”

When asked how Biden can earn the endorsement, Fain said, “We expect actions, not words.”

Fain referenced comments over the Biden administration’s recent attempts to interject in the UAW’s negotiations with three major automakers — Ford, General Motors and Stellantis.

“This negotiating … our negotiators are fighting hard,” Fain said. “Our leadership is fighting hard. It’s going to be won at the negotiating table with our negotiating teams, with members manning our picket lines and our allies out there.”

Fain’s comments come after Biden said last week he was sending acting Labor Secretary Julie Su and senior aide Gene Sperling to Detroit to help reach a “win-win” contract for the companies and their employees.

“Who the president is now, who the former president was or the president before them isn’t going to win this fight,” Fain continued. “This fight is all about one thing — it’s about workers winning their fair share of economic justice instead of being left behind as they have been in the last decades.”

UAW workers began a strike against the automakers last week after ongoing negotiations failed and the workers’ contracts expired.

The union is asking for wage increases, cost-of-living pay raises, a 32-hour work week with 40 hours of pay, union representation of workers at new battery plants and restoration of traditional-defined benefit pensions for new hires who now receive only 401(k)-style retirement plans and pension increases for retirees.

Last week, former UAW President Bob King said Biden “should have done a lot more already” to assist striking autoworkers. In an interview with NewsNation’s Chris Cuomo, King said he also backed Fain’s decision not to endorse Biden over concerns about federal electric vehicle (EV) policies.

The Biden administration has pushed for an industry shift to EVs, which require fewer workers to make, sparking concerns over how such a transition could impact workers jobs and pay.

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White House team to go to Detroit to help resolve autoworkers strike

Monica Alba and Jesse Kirsch and Will Ujek
Sun, September 17, 2023 

A team that President Joe Biden dispatched to help resolve the strike between the U.S.’ largest autoworkers union and the Big Three auto companies plans to be in Detroit to support talks “early in the week,” an administration official said Sunday.

Biden named White House adviser Gene Sperling and acting Labor Secretary Julie Su last week to go to Detroit to help reach a deal to end the walkout by the United Auto Workers union, which began early Friday. Sperling has been the point person on key issues connected to the union and the companies, and he has been coordinating with Su.

"Both Sperling and acting Secretary Su are engaging with the parties by phone, as they have for weeks, with the intention of being there early in the week," the official said, adding that the administration was "pleased that the parties are continuing to meet as they had been before the contract expired."

United Auto Workers members strike at the Ford Michigan Assembly Plant 

Su and Sperling's goal was not to serve as mediators or intervene but to "help support the negotiations in any way the parties feel is constructive," the official said.

Biden said Friday that he hoped that the UAW and the Big Three returned to negotiations.

After talks collapsed, Biden said he understands workers’ frustrations that as automobile companies register “record profits,” they haven't “been shared fairly, in my view, with those workers.”

“Let’s be clear: No one wants a strike,” he said at the White House. “But I respect workers’ right to use their options under the collective bargaining system.”

The strike is a particular challenge for Biden, who has called himself “the most pro-union president you’ve ever seen.” While the UAW has historically supported Democrats like Biden, former President Donald Trump won important backing from blue-collar autoworkers.

Before the strike was declared, UAW President Shawn Fain said a walkout would force Biden and other politicians to pick sides when it comes to organized labor.

On Friday at midnight, about 13,000 members of the UAW walked out of a General Motors site in Missouri, a Stellantis center in Ohio and a Ford assembly plant in Michigan.

If every UAW member struck immediately, the union would have enough funds to supply about 11 weeks of strike pay.

This article was originally published on NBCNews.com

The United Auto Workers strike could be the canary in the coal mine for Biden's reelection pitch to working-class voters

John L. Dorman
Sun, September 17, 2023 

United Auto Workers members attend a rally in Detroit, Mich., on September 15, 2023.

AP Photo/Paul Sancya, File

The UAW union late last week went on strike to pressure the "Big Three" to raise worker wages.

The strength of President Biden's economic message could hinge on the outcome of the strike.

Biden has sought to sharpen his 2024 economic pitch, but voters aren't fully sold on his message.

Shortly after Joe Biden launched his 2020 presidential campaign, his first major rally was held at a Teamsters union hall in Pittsburgh, where he extolled the virtues of middle-class Americans.

Referring to himself as a "union man," Biden mapped out of his vision of an economy that would empower ordinary citizens by lifting wages and targeting financial loopholes that favored big businesses.

"The country wasn't built by Wall Street bankers, CEOs, and hedge-fund managers. It was built by you," he told the receptive audience in April 2019.


That was over four years ago.

Biden is now sitting in the Oval Office, and the United Auto Workers strike is giving him the most challenging labor crisis of his presidency, as the economic pitch for his reelection bid could sink or swim depending on the outcome.

The UAW, which represents almost 150,000 autoworkers, began a strike on Friday against the "Big Three" automakers — Ford, General Motors, and Stellantis. It is the first time that there have been simultaneous strikes at the three Detroit automakers. (At the moment, only three plants — a Ford factory in Wayne, Michigan; a GM assembly plant in Wentzville, Missouri; and a Stellantis Jeep plant in Toledo, Ohio — are striking. But more factories could be added to the list depending on how negotiations move along.)

The union is calling for more robust benefits and the elimination of "tiered" compensation, the latter of which occurs when workers are paid different rates for performing the same work.

But perhaps the biggest sticking point for the UAW is the push to raise wages.

The UAW is now calling for a 36% increase in general employee pay for across a four-year period, mirroring the 40% chief executive pay bump that union leadership says has occurred over the past four years.

And Biden is clearly listening.

Late last week, he sent acting Labor secretary Julie Su and White House economic advisor Gene Sperling to Michigan "to offer their full support for the parties" in the contract talks.

President Joe Biden is seeking reelection to a second term.AP Photo/Susan Walsh

And the president last week spoke on the wide disparities in CEO pay compared to workers on the floor.

"I've been in touch with both parties over — since this began over the last few weeks. And over the last — the past decade, auto companies have seen record profits, including the last few years, because of the extraordinary skill and sacrifices of the UAW workers," he said at the White House. "But those record profits have not been shared fairly, in my view, with those workers."

"Unions raise workers' wages, they said — incomes — increase homeownership; increase retirement savings; increase access to critical benefits, like sick leave and childcare; and reduce inequality — all of which strengthen our economy for all workers," he added.

This is the sort of pitch that Biden has sought to use in next year's election, but especially in Michigan, which is a critical part of the blue-state coalition that he hopes to assemble.

But ahead of any agreement coming to fruition in the next few days, the Biden team might want to send some emissaries to factories across the Midwest, where discontent with the president among some auto workers is simmering, according to a report from Politico's Adam Wren.

Denny Butler, a union committeeman in Kokomo, Ind., told the outlet that he wasn't backing Biden or former President Donald Trump at the moment. And he also criticized both political parties.

"They're all full of shit," Butler said.

"Historically, man, if you didn't vote Democrat years ago, and you were in the union, sometimes you got your ass kicked," he continued. "Democrats were for the working people. That shit has changed. I'm telling you what, the Democratic Party was not what it was 20, 30 years ago."

As Biden looks to lay out his economic plans to working-class voters across the country, most of whom have endured inflation exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic and supply-chain issues, the fallout from the UAW strike could inform the opinions of voters across the political spectrum next year.

Voters will ask: Does the economy work for me?

The president will have to continue listening to workers to effectively make his case.

Obama on UAW strike: Time to ‘do right’ by workers that keep companies ‘on their feet’

Nick Robertson
Sat, September 16, 2023 

Former President Obama backed the United Auto Workers strike on Saturday, telling automakers that it’s time to “do right” by workers.

“Fourteen years ago, when the big three automakers were struggling to stay afloat, my administration and the American people stepped in to support them,” Obama said on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter. “So did the auto workers in the UAW who sacrificed pay and benefits to help get the companies back on their feet.”

“Now that our carmakers are enjoying robust profits, it’s time to do right by those same workers so the industry can emerge more united and competitive than ever,” he added.

UAW began a strike against the “Big Three” automakers — Ford, General Motors and Stellantis — early Friday morning, a first in the union’s history, after negotiations failed before reaching the end of the workers’ contracts. The union is demanding increased wages, shorter work weeks and better retirement benefits.

Profits at the Big Three firms increased by 92 percent in the last decade and CEO pay increased by 40 percent in the same period, according to an analysis from the Economic Policy Institute.

“We are committed to winning an agreement with the Big Three that reflects the incredible sacrifice and contributions UAW members have made to these companies,” UAW President Shawn Fain said in an address Thursday.

In late 2008, weeks after Obama’s first election, the Bush administration announced a nearly $18 billion bailout for major automakers wrecked by the recession. Congress later invested about $80 billion of federal funds into Detroit automakers during the Obama administration, losing about $11 billion on its GM investment alone by the time the government sold the shares in 2013.

The Biden administration has also backed the UAW strike and President Biden encouraged automakers to return to the bargaining table with an increased offer on Friday.

“I believe they should go further… Record corporate profits, which they have, should be shared by record contracts for the UAW,” Biden said.

Strikes are limited to a small number of specific plants chosen by union leadership hours before they begin. The pop-up strike tactic is meant to “keep the companies guessing,” Fain said.

How an auto workers strike 87 years ago transformed NORTH America

Nathaniel Meyersohn, CNN
Sun, September 17, 2023 

During the final days of 1936, about 50 autoworkers at General Motors shut down their machines at Fisher Body Plant No. 2 in Flint, Michigan, and sat down.

The workers, members of the tiny United Automobile Workers union founded just a year prior, sought to improve brutal working conditions at mighty General Motors, the world’s largest manufacturer. They also demanded GM recognize the union as workers’ bargaining agent in negotiations.

The UAW’s sit-down strike across GM plants lasted 44 days. It is considered the most important work stoppage of the 20th century and a turning point in relations between companies and workers in America. It was a breakthrough for unions and led to a wave of labor organizing across the country.

A GM plant in Flint, Michigan on January 1, 1937. The 44-day strike birthed the United Auto Workers union. - Sheldon Dick/Hulton Archive/Getty Images

Now, the UAW is on strike against Detroit’s Big Three — General Motors, Ford and Stellantis —for the first time. The strike comes at a critical moment for both a re-energized labor movement and an auto industry in transition as the electric vehicle era dawns.

The UAW, led by upstart president Shawn Fain, has updated its tactics. The UAW is calling its new strategy a “stand up strike,” a reference to the sit-down strike that started 87 years ago, and has launched targeted strikes at selected plants.

“Shawn Fain is drawing from the union’s long history and modernizing the UAW tradition,” said Thomas Sugrue, a historian at New York University. “The union is relying on understandings of the past, but a reinvention to respond to current conditions.”
Birth of the UAW

During the 1930s, UAW workers were protesting the intense speed they were forced to work on assembly lines, the arbitrary power GM foremen had to hire and fire them, and unlivable wages. GM had disrupted workers’ attempts to form a union through spying campaigns and firings of organizers.

Sit-down strikes had been spreading in Europe at the time, and UAW workers were inspired by those efforts.

Sit-down strikes were a novel tactic and had several benefits over a traditional strike, which involved workers walking off the job, writes labor journalist Steven Greenhouse in “Beaten Down, Worked Up: The Past, Present and Future of American Labor.”

Strikers cross off number of days they have been on the sit-down strike at General Motors' Chevrolet auto plant in Flint on February 10, 1937. - Tom Watson/NY Daily News Archive/Getty Images

Police often attacked workers, and replacement workers could easily take their jobs while they picketed outside. By sitting down, workers stayed inside the factory and near their stations so “scabs” couldn’t take over. Management was hesitant to send in police out of fear valuable machines would be damaged.

The initial strike at Fisher Body Plant No. 2 quickly spread to other GM plants in various cities, crippling GM’s operations.

On January 11, 1937, two weeks into the strike, workers at the plant clashed with GM security and Flint police after the company cut off heat and electricity and prevented food from being delivered to workers inside. The clash left dozens injured. Michigan Gov. Frank Murphy called in the National Guard and ordered both sides to negotiate.

Forty-four days later, the two sides reached a compromise in which GM agreed to recognize the UAW as the bargaining agent for workers who wanted to join the union.

It was a watershed victory for the union.

A march of strikers' wives following the riot between strikers and policemen on February 1, 1937, in Flint. - Bettmann/Bettmann/Bettmann Archive

“The workers in the other basic mass production industries,” one union leader told the New York Times, “will derive from the auto workers’ struggle the confidence and conviction that they, too, can win similar rights in their industries.”

The GM sit-down strike led to a burst in UAW membership.

Its membership surged from 88,000 in February 1937 to 400,000 by October. By 1941, it had jumped to 649,000 members, according to Greenhouse.

The sit-down strike also prompted unionization and a wave of strikes in other industries.

“Sitting down has replaced baseball as America’s pastime,” Time Magazine said in 1937.
Stand-up strike

The UAW’s victory helped lead to unionization at Chrysler in 1939 and Ford in 1941.

Detroit’s unionized jobs with rising wages and company-provided benefits set a standard for other manufacturing jobs and helped lead to the formation of the middle class during the mid-20th century.

“Auto industry jobs in the history of US have been an important bedrock of the emergence of the middle class,” said Joseph McCartin, a labor historian at Georgetown University.

But non-unionized foreign and domestic competition has undercut the US auto industry and eroded UAW jobs and benefits in recent years.

UAW members on a picket line outside a Ford plant in Wayne, Michigan, on Friday. - Emily Elconin/Bloomberg/Getty Images

Unions across America have also declined, peaking in 1945 at 33.4% of the workforce. Last year, 10.1% of workers belonged to unions.

Current UAW leadership, led by president Fain, is seeking to recapture the energy from the sit-down strike against GM during the 1930s.

The UAW dubbed its targeted strike of three plants as a “stand up strike,” which it called a strategic “new approach” to walking off the job.

“The Stand Up Strike is our generation’s answer to the movement that built our union, the Sit-Down Strikes of 1937,” the UAW said in a statement. “Then as now, our industry is rapidly changing and workers are being left behind.”

The negotiation between UAW and Detroit’s Big Three will have a long-term impact on both the auto industry and manufacturing jobs, McCartin said.

“The question here is whether manufacturing jobs, as they grow, will function as middle-class jobs.”

Contract negotiations: UAW strike puts the four-day workweek back in focus

Eva Rothenberg
Sun, September 17, 2023 

When the United Auto Workers called a strike last week against General Motors (GM), Ford (F) and Stellantis (STLA), one of their demands focused on an idea circulating on the periphery of labor reform circles.

In addition to calling for a 36% pay raise and increased job security, union members want a 32-hour, four-day workweek with no pay cuts.

Proposals to shorten the workweek have gained traction in recent years, with the flexibility of pandemic-era remote work fueling many of these calls. The accelerating use of artificial intelligence in the workplace has also pushed some workers to question the necessity of a 40-hour week.

United Auto Workers on the picket line at Ford Michigan Assembly Plant in Wayne, Michigan on September 16, 2023. Credit: DeeCee Carter/MediaPunch /IPX

Sen. Bernie Sanders has long been a vocal proponent of a shortened workweek.

“We are looking at an explosion in this country of artificial intelligence and robotics. And that means that the average worker is going to be much more productive,” the Vermont Independent told CNN’s Jake Tapper on Sunday. “The question as a nation that we have to ask ourselves is: Who is going to benefit from this productivity? We should begin a serious discussion — and the UAW is doing that — about substantially lowering the workweek.”

Several countries have conducted trials of four-day workweeks, with the largest held in the United Kingdom last year. The trial lasted six months and encompassed about 2,900 workers across 61 companies. Participants reported better sleep, more time spent with their children and lower levels of burnout.

“It would be an extraordinary thing to see people have more time to spend with their kids, with their families, to be able to do more cultural activities, get a better education,” said Sanders. “People in America are stressed out for a dozen different reasons, and that’s one of the reasons why life expectancy in our country is actually in decline.”

A separate study conducted in Iceland between 2015 and 2019 found reducing the number of work days a week did not lower productivity. A similar program in the United States and Canada, composed of dozens of businesses, found none of the companies planned to return to the five-day standard after the trial ended.

1933 

The United Auto Workers union has declared "war" on the Detroit Three automakers. It is demanding a 46% raise, a return to traditional pensions and a 32-hour work week.  Bloomberg's David Welch and Kailey Leinz report. …

 

Sanders: ‘Serious discussions’ should take place on 4-day workweek

Nick Robertson
Updated Sun, September 17, 2023 

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) in a Sunday interview encouraged “serious discussion” on pursuing a four-day workweek.

Sanders linked the need to such conversations to the targeted strike launched at the end of last week by the United Auto Workers (UAW) union.

“As a nation, we should begin a serious discussion — and the UAW is doing that — about substantially lowering the workweek,” he said in a CNN interview Sunday.

UAW began a strike against three major automakers — Ford, General Motors and Stellantis — Friday morning. The union is demanding increased wages, shorter workweeks and better retirement benefits.

The progressive senator argued that massive increases in worker productivity may warrant a reduction in the average workweek.

“We are looking at an explosion in this country of artificial intelligence and robotics. And that means that the average worker is going to be much more productive. Worker productivity is going to increase significantly,” Sanders said.

“The question as a nation that we have got to ask ourselves is, who’s going to benefit from that increased productivity? Is all of that new income and wealth being created by worker productivity going to go to the people on top, or are workers going to benefit?” he continued.

Four-day workweeks are an innovative method to increase worker productivity by giving employees more time off, proponents claim. A study last year of 33 companies globally that tested the method resulted in all of them keeping the policy.

In June, a survey found that more than half of U.S. employers were open to the idea of a four-day workweek.

Despite promising signs in studies, most U.S. employers have been reluctant to entertain the policy. A Maryland bill officially backing the change was shelved earlier this year.

“It seems to me that, if new technology is going to make us a more productive society, the benefits should go to the workers,” Sanders said. “And it would be an extraordinary thing to see people have more time to be able to spend with their kids, with their families, to be able to do more in cultural activities, get a better education.”

The strike by auto workers is entering its 4th day with no signs that a breakthrough is near

Associated Press
Mon, September 18, 2023 

 United Auto Workers members walk a picket line during a strike at the Ford Motor Company Michigan Assembly Plant in Wayne, Mich., Friday, Sept. 15, 2023. 

(AP Photo/Paul Sancya, File) 


The auto workers' strike against Detroit's Big Three went into its fourth day on Monday with no signs of an early breakthrough and against the threat that the walkout could soon spread.

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said she is hoping for a quick resolution, and that it is too soon to gauge the impact of the strike.

“It's premature to be making forecasts about what it means for the economy. It would depend on how long the strike lasts and who would be affected by it,” she said on CNBC.

Yellen said labor activism this year — strikes by Hollywood writers and actors, by workers at about 150 Starbucks locations and walkouts that were narrowly averted at United Parcel Service and West Coast ports — has been driven by a strong labor market and high demand for workers.

In a sign of the potential economic and political of a long strike, President Joe Biden is sending two top administration officials to Detroit this week to meet with both sides. Biden has sided with the UAW in brief public comments, saying that the automakers have not fairly shared their record profits with workers.

An administration official said Monday that acting Labor Secretary Julie Su and senior aide Gene Sperling will not serve as mediators — they won't be at the bargaining table — but are going to Detroit “to help support the negotiations in any way the parties feel is constructive.” The official was not authorized to discuss private discussions and spoke anonymously.

UAW President Shawn Fain said Monday that the Biden administration won't broker a deal.

“This is our battle. Our members are out there manning the picket lines," Fain said on MSNBC. "This battle is not about the president, it’s not about the former president.”

Rather than launching an all-out strike of its 146,000 members, the union opted to target three factories — one at each company — a plan that could make the union's $825 million strike fund last longer.

A key feature of the strategy is the threat of escalating the strike if the union is unhappy with the pace of bargaining. On Friday, Fain said more factories could be targeted: “It could be in a day, it could be in a week.”

UAW boss says workers shouldn’t accept lower wages so ‘greedy people like Elon Musk can build more rocket ships’


Nicholas Gordon
Mon, September 18, 2023

The president of the auto workers union had harsh words for Elon Musk, the Tesla CEO and longtime nemesis of organized labor.

Workers in companies like Tesla “are scraping to get by so that greedy CEOs and greedy people like Elon Musk can build more rocket ships,” United Auto Workers president Shawn Fain said on CBS’s Face the Nation program Sunday.

In statements outlining their position, Ford Motor, General Motors and Stellantis—collectively known as the “Big Three”—have warned that the union’s demands would worsen the already-existing cost gap with other car companies with non-unionized workforces.

On Thursday, Ford said that meeting the UAW’s demands would double its labor costs, already “significantly higher than the labor costs of Tesla, Toyota and other foreign-owned automakers in the United States that utilize non-union-represented labor.”

Responding to these concerns, Fain claimed on CBS that labor costs made up just 5% of a vehicle’s cost. “[Automakers] could double our wages and not raise the price of the vehicles and still make billions in profits,” he said. The union president called wages at Tesla and other companies “pitiful.”

Representative Debbie Dingell (D-Mich.), whose district covers part of the Detroit area, echoed these concerns on CBS. “Tesla does have a huge discrepancy in what they’re paying their employees. And most people in this country can’t afford a Tesla,” she said, referring to the car’s high price.

But Dingell suggested that a win for the UAW could help non-unionized workers too. “Almost all workers at auto plants benefit from where these negotiations go,” she said.
What are auto workers demanding?

The UAW started a targeted strike on Friday, walking out of three plants in Missouri, Ohio and Michigan. The union has suggested that starting small will allow most of its members to keep working, while preserving room for further escalation.

Negotiations between the union and the Big Three restarted over the weekend. The UAW said it had “reasonably productive discussions” with Ford on Saturday.

Ford said it was committed to reaching a deal with the union in a statement to Reuters on Saturday.

Still, the union and the automakers appear far apart. The UAW is currently asking for a mid-30% wage increase over the lifespan of the new contract, down from the initial demand for a 40% pay hike, but still far from what auto manufacturers have offered, at 20% at most.

The union is also asking for other benefits, including a shorter work week and, importantly, an expansion of benefits to plants working on electric vehicles. (Many of these factories are joint ventures with foreign companies, and not unionized).

The UAW’s president wants to recover lost ground after the 2008 auto bailout, when workers agreed to give up longstanding benefits to save auto companies from bankruptcy.

“The workers were unfairly blamed for everything that was wrong with those companies,” Fain said on Sunday, instead blaming “bad decisions on the parts of the companies that put us in that position.”

“We made all the sacrifices,” Fain argued, and “after a decade of massive profits, the workers have [gone] backwards.”
What about Tesla?

The UAW has long tried to organize workers at Tesla, which does not have a unionized workforce.

The union tried, and failed, to organize workers at the EV maker’s plant in Fremont, Calif. in 2018. The UAW then accused Tesla of illegally interfering in unionizing efforts, pointing to a tweet from CEO Elon Musk.

At the time, Musk asked why Tesla’s workers would “pay union dues and give up stock options for nothing” if they voted to join the UAW. The union alleged that workers could interpret the Tesla CEO’s tweet as a threat to take away stock options if they organized.

The National Labor Relations Board ordered Tesla to delete the tweet, as well as rehire a Tesla employee allegedly fired over organizing activity. The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals is now evaluating the order.

Musk has continued to needle the auto workers union on social media. “We pay more than the UAW btw, but performance expectations are also higher,” Musk posted to social media platform X, which he owns, on Thursday.

Yet industry data suggest that Tesla employees earn as much as a third less as their unionized counterparts. Tesla workers earn $45 an hour in wages and benefits, while those at UAW-represented plants can make up to $66 an hour, according to the Wall Street Journal citing industry data.

Tesla employees do receive stock options. Musk on Thursday claimed that “quite a few of our factory techs who work on the line have become millionaires over the years from company stock grants.”

Tesla did not immediately respond to an inquiry about pay at the company.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

'We're going to wreck their economy:' UAW president Shawn Fain has a plan. Will it work?

"We’re going to wreck their economy, the one that works for the billionaire class. It doesn’t work for the working class.”


Brian Howey
Mon, September 18, 2023 

KOKOMO — Buried deep in the wallet of Shawn Fain is a well-worn pay stub of one of his two grandfathers. It’s a reminder of where the new United Auto Workers president comes from.

Two of his grandparents were General Motor retirees at Kokomo and one worked at Chrysler starting in 1937. Nine years later in 1946, the UAW’s negotiation strategy with the then-Big Three American automakers was to bargain with one, and then use that template for the other two.

Fain is now in the vortex of the American labor movement. He was elected as president of the UAW in March after beginning his career as an electrician at the Chrysler Kokomo Casting Plant. His election was seen as a sea change in the world of automaking.

“He’s always been a labor activist. He was always locally popular with rank and file members,” said former Kokomo Mayor Greg Goodnight, who worked for Haynes International and was a union president at the same time as Fain was at Chrysler (now a unit of Stellantis).

Brian Howey

But Fain is negotiating in Detroit far differently than his predecessors. The UAW’s contracts at the Detroit automakers expired at 11:59 p.m. Thursday. He said on Wednesday that while there has been progress, the four sides are still far apart.

In the year before the Great Recession put Chrysler and GM on the brink of extinction in 2008, “Shawn was anti-ratification due to the agreement implementing tiers and cutting wages for workers in half,” the UAW website said. “Many times, at council meetings, he was ostracized for speaking up against the agreements as they didn’t serve the best interest of the Membership.”

Fain was asked on CNN last week whether a strike at the Detroit automakers could damage the recovering U.S. economy. “In the last decade they made a quarter of a trillion dollars in profits,” Fain said. “It’s not that we’re going to wreck the economy. We’re going to wreck their economy, the one that works for the billionaire class. It doesn’t work for the working class.”

Fain also isn’t reticent about wading into American politics. This comes as the House Republican Study Group formerly headed by U.S. Rep. Jim Banks advocated a shift from Republican advocacy of big business to that of blue-collar workers.

Asked on MSNBC whether he plans to endorse President Biden for reelection, Fain responded, “We’ll make that decision when the time is right. Our endorsements are going to be earned, not freely given.”

He then pivoted to “the other person we talked about, the other candidate,” meaning Republican presidential frontrunner Donald Trump. In 2020, Trump carried Howard County (home to GM and Stellantis plants in Kokomo) with 65% of the vote, to Biden’s 33%, up from 63% in 2016. In Allen County (GM at Fort Wayne), in 2020 it was Trump 55%-43% over Biden. In Lawrence County (GM at Bedford) Trump carried it with 74%. In Grant County (GM at Marion) Trump won with 68%.

“I’ll never forget in the ’16 race when he spoke about workers in Michigan, union jobs in the Midwest, he said we need to do a rotation in this country," Fain said. "We need to move those jobs to other places that pay less money and those people will be begging for their jobs back. That’s not a person I want as my president.”

UAW negotiations: What Detroit automakers have to give the UAW to get a deal, according to experts

UAW membership woes: UAW membership peaked at 1.5 million workers in the late 70s, here's how it's changed

The Wall Street Journal observed on Tuesday: “Unions aren’t the force in the U.S. that they used to be. That doesn’t mean they can’t pack a punch.”

In the coming days, we’ll find out how hard that punch is.

Brian Howey is senior writer and columnist for Howey Politics Indiana/State Affairs. Find Howey on Facebook and Twitter @hwypol.

US auto union chief warns ready to 'amp up' strike if no deal

Brian KNOWLTON
Sun, September 17, 2023 

The United Auto Workers (UAW) union is threatening to 'amp' up

 its strike at the Big Three automakers (Matthew Hatcher)

The United Auto Workers chief warned Sunday that a historic strike at the top three car manufacturers will expand if the companies do not raise their wage offers in ongoing negotiations.

Stellantis, one of the three, had offered its workers what it called a "highly competitive" wage increase of 21 percent over four years, but UAW President Shawn Fain called that "definitely a no-go."

"If we don't get better offers and... take care of the members' needs, we're going to amp this up even more," Fain told CBS News talk show "Face the Nation," saying General Motors, Ford and Stellantis have "no excuse" for not resolving salary disputes given their massive profits of recent years.

"We're prepared to do whatever we have to do. The membership is ready, the membership is fed up."

The UAW is demanding improved conditions across the board for its workers, including a 40 percent pay raise over the next four-year contract. All three companies have been offering raises of around 20 percent.

A UAW source confirmed that the union held talks with General Motors on Sunday, the third day of the strike, but offered no further details.

The standoff has fed already acrimonious debate in Washington over President Joe Biden’s economic policies ahead of the 2024 election -- and whether he has done enough to avert or resolve the auto dispute.

Only 12,700 of the union's 150,000 workers are currently on strike, but Fain's comments pointed to the possibility of a much broader action, with echoes throughout the economy.

- 2024 presidential race -

Republicans on Sunday tried to tie the strike to voters' concerns on inflation and the Biden administration's overall economic leadership.

"I have no doubt in my mind that all those hard-working autoworkers are living in the same reality as other Americans, and that is that wages are not keeping up with inflation," former vice president Mike Pence said on CNN.

Pence, who is seeking the Republican presidential nomination in the 2024 election, blamed Biden's stewardship for "the worst inflation in 40 years" and added that the administration's electric vehicles push would mainly benefit battery-makers in China.

Pence's former boss Donald Trump, who holds a resounding lead in polls over other Republican presidential aspirants, has been critical of the union's leadership and of Biden's focus on promoting EV manufacturing.

"The auto workers will not have any jobs... because all of these cars are going to be made in China -- the electric cars, automatically, are going to be made in China," Trump said in an interview aired Sunday on NBC's "Meet the Press."

Democrats have lined up solidly behind the autoworkers -- and Biden.

"The president has made it clear which side he is on in this struggle," liberal senator Bernie Sanders said on CNN, adding that Biden had repeatedly said "that a strong labor movement benefits all of us."

On social media, Vice President Kamala Harris said she agreed that "a new contract should promote good middle-class jobs -- and ensure the UAW remains at the heart of our auto economy."

Hakeem Jeffries, the Democratic leader of the House of Representatives, echoed that theme.

"Incredible economic prosperity has been generated for the corporations," he told ABC's "This Week," shortly before heading to Detroit to stand with the workers. "It’s only fair that everyone share in those record profits."

bbk/sms/tjj

Hyundai Motor's South Korea union approves wage deal - union official

Heekyong Yang
Mon, September 18, 2023 

 2022 World Car Awards at the New York International Auto Show, in New York City

By Heekyong Yang

SEOUL (Reuters) -Hyundai Motor Co and a union representing its South Korean workforce on Monday sealed a wage deal that will boost annual pay by about 12%, avoiding a strike and production losses at the company's biggest manufacturing base.


The union, one of the biggest in South Korea with more than 44,000 members, said on Monday that a total of 58.81% of its voting members had approved the tentative agreement reached last week.

Unionised workers voted last month for a possible strike over demands for higher wages, a performance bonus and an increase to the mandatory retirement age to 64 from 60.

The union demand to increase the retirement age - which would have allowed workers to stay in their jobs, reducing reliance on the pension system, for longer - was not accepted.

Workers at Hyundai Motor, the No.3 global automaker by sales with its affiliate Kia Corp, last went on strike in 2018.

Unionised workers at Hyundai in South Korea held a four-hour strike for one day in July in support of a general strike, but it was not related to the union's wage negotiations with the management.

(Reporting by Heekyong Yang; Editing by Andrew Heavens and Jan Harvey)

Sunak’s Tories, Starmer’s Labour: Britain is stuck in a doom loop of failed economics. Here’s the way out

We rely on too many old ideas. Governments must foster growth that is innovative and sustainable

‘Potential to leverage school meal procurement to transform food supply chains has already been recognised in Sweden.’ 

Illustration: Julia Louise Pereira/The Guardian

Mariana Mazzucato

Mon 18 Sep 2023 

Politicians from across the UK’s political spectrum seem to agree on one thing: growth. But for all the talk of resuscitating the UK’s flagging economy, there is little evidence (yet) to suggest that any party will succeed in charting a new course. Political leaders of all persuasions are – to echo the words of John Maynard Keynes – captive to defunct economic theory.

Rishi Sunak is advancing a piecemeal industrial strategy while painstakingly avoiding this label, focusing on wooing companies such as Jaguar Land Rover to base operations in the UK and on building the competitive strength of certain sectors. On the other side of the aisle, Keir Starmer is framing Labour as “economically responsible”, with a focus on growth rather than “big spending”, and is scaling back or delaying previous commitments, including a green prosperity fund. While Sunak’s plans show a lack of confidence in the state’s role in the economy, Starmer’s are falling victim to a false dichotomy between spending and growth.

By taking a forward-looking, ambitious approach to how they spend and invest, governments have significant power to foster and direct growth to be innovation-driven, inclusive and sustainable. Setting bold objectives that require public-private collaboration can work to expand private sector investment, stimulating jobs, training and productivity growth. These benefits are a byproduct of this mission-oriented investment; they are not the core objective. Done well, this approach can bring economic, social and environmental priorities into alignment.

For example, in addition to contributing to better health, education and economic outcomes for young people, well-structured investments in healthy and sustainable school meals can create a massive market opportunity for UK agriculture and food industries. This potential to leverage school meal procurement to transform food supply chains has already been recognised in Sweden. In the UK, Starmer has so far avoided committing to free school meals for all primary schoolchildren, citing spending constraints and a focus on fixing a broken economy. Not only has Sunak ignored calls for free school meals, he is also battling claims that underinvestment in infrastructure has led to schools that are crumbling.

Instead of seeing spending on education, school meals and other priorities – such as tackling the climate emergency, health crises or the digital divide – as an expense, it should be recognised as an investment. And one that can drive innovation.

In my 2013 book, The Entrepreneurial State: Debunking Public Vs Private Sector Myths, I made the case for governments to invest (rather than cut) their way to growth – and to do so in an entrepreneurial way that embraces the collective risk-taking needed. But, as I warned, it is vital to ensure that both risks and rewards are socialised. What was the point of government investing in the technologies that make our smartphones smart (yes, the internet, GPS, touchscreen and Siri are all fruits of government investment) if we don’t ensure that the resulting wealth is distributed rather than absorbed into massive excess profits in the private sector? A decade later, governments around the world are advancing industrial strategies, notably in the US, where the government has compared the scale of its ambitions to that of the Apollo space programme and is investing $2tn into its economy through the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, Chips and Science Act and Inflation Reduction Act. But most still shy away from maximising the potential of these investments by bringing social and environmental objectives into alignment with industrial strategy goals. Realising this potential requires four shifts in thinking.

First, it requires setting a clear direction. Governments can orient industrial strategy investments around bold goals – such as healthy, sustainable and tasty school meals for all children – to shape economies that not only grow, but grow in ways that are designed to benefit people and the planet.

Second, governments should approach the relationship between government, business and labour in such a way that risks and rewards are equitably shared. This is about establishing a new social contract. While public-private partnerships can and should create private value, the government’s role is to maximise public value. This requires setting conditions on any benefit granted to the private sector – through grants, loans, procurement deals, tax incentives or other means – to, for example, ensure affordable prices (as with the Oxford-AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine during the pandemic), share profits or IP rights, require fair labour practices and carbon emissions reductions, or limit shareholder buybacks (as was done with the US Chips and Science Act) and require reinvestment in research and development or worker training.

Third, it requires citizen engagement. At a time when public disenchantment with government leadership is rife, it is all the more vital for economic strategies to benefit and resonate with the people they are ultimately for. As politicians closely watch the polls and refine their policy agendas, they should be looking for ways to meaningfully engage in a ground-up conversation with the people of Britain and really listen to them.

Finally, directing and shaping growth requires investments in dynamic public sector capabilities, tools and institutions – to build back the state’s entrepreneurial capacity. Conversely, it means avoiding the pitfalls of over-reliance on consulting firms, a tendency that the UK has repeatedly fallen victim to and is the subject of my new book, The Big Con: How the Consulting Industry Weakens our Businesses, Infantilizes our Governments and Warps our Economies. The language of cost-saving and fiscal responsibility can lead to downsizing and gutting the capacity of governments to advance ambitious strategies. This becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy: when governments outsource critical functions, they do not develop the internal skills and knowledge to manage these functions.

The importance of taking an active hand in the UK economy is not about big v small government; rather, it is about advocating for smart, capable governments that understand their role in directing growth. Unless this direction is aligned with sustainability, health and inclusion goals, a thriving, resilient economy will remain elusive.

Mariana Mazzucato is a professor in the economics of innovation and public value at University College London and the founding director of the UCL Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose

I’m an Uluru youth ambassador because I don’t want to tell my grandchildren how close we got to real change

The Indigenous voice will be the first time many young Australians vote in a referendum. Photograph: William West/AFP/Getty Images

Australian people shouldn’t be taken for fools – they are turning up to information sessions hungry for factual information about the Indigenous voice

Kishaya Delaney

GUARDIAN AUSTRALIA
Mon 18 Sep 2023

As adults, many of us have voted in our first election, bought our first car or house, or had our first baby (or fur baby). Each of these “firsts” comes with a level of excitement and trepidation about the unknown. For those of us under the age of 41, a new “first” is coming: on 14 October we will participate in our first referendum.

Next month, all voting Australians will be asked to vote on creating a constitutionally protected Indigenous voice to parliament. The voice would enable Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people to have a say on the law and policy that affects their lives every day, through an advisory body representing the diversity of First Nations communities. It’s an exciting proposition, an opportunity to take part in making a permanent change to our political system to properly recognise the unique history, culture and experience of First Nations people.

As the referendum looms, loud voices on all sides of politics and the media take up space in the news cycle. Many Australians are searching for answers about what it actually means to vote in a referendum.

Since 2017, the Uluru dialogues have been leading community education about the Uluru statement from the heart. The Uluru statement youth dialogue, a collective of First Nations youth across the country, has been working since 2019 to build community understanding about the reforms. As the generations who would be most affected by the establishment of the voice, we are committed to helping our communities understand the need for the voice.

We don’t want to be telling our grandchildren how close we got to real, substantive change only to fail to get it over the line. We are working to make sure that doesn’t happen.

As ambassadors for the Uluru youth dialogue, we’ve been hosting community information sessions around Australia explaining constitutional recognition, the regional dialogue process that led to the Uluru statement from the heart, and the voice referendum question and amendment. These sessions offer people an opportunity to ask questions that they feel they can’t find the answers for.

My cousin, Alisha Agland (also an ambassador), and I have been delivering sessions together in recent months around regional New South Wales, and others from the Uluru dialogues and Uluru youth dialogue have been engaging with communities on the ground across the country. From the Kimberley to Adelaide, Perth to Townsville, dialogue teams have been working closely with Aboriginal communities and the broader public to help people access accurate factual information.

Alisha and I get a mix of people at our sessions. Some are keen supporters, eager to learn more. Others are on the fence, hoping for some clarity. And we’ve usually got quite a few self-proclaimed no voters. But without a doubt, all leave the session with a lot more clarity and understanding of what the referendum is actually about.

Yes campaign ramps up with new $20m ad campaign and rallies around Australia

Many voice and Uluru statement-related events have been held in the cities in recent years, but there have been far fewer opportunities for people in the regions to engage. Being from Orange, my cousin and I felt strongly that we needed to engage our own community in the conversation, and we knew we needed help. Earlier this year, we brought together what is now known as the Orange region voice working group, a collective of Indigenous and non-Indigenous representatives from the region committed to educating the community about the referendum. Building on this experience and wanting to engage parts of the state where there hasn’t been as much access to face-to-face information, Alisha and I have been travelling from Port Macquarie to Lennox Heads delivering sessions.

The most valuable part of the sessions is the Q&A. Most people have questions they can’t find an answer to with a Google search, partly because the internet is flooded with confusing news articles, but also because it’s not always easy to identify factual, reliable information relating to the referendum in general.

The yes campaign’s messaging and information has remained consistent over the past year, but I’ve seen the frequently asked questions at sessions evolve as the no campaign’s arguments have changed. First it was about the lack of detail, then it was the impact on executive government and slowing down the government. More recently it’s been the question of treaties or the length of the Uluru statement. People come to our sessions to get clarity about what they’re reading online or hearing from their friends.

Fortunately, these types of questions can be answered with factual responses that can help put people’s mind at ease. This is why people come along.

And it is why Alisha and I will be delivering online information sessions and Q&As every Tuesday until the referendum, to ensure the greatest access to factual information no matter where you are.

While “Don’t know? Vote no” seems like a catchy slogan, my experience is that the Australian people shouldn’t be taken for fools in this debate. With over a month before the vote, people are taking the time to find out.

Kishaya Delaney is a Wiradjuri woman and Uluru Youth Dialogue Ambassador

Read our voice referendum explainer and see the latest voice poll results

The truth about nitro-meats: my seven-year search for better bacon

Like so many Britons, I love a bacon butty or a plate of ham and eggs. But most of these pork products are made with nitrates – and rated as carcinogenic by the World Health Organization. So I’ve been investigating the alternatives …

 

We’re a nation of bacon bap breakfasters. 

Photograph: zkruger/Getty Images/iStockphoto

Amy Fleming
Mon 18 Sep 2023

I didn't realise quite how much I loved bacon, pancetta, chorizo and ham until the World Health Organization added processed meats to its list of carcinogens in 2015. Those salty, chewy pancetta chunks that send a mushroom risotto stratospheric – if I can resist scoffing the lot before the rice is cooked. The crumbly grain of Christmas ham carved off the bone. Translucent chorizo slices on holiday with a sip of red wine, or fried with potatoes, coating them with red umami oil. I am that disgusting person who dips her fingers in the pan after cooking bacon, to savour the salty melted fat.

Perhaps the health risks aren’t as scary as they sound as long as you’re not eating the stuff every day. But plenty are. Britain is a nation of bacon bap breakfasters, with ham sandwiches a lunchbox staple. We serve these foods in our hospitals and our schools, and once I’d read the cancer news I couldn’t unknow it. I went from thinking of charcuterie as traditional and natural – the stuff of bustling Saturday farmers’ markets – to shunning it as toxic. Once I started checking the ingredients, I saw that even the farmers’ market stuff contained nitrates and/or nitrites. When meat with these additives is cooked and eaten, carcinogenic N-nitroso compounds (NOCs) such as nitrosamine are formed.

Even unprocessed red meat (which includes pork) contains heme iron, which is involved in the formation of NOCs. This is why the World Cancer Research Fund recommends no more than three portions of red meat a week – but, when it comes to processed meat, “very little, if any”.

The additives that make processed meats so much worse are the synthetic compound sodium nitrite (E250), along with sodium nitrate (E251) and potassium nitrate (E252). The latter two are both naturally occurring minerals – although they can be industrially synthesised – and have been used in meat curing for centuries, to give it colour and protect it from deadly bacteria. Other bacteria, during the curing process or in our mouths when we chew the meat, convert the nitrates into nitrites – which is why, collectively, these additives are often referred to simply as nitrates or nitrites.

Even before the WHO’s announcement, I was on board with the idea of reducing meat consumption for the sake of the planet. But I was far from being a vegetarian. So I began to look for nitrate-free pork products. That quest led me to an online seller having a stab at an additive-free ham, but it arrived grey, overly salty and distinctly unham-like. I was bitterly disappointed. My partner tried River Cottage’s traditional dry-cure bacon recipe – using salt and sugar – but the result was too sweet for my tastes, and a very different animal from conventional British wet-cure bacon.

In 2022, the stakes rose. March saw a group of cross-party MPs and eminent scientists writing to the government, urging a phasing out of nitrates. They argued that the additives were linked to the development of breast, prostate and bowel cancer. What’s more, food technology had caught up, they said, and nitrates were no longer needed to make the meats look and taste how consumers expect – the era of grey nitrate-free ham was potentially over.

In July 2022, France announced it would be phasing out nitrates, and in December, research led by Chris Elliott, professor of biological sciences at Queen’s University, Belfast, demonstrated that mice fed on Herta frankfurters (freeze-dried and made into feed pellets) developed 82% more tumours in the colon than those given a balanced rodent feed. Today Elliott and his colleagues are campaigning for schools and hospitals to stop feeding nitrates to children and patients.

Most big stores do now offer an own-brand nitrate-free bacon. 

Photograph: sergeyryzhov/Getty Images/iStockphoto

The WHO lists processed meat as a “known human carcinogen” along with smoking, alcohol and asbestos, but clearly these substances don’t all carry the same risk. Smoking is the biggest cause of lung cancer, which leads to 35,000 UK deaths per year. Alcohol is linked to seven kinds of cancer, and comes with other health risks such as heart and liver disease, along with serious accidents. Nevertheless, Denis Corpet, professor of food safety and human nutrition in Toulouse, says he never buys so-called nitro-meats. He used to pack charcuterie when he hiked up mountains, but now, he says, “I don’t buy it because we’ve learned so much.” Not that an occasional slice of ham as part of a healthy varied diet is that risky, he says, if it’s anything like the traditional plant-heavy diet of Mediterranean peasants who “couldn’t afford meat very often”. His own research has found that consuming calcium alongside your processed meat can block the carcinogenicity – although this hasn’t been demonstrated in large cohorts yet, so mandatory cheese and ham combinations is nowhere near the official-medical-advice stage.

In the meantime, British supermarket offerings remain disappointingly nitrate-heavy. Most big stores do now offer an own-brand nitrate-free bacon. In my local I can also find one ring of nitrite-free chorizo, Unearthed’s prosciutto and serrano hams, and Finnebrogue Naked’s nitrate-free bacon and ham. Finnebrogue Naked’s bacon is among the most expensive per kilo. And that’s largely it, among shelves upon shelves of nitrates.

France is a little further ahead, says Corpet: “I would say a quarter are nitrate-free now,” and they are only “a little more expensive”.

It was Finnebrogue Naked that first demonstrated in the UK in 2018 that nitrate-free bacon butties were possible. Based in Northern Ireland, the company started out making sausages for M&S, but the WHO’s 2015 report on processed meat gave them an idea. “We thought: we’ve got all this volume of pork; why don’t we step in and try and do this the ‘proper’ way?” says Jago Pearson, chief strategy officer at Finnebrogue. In 2018, the company launched its Naked Bacon (now renamed Better Naked) brand and began producing M&S’s own label nitrate-free bacon. Now it’s supplying Sainsbury’s, Tesco, Waitrose, Asda and Morrisons.

The secret ingredient Finnebrogue adds instead of nitrates is simply “fruit and spice extracts” according to Declan Ferguson, the firm’s research, development and technical director. It was developed by the Spanish food technology company, Prosur and it is also used in Waitrose Made without Nitrite bacon, made by Pilgrim’s UK.

According to Ferguson, the only reason there has to be any additive at all is to keep the meat pink. A protein in meat called myoglobin naturally turns red and then brown as it oxidises, and the nitrates stop this happening. If the bacon went grey-brown, he says, you couldn’t legally sell it as bacon. The Prosur additive is high in antioxidants, which, says Ferguson, also “stops that myoglobin going brown”. It doesn’t slow the curing process or affect shelf life. “To the naked eye it looks like normal bacon,” he says, “but it actually isn’t the same pink as nitrate bacon and ham – it’s more red.”

Before bacon was made industrially, he says, “it would have been done either through salting or salt plus drying”. Parma and Serrano ham are made similarly: “The more traditional producers only use salt and drying.” Fermented products like salami, for which microbes are essential, can easily be made without nitrates, too, he says. “Nitrates have been introduced over time to help speed up that process and to create something that looks pink and fresh,” says Ferguson.

After the carcinogen story broke in 2015, many in the meat industry claimed that nitrates protected charcuterie-lovers from contracting botulism, a rare but serious disease caused by toxins produced by Clostridium botulinum bacteria. When Finnebrogue started making nitrate-free bacon and ham, it had to spend a lot of time and money debunking this. “We’ve done ‘challenge-testing’, where we put the clostridium botulinum bugs in the bacon,” Ferguson says. “We tested whether it grew and we were able to prove that it didn’t.”

The Food Standards Agency (FSA) says that nitrates and nitrites “have undergone a safety assessment prior to being authorised” and are “important preservatives which hinder the growth of harmful organisms, in particular the bacteria responsible for botulism”. However, the agency doesn’t insist on their use. “They are one of the ways manufacturers can choose to protect against growth of these harmful organisms,” says Adam Hardgrave, head of additives at the FSA, “but other methods include using pH, water activity [essentially, how much water is available for the bugs to grow], salt, other food additives …”

Cured meats … ‘There are a lot of new nitrate-free trials going on behind the scenes.’ Photograph: carlosgaw/Getty Images

“The other misconception,” says Ferguson, “was that nitrates contribute to flavour, when they don’t give you flavour compounds in themselves. We have won multiple awards for the flavour of our bacon.”

In the US, there has been a clampdown on bacon marketed as “uncured”, which has been spiked with celery or other vegetable extracts instead of the E numbers. It may sound healthy, but it’s not. Like many vegetables, celery is a source of nitrate, and a concentrated extract can indeed stand in nicely for the usual additives. But the end product still contains harmful levels of nitrates, and can now no longer be labelled as “uncured”, or “no nitrate or nitrite added”.

Prosur’s secret ingredient isn’t the only nitrate-free colour enhancer on the market. Ferguson says he is aware of producers in Spain, France and Germany using similar additives, “or different ingredients to make something look red or pink through, say, cherry extracts or green tea”.

David Lindars, technical operations director of the British Meat Processors Association, is surprisingly on board with a nitrate-free future, and says he’s found decent nitrate-free salami at his local Tesco. He also says there are a lot of new nitrate-free trials going on behind the scenes.

“They do take quite some time,” he says, “because you have to be absolutely certain there is going to be no risk to human health.” And the products have to match consumer expectation and shelf life. “It’s really expensive, too. You’re looking at circa £15,000 with one of the highly reputable labs.” Still, that’s small change compared with the cost of new production lines: Finnebrogue spent £20m to get its up and running.

In the meantime, Lindars says, in conventionally cured meats, “there has been a big push over the past 18 months or so to reduce the level of nitrates from 150 parts per million, which is the maximum. Two retailers that I know of have reduced their standard product to 60 parts per million: Co-op and Waitrose.”

While I have cut my meat consumption, I can report that as an occasional treat, Finnebrogue Naked bacon is just as good as regular sliced bacon and, yes, I still dip my fingers in the hot fat. The Artysan Chorizo Riojano IGP ring is equally good, although I wish there was a more spicy version available. Like most packaged ham, I find Finnebrogue’s slices too slimy and grainless. There’s still a frustrating lack of choice. “There will be new nitrite-free stuff coming down the line later this year,” Pearson promises, though he won’t say what.

“Where developments tend to lag the most,” says Lindars, “is in food service,” ie takeaways and restaurants. “Because your bacon roll - or whatever it may be - is cooked in the sandwich shop, the legislative requirements on displaying consumer information is very different.” Customers, in turn, are often less rigorous in seeking nutritional information when eating out. “You tend to be in a different frame of mind,” says Lindars. “It’s kind of an impulse buy.”

But the sense is that change is in the works, largely because, he says, “the consumer dictates, ultimately. You and me, we’re going to buy what we want and what we believe to be good for us.”