Wednesday, September 13, 2023

UAW ready to conduct rolling strike at all Detroit automakers, union boss says


Shawn Fain, the president of the powerful United Auto Workers union, indicated Wednesday that the group is ready to conduct a rolling strike at all automakers in Detroit. Photo courtesy of UAW/Facebook

Sept. 13 (UPI) -- Shawn Fain, the president of the powerful United Auto Workers union, indicated Wednesday that the group is ready to conduct a rolling strike at all automakers in Detroit.

Fain, speaking on Facebook Live, confirmed rumors that the union would target specific plants instead of all facilities. Other plants could be added to the strike depending on how it fares.

The deadline to negotiate a labor contract with the Detroit Three -- Ford Motor Co., General Motors and Stellantis -- expires just before midnight on Thursday and Fain's comments are the clearest signal yet that the union intends to strike.

"When we say our union is back in the fight, we mean it," he said on Facebook Live.

The union is calling the looming strike "Stand Up" in a nod to the union's legendary "Sit-Down" strike in the 1930s.

Fain dismissed corporate arguments that a rise in hourly wages would lead to a rise in car prices, as well as damage the economy. He added that the union is "making progress" at the negotiating tables but is still "very far apart" from its key priorities.

The union is seeking wage increases by as much as 46% and a 32-hour work week paid as 40 hours, as well as cost-of-living adjustments, pensions and retiree healthcare for all workers.

"In bargaining, we've repeatedly told the companies from Day 1, 'Sept. 14 is a deadline, not a reference point,'" Fain said, adding that the carmakers "nickel and dime" their workers.

"The Big Three can afford to give us our fair share. If they choose not to, they're choosing to strike themselves. We are not afraid to take action."

Some union members, however, express concern at the effectiveness of not striking at all plants at once, comments to the UAW's account on Facebook show.

"Not happy!!! Would rather accept offer that's on table than this pathetic partial strike while others work under expired contract!" commenter Aaron Spiers said on Facebook.

"There's no solidarity in watching some go hungry while others work and risk their job with no protection."

Others encouraged the union to "stand strong" and fight for job security as carmakers seek to outsource labor while some criticized both sides for waiting to "real serious" until the contracts are set to expire.


AP Sources: UAW may strike at small number of factories if it can’t reach deals with automakers

BY TOM KRISHER
September 13, 2023

DETROIT (AP) — Leaders of the United Auto Workers union are considering targeted strikes at a small number of factories run by each of Detroit’s three automakers if they can’t reach contract agreements by a Thursday night deadline.

The union’s leadership discussed smaller-scale strikes at a meeting on Friday, and local union leaders were told about the strategy on Tuesday afternoon, two people with knowledge of the strategy said.

The people didn’t want to be identified because they weren’t authorized to disclose details until President Shawn Fain updates workers Wednesday afternoon in a Facebook Live appearance.

At the Tuesday meeting, Fain didn’t say whether the union would target vehicle assembly plants or component factories, one of the people said. Strikes at parts plants could force production halts at multiple assembly factories. He also didn’t say how many workers would walk off their jobs.

The UAW wouldn’t comment.

Strikes at individual plants would be far less costly to the union, which would have to pay $500 per week to each of its 146,000 members if it strikes against General Motors, Stellantis and Ford at the same time. In that case, the union’s $825 million strike fund would run dry in just under three months, not including payments by the union for health insurance.

The strategy comes as the pace of talks with all three automakers picked up with less than two days left before contracts with the union expire at 11:59 p.m. on Thursday.

Both sides are exchanging offers and negotiating long hours. But they still appear to be far apart on wages and benefits.

The union and companies have said they are willing to talk in an effort to work out deals before the deadline. Still, Fain last week said he threw counter-offers from the companies into the trash, and he accused the companies of being slow to make wage and benefit offers.

Yet there was optimism on both sides that they still could reach deals before the deadline.

Ford CEO Jim Farley said Tuesday night that the company submitted a new offer to the union “that’s our most generous offer in 80 years of the UAW and Ford.”

The offer gives pay increases, eliminates different tiers of wages, has protection against inflation and makes bigger contributions to retirement plans. “It’s a significant, significant enhancement,” he said. “I’m still optimistic that we’ll get a deal, but there is a limit.”

Farley ruled out a union demand for a 32-hour work week for 40 hours of pay, but said it’s still possible to avoid a strike.



GM President Mark Reuss said Tuesday that a lot of progress had been made in the past few days. “The give-and-take is really happening, so we’re on a path, that’s part of the process,” he said at a Detroit industry gathering hosted by the trade publication Automotive News.

Reuss said GM’s goal is to reward employees while also investing in the future.

Fain, when asked on Labor Day about targeted strikes, said everything is on the table. “We’ve mapped out a lot of different strategies. But it’s really just going to depend on where we are on Sept. 14. That will dictate how we react.”

If the union strikes against all three automakers at the same time, it would be a first in the union’s more than 80-year history, said Nelson Lichtenstein, a history professor at the University of California Santa Barbara, who has researched the issue.

The union likely will strike at plants that make components for pickup trucks and big SUVs, which are the companies’ main profit centers, said Marick Masters, a business professor at Wayne State University in Detroit.

“They’re trying to impose some hardship on the companies and apply an accelerating level of pressure to encourage them to make an offer which will be acceptable to the rank and file and goes further toward meeting the demands that they have on the table,” he said.

It would make sense for the union to target the companies’ most popular and lucrative products, he said. “You would go after the components that would shut down as many of those product facilities as possible.”

The tactic would force the companies to lay off workers at assembly plants, and they would get unemployment benefits rather than money from the union strike fund, Masters said.

Last known offers from GM and Ford were 10% raises over four years with lump sum annual payments in the years that raises are not awarded. The last known offer from Stellantis, formerly Fiat Chrysler, was raises of 14.5% over four years with no lump sums for wages. All three companies offered lump sums in other areas to cover inflation and a bonus for ratifying a contract.

In addition to general wage increases, the union is seeking an end to varying tiers of wages for factory jobs; a 32-hour week with 40 hours of pay; the restoration of traditional defined-benefit pensions for new hires who now receive only 401(k)-style retirement plans; and a return of cost-of-living pay raises, among other benefits.

Perhaps most important to the union is that it be allowed to represent workers at 10 electric vehicle battery factories, most of which are being built by joint ventures between automakers and South Korean battery makers. The union wants those plants to receive top UAW wages. In part, that is because workers who now make components for internal combustion engines will need a place to work as the auto industry makes the transition to electric vehicles.

The auto companies say they face tremendous capital expenses as they develop electric vehicles and prepare factories to make them, all while still manufacturing cars, trucks and SUVs with internal combustion engines.

The union, however, says the companies are wildly profitable and can afford to give big raises because labor is only a small percentage of the price of a car. The companies collectively posted net income of $164 billion over the past decade, $20 billion of it this year.

Autoworkers strike would test Biden’s claim that he’s the most pro-union president in US history



BY WILL WEISSERT AND JOEY CAPPELLETTI
September 13, 2023

LANSING, Mich. (AP) — The prospect of an autoworkers strike could test Joe Biden’s treasured assertion that he’s the most pro-union president in U.S. history.

The United Auto Workers is threatening to strike against General Motors, Ford and Stellantis, if tentative contact agreements aren’t reached by 11:59 p.m. on Thursday. That could reshape the political landscape in the battleground state of Michigan and potentially unleash economic shockwaves nationwide.

The auto industry accounts for about 3% of the nation’s gross domestic product and though union leaders say they are mulling strikes at a small number of factories run by those automakers, as many as 146,000 workers could eventually walk off their jobs. The effects would be most immediate in Michigan and other auto job-heavy states such as Ohio and Indiana. But a prolonged strike could trigger car shortages and layoffs in auto-supply industries and other sectors.

“Anything that goes beyond a week, you’re going to start feeling the pain,” said Marick Masters, a business professor at Wayne State University in Detroit. “And anything beyond two weeks, that’s when the effects start to compound.”


Why the United Auto Workers union is poised to strike major US car makers this week

Auto workers leader slams companies for slow bargaining, files labor complaint with government

Biden says auto workers need ‘good jobs that can support a family’ in union talks with carmakers

Doc Killian, who has worked in a Ford assembly plant in Wayne, Michigan, for 26 years, says he can no longer afford the cars he helps build, crystallizing how the nation’s middle class has been squeezed.

“I think the American public as a whole realizes the impact that the American autoworkers have on the economy,” Killian said. “If we suffer, the American economy suffers.”

Biden has built his political career around just such an argument, repeating the mantra that the “middle class built America, and that unions built the middle class.” His administration also has championed organized labor and promoted worker organization unabashedly, with Biden frequently proclaiming himself “the most pro-union president in American history.”

Still, Shawn Fain, who was elected president of the United Auto Workers in March after promising a more confrontational stance in negotiating with automakers, countered Biden’s claim on CNN this week, saying, “I think there’s a lot of work to be done in that category.”

Fain has sought to broaden his argument beyond just autoworkers, telling a recent livestream that his union’s demands are about “raising the standard for workers everywhere.”

“I truly believe that all of America will stand with us in this fight,” Fain said.

Biden also must contend with criticism from former President Donald Trump, the early leader in next year’s Republican presidential primary, who is now pushing for the UAW to endorse him. Trump also has decried rules pushed by the Biden administration that require two-thirds of new passenger cars sold in the United States to be all-electric by 2032.

“Stand strong against Biden’s vicious attack on American labor and American auto workers,” Trump said in a statement Wednesday. “And if you want more jobs, higher wages and soaring pensions, vote for President Trump and have your leaders endorse me. If they don’t, drop out of the Union and start a new one that’s going to protect your interests right.”

But some union leaders and members have scoffed at suggestions that the U.S. not embrace efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions because manufacturers in China and elsewhere could rush in to produce electric vehicles if the U.S. does not. Fain, who has previously applauded the “transition to a clean auto industry” as long as autoworkers “have a place in the new economy,” said Trump was “not someone who stands for a good standard of living.”

Dave Green, a UAW regional director in Ohio and Indiana, said the former president “carries no credibility in my book” since “he did nothing to support organized labor except lip service.”

Green said he still considers Biden the most pro-union president of his lifetime. But he hopes the White House won’t stay neutral if there’s a strike.

“We don’t forget,” Green said. “When you’re in distress, the people who are there supporting you — that goes a long way.”

Biden faced some criticism from labor groups last year when he urged Congress to approve legislation preventing rail workers from going on strike, fearing an upending of supply chains heading into the holidays. But, unlike with rail and airline workers, the president doesn’t have the authority to order autoworkers to stay on the job.

Nowhere will the political fallout of an auto workers strike be felt more than Michigan, which Biden won by nearly 3 percentage points in 2020. The state shifted further during last year’s midterms, leaving the governor’s office and Legislature Democratic-controlled for the first time in 40 years.

“The UAW is a major player in Michigan politics and if there is a strike, of whatever duration, it’ll have a political impact,” said Mark Brewer, former chairman of the Michigan Democratic Party. A strike, Brewer said, would leave Biden having “to speak and act consistent with his previous advocacy for working people.”

That might mean alienating other allies, though, since Biden has in the past received support from top U.S. automakers on the administration’s rules over future sales. And Ray Curry, the former UAW president who was unseated by Fain, had worked with Biden in the past, even attending White House ceremonies.

Biden was nonetheless anxious to meet Fain given the pair’s shared working-class backgrounds, and they sat down together one-on-one in the Oval Office in July. The White House says it has been in regular touch with the UAW since then, and that overall communication is much better now.

“We are engaged regularly with the parties, and of course seek to support negotiations in any way that is helpful,” said Michigan native and longtime Democratic and Biden adviser Gene Sperling, who the president tapped as the administration’s point person on the autoworker negotiations. “But there is no substitute for the parties staying at the table 24/7 to come to what the president wants to be a win-win agreement.”

At Wednesday’s White House briefing, the chair of Biden’s Council of Economic Advisers did not answer questions about whether the president would support striking workers or whether he might step in to try and head off a strike. Jared Bernstein cited Biden’s record of backing unions and collective bargaining.

“The president’s been very much engaged,” Bernstein said of the auto negotiations.

Union support was instrumental in helping Biden overcome a slow start to clinch the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination, and it helped him win not just Michigan but Wisconsin and Pennsylvania as he defeated Trump in that year’s general election.

Underscoring his commitment to organized labor, Biden’s lone campaign rally since launching his reelection bid in April came in June in Philadelphia, when more than a dozen of the country’s largest and most powerful unions endorsed Biden for a second term.

So many unions banding together for an unprecedented joint endorsement so early in the election cycle was meant as a show of strength for the president. Conspicuously absent from the event, though, was the UAW. Fain has since said that if Biden wants the UAW’s 2024 endorsement, he’ll have to earn it.

Other union leaders acknowledge what’s at stake for Biden.

“Are strikes uncomfortable for an administration?” said Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, which endorsed Biden’s reelection this summer. “Of course they are.”

But, she said, “The administration believes in workers and believes that workers have the power to have a better life through collective organization and through collective bargaining.”

“This is not a soundbite to them,” Weingarten said. “This is a belief system.”
___

Weissert reported from Washington. Associated Press writer Tom Krisher in Detroit contributed to this report.

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