UAW Leader Has No Desire at All to Talk to Trump in Michigan

William Vaillancourt
Tue, September 26, 2023

The United Auto Workers union’s president derided GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump as being out of touch with the striking workers, claiming in a CNN interview Tuesday that the former president “serves the billionaire class and that’s what’s wrong with this country.”

On the same day that Joe Biden became the first sitting president to join a picket line on behalf of the United Auto Workers, Shawn Fain, who has not yet given an endorsement in the 2024 race, said that he has no desire to discuss the strike with Trump.

“I see no point in meeting with him because I don’t think the man has any bit of care about what our workers stand for, what the working class stands for,” he told The Situation Room anchor Wolf Blitzer. “He serves the billionaire class and that’s what’s wrong with this country.”

After Blitzer commented that his remark “effectively sounds like an endorsement for Biden,” Fain pushed back.

“It’s not an endorsement for anyone. It’s just flat-out how I view the former president.”

Trump is expected to skip Wednesday's primary debate and instead speak at a non-union automotive parts manufacturer in Michigan—a move that Fain called a “pathetic irony.”

“All you have to do is look at his track record. His track record speaks for itself.”

Meanwhile, Biden, whose appearance outside a General Motors facility in Michigan was at the invitation of Fain, told onlookers that they “should be doing just as well” as the auto companies, The New York Times reported.

“You’ve heard me say many times: Wall Street didn’t build this country,” Biden said. “The middle class built this country. And unions built the middle class. That’s a fact. Let’s keep going. You deserve what you’ve earned, and you’ve earned a hell of a lot more than you get paid now.”

The UAW gave its support to Biden 2020, but this time around has taken issue with the administration’s goal of having two out of three new passenger cars be electric by 2032. (Electric cars currently comprise 5.8 percent of cars on the road, and they’re getting more popular by the year, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.)

Biden said Tuesday that he’s “not worried about” what it would take for the union to endorse him again. Fain, for his part, said on CNN that endorsements will come “at the appropriate time.”

Big Three CEOs Make 300 Times What Their Workers Make, Most Other Big Companies Aren't As Bad

Andy Kalmowitz
Tue, September 26, 2023

Even before the United Auto Workers union went on strike on September 15th, UAW President Shawn Fain put the pay and raises of the Big Three CEOs in the limelight. He has alleged (rightly so) that wage gains for the CEOs’ rank-and-file employees have not kept pace.

General Motors CEO Mary Barra, Ford CEO Jim Farley and Stellantis CEO Carlos Tavares all reportedly made between $21 and $29 million last year. That works out to about 300 times as much as their employees. That may sound like a lot – and it is – even when compared to the pay of other large company CEOs. According to The Wall Street Journal, the media CEO pay package for S&P 500 companies was about $14.5 million in 2022.

In part, the ratios reflect the size of the three automakers, which each reported revenue of around $150 billion in their most recent fiscal years, said Robin Ferracone, CEO of Farient Advisors, an executive compensation and governance consulting firm.

“Size matters,” she said. “The size of the company is indicative of the scope of the job, so if you have a very large company, those CEOs tend to get paid more.” By revenue, the automakers are more than twice as big as the biggest airlines, she noted.

The outlet says that pay ratios – mandated for disclosure by the SEC in 2018 – are the function of two numbers: CEO pay divided by the pay of the median employee. It takes into account salary, bonuses and equity awards among other factors.

In industries that primarily employ highly skilled and well-compensated workers, such as utilities or pharmaceuticals, pay ratios tend to be relatively low. In industries with many low-wage workers, such as retail and fast food, ratios often are correspondingly high.

Last year, Farley reportedly made 21 percent more than his predecessor did in 2019 at Ford. Meanwhile, Barra made about 34 percent more than she did just four years ago at GM.

Under the current UAW contract – negotiated in 2019 – WSJ says full-time unionized factory workers start off at about $18 per hour and can earn up to $32 per hour. Since 2019, base wages have risen six percent. In that time, vehicle prices are up about 23 percent and overall consumer prices rose 19 percent, the outlet says. Accounting for inflation, auto workers’ wages have fallen about 5.4 percent between 2019 and July of this year.

Ford’s Farley last year earned around $21 million, or 281 times the company’s median employee earnings, compared with the multiple of 157 that his predecessor Jim Hackett earned in 2019 when the auto workers signed their last contract. Last year, employee median pay was $74,691.

At General Motors, Barra made $29 million last year. That was 362 times the median employee earnings of $80,034, and up from a comparable multiple of 203 times in 2019.

At Stellantis, the global parent of Chrysler, Dodge and other brands, Tavares last year made around $25 million, or 365 times the average employee pay of $68,712 at current exchange rates.

In 2019, the CEO earned 232 times the pay of the average employee.

You can read the whole story in The Wall Street Journal here.