UAW’s clash with Big 3 automakers shows off a more confrontational union as strike deadline looms
DETROIT — A 46% pay raise. A 32-hour week with 40 hours of pay. A restoration of traditional pensions.
The demands that a more combative United Auto Workers union has pressed on General Motors, Stellantis and Ford — demands that even the UAW’s own president calls “audacious” — are edging it closer to a strike when its contract ends Sept. 14.
The automakers, which are making billions in profits, have dismissed the UAW’s wish list. They argue that its demands are unrealistic at a time of fierce competition from Tesla and lower-wage foreign automakers as the world shifts from internal combustion engines to electric vehicles. The wide gulf between the sides could mean a strike against one or more of the automakers, which could send already-inflated vehicle prices even higher.
A potential strike by 146,000 UAW members comes against the backdrop of increasingly emboldened U.S. unions of all kinds. The number of strikes and threatened strikes is growing, involving Hollywood actors and writers, sizable settlements with railroads and major concessions by corporate giants like UPS.
Shawn Fain, who won the UAW’s presidency this spring in the first direct election by members, has set high expectations and assured union members that they can achieve significant gains if they are willing to walk picket lines.
In a speech to a Labor Day parade crowd in Detroit on Monday, Fain said that if the companies don’t come up with a fair contract, “come Sept. 14, we’re going to take action to get it by any means necessary.”
Fain has characterized the contract talks with Detroit automakers as a form of war between billionaires and ordinary middle-class workers. Last month, in an act of showmanship during a Facebook Live event, Fain condemned a contract proposal from Stellantis as “trash” — and tossed a copy of it into a wastebasket, “where it belongs,” he said.
Over the past decade, the Detroit Three have emerged as robust profit-makers.
They’ve collectively posted net income of $164 billion over the past decade, $20 billion of it this year. The CEOs of all three major automakers earn multiple millions in annual compensation.
Speaking last month to Ford workers at a plant in Louisville, Kentucky, Fain complained about one standard for the corporate class and another for ordinary workers.
“They get out-of-control salaries,” he said. “They get pensions they don’t even need. They get top-rate health care. They work whatever schedule they want. The majority of our members do not get a pension nowadays. It’s crazy. We get substandard health care. We don’t get to work remotely.”
UAW members have voted overwhelmingly to authorize its leaders to call a strike. So, too, have Canadian auto workers, whose contracts end four days later and who have designated Ford as their target.
The UAW hasn’t said whether it will select one target automaker.
It could strike all three, though doing so could deplete the union’s strike fund in under three months.
On the other hand, if a strike lasted even just 10 days, it would cost the three automakers nearly a billion dollars, the Anderson Economic Group has calculated. During a 40-day UAW strike in 2019, GM alone lost $3.6 billion.
