Trade-Off Negotiations in the UAW: Fain vs. Automakers: An Analysis of the Detroit-Michigan Auto Workers’ Picket Lines
Shawn Fain said on CBS’s Face of The Nation that if they don’t get better offers, they would have to “amp this thing up” more.
On the other, are the big three automakers, who all say they have put historically generous offers on the table, while also emphasizing that there are limits.
The goal is to secure a sustainable future that will allow all of the UAW-represented employees to be in a company that will compete well during the historic transformation of the automotive industry.
Ford told 600 workers not to report to work at its Michigan Assembly Plant’s body construction department because the metal parts they make need to be coated promptly for protection and the paint shop is on strike.
GM has warned it will lay off 2,000 workers at a plant in Kansas early this week because it lacks components supplied by GM’s Wentzville, Mo., plant, which is on strike.
The historic strike started with 9% of the UAW’s nearly 150,000 members walking off their jobs after midnight on Friday. The three auto plants — a General Motors assembly plant in Wentzville, Mo., a Stellantis assembly plant in Toledo, Ohio, and part of a Ford plant in Wayne, Mich. — were the first join the picket lines.
But because in this case it’s due to a strike, the companies say there is no such compensation. General Motors said in a statement, “We are working under an expired agreement at Fairfax. In this circumstance, there are no provisions for company-sponsored Sub-pay.
The president of the union that represents auto workers in the states of Missouri, Michigan and Ohio set a new deadline in the talks.
“If we don’t get serious progress by noon on Friday, September 22nd, there will be more locals that will stand up and join the strike,” he said in a video posted to Facebook Monday night.
“If the company doesn’t respect the demands of our workers, then we will escalate action,” he told NPR on Monday.
Labor historians see the deployment of this new strategy as a reflection of newfound militancy at the UAW under Fain’s leadership, but also some sharp and strategic thinking about how to put pressure on companies while maintaining flexibility and limiting fallout.
“It’s not the goal of the UAW to bring down Ford, GM and Chrysler,” says Erik Loomis, professor of history at the University of Rhode Island and author of A History of America in Ten Strikes. That’s not what the point is. The point is to get a fair deal out of them.”
While it’s too early to say whether the strategy will work, Loomis says momentum appears to be on the side of the union, with companies having to guess which part of their supply chain might be hit next.
There have been effects on non-striking workers. 600 workers with Ford were put on temporary layoff due to the strike of the paint department which has caused them to use materials that need to be coated.
The UAW said it will provide those workers who are laid off in response to the strikes the same pay as striking workers — $500 a week. For most auto workers on the production line, that represents well under half their weekly earnings.
So as not to burn through its $825 million strike fund too quickly, Loomis says it’s entirely possible the union will eventually send some striking workers back to their jobs while bringing others out.
Biden, Fain and the State of the Union: In Defense of Biden’s Position on the Phenomenology of the Reionization Process
President Biden made a suggestion last week that the talks had broken down but that is not true according to Fain.
Sharon Block of the Center for Labor and a Just Economy says a strike is not an indication of an impasse.