The UAW’s Stand-Up Strike: “We’re Inventing a New Way to Squaring Down the Big Three,” Fain said
The United Auto Workers’ union and the Detroit Big 3 automakers have not yet reached a deal with less than 24 hours left until the current strikes end.
UAW President Shawn Fain put up a chart during a Facebook Live event comparing Big 3 profits to autoworker pay, which increased just 6 percent.
He said while what the automakers are offering in response to union demands has improved, it still doesn’t reflect the sacrifice of the autoworkers who made the companies successful.
“They could double our wages and not raise car prices and still make billions of dollars in profit,” he said. They want to make the American people think the autoworkers are the problem. We’re not the problem. … Corporate greed is the problem. And come tomorrow night, if they force us, we’re about to make it the Big Three’s problem.”
The UAW conducted the talks in a way that was unusual. Typically it picks one company to hash out a deal with, possibly striking against them, and then once that’s resolved, it pushes the other two companies to more or less match that deal.
If they didn’t make a satisfactory offer this time, they’d be struck at once. For a process shrouded in secrecy, the union provided regular updates about what both sides had offered.
Now the union has outlined a strike plan that would be as unusual as the talks. “We’re inventing a whole new way to strike,” Fain said in his Wednesday live-stream. “stand-up strike” was a reference to the “sit-down strikes” of 1937.
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Jim Farley said his company had presented four increasingly generous offers without a counter proposal from the union.
” The first time I found out that Shawn was watching our latest offer was on Facebook Live tonight,” said the man at the Detroit Auto Show. We’re here.” We’re ready to negotiate. It’s difficult to negotiate a contract when there is no one to talk to.
“We want to make a deal,” he said. “If there is a strike, it won’t be because we didn’t put a great deal in front of them, because we have – four times.”
In statements on Wednesday, GM simply said it was continuing to bargain “directly and in good faith” with the union. But Stellantis said it was still waiting on a counter proposal to the offer it made on Tuesday.
General Motors responded to UAW’s pay raise proposal in an August 3 statement, saying it expects increased wages for unionized employees — but that the union’s ask “would threaten our ability to do what’s right for the long-term benefit of the team.”
The UAW notes that the companies have made record profits in recent years and that the workers want their fair share.
The companies are agreeing to make Juneteenth a holiday, and Ford has offered 2 weeks of parental leave, but otherwise, there has been no major movement on paid time off.
The companies do not consider this a “tier” system, since the pay is eventually equal, and they’re offering to reduce the timeline to bridge the gap to four years. But the union views the requirement to work for years before getting maximum wages – along with the fact that people hired since 2007 don’t get pensions or retiree benefits – as a form of a “tier.”
Back then, a “second-tier’ employee would never earn as much as a “first-tier” one. But that changed in 2019. Now a new hire can work their way up to the same pay as their colleagues, over the course of eight years.
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On pensions and benefits for retired workers, the companies have not budged. Some workers prefer 401(k)s to pensions because they can be taken with you when you change jobs; automakers argue that pensions and retirement benefits are too expensive. The guaranteed payments of a pension have been advocated by the union.
The union has also been pushing for another benefit that’s a blast from the past: job security guarantees that would continue to pay workers even if a plant is shut down. That has gotten no traction at all. Up until the late 2000s, a similar program that paid workers not to work hurt the reputation of the union and was an awful burden on the auto industry.
“People are angry,” Brandon Szcesniak, a 21-year-old union member who works at Ford’s Wayne plant, told Labor Notes. “It’s like a revolving door. it’s not a career anymore, it’s a job. They want us to buy a Ford, but how can we do that on this pay?
Tesla operates its Fremont, California, factory with nonunion labor, as the UAW has struggled to find a toehold at the plant. The company has been accused of violating labor laws by barring workers from discussing pay and working conditions. There have been many OSHA complaints filed against the company over the years.
The situation for GM and Ford is a nightmare because both of them are in the very early stages of an EV transformation path that will define future success, according to Dan Ives of Wedbush. He said the winner was the clear winner. Musk and Tesla with champagne now on ice.”
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“This is more of a symbolic strike than an actual damaging one,” Sam Fiorani, a production forecaster at AutoForecast Solutions, told Reuters. Not all of the people were in agreement.
Some analysts were against the strike, with others saying it was symbolic and devastating. Ford Bronco, Jeep Wrangler and Chevy Colorado are three of the most profitable models produced by the struck plants.
It was a historic moment — never before had workers at all three companies gone on strike at the same time — that came as the automakers were in the midst of making a huge high-stakes switch to EVs.
Those plans are now on hold as Ford,General Motor, and Stellantis workers take to the streets to demand a share of the profits generated by combustion trucks and SUVs as well as stronger job security and better retirement plans.
Ford said it got a counterproposal from the union hours before the current contract expired but said there was “little movement” from the UAW’s previous proposal.
“If implemented, the proposal would more than double Ford’s current UAW-related labor costs, which are 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,” Ford said in a statement.
GM CEO Mary Barra noted that the two sides were still far apart on key issues. The offer the company put on the table last night is still being worked on, said the CEO on CBS This Morning.
Analysts note that the Big Three spend roughly $64–$67 an hour on total labor costs, including benefits, while their nonunion rivals only spend around $55 an hour and Tesla spends $45–$50 an hour.
If there is a 40% wage increase that is approved, it will be a big problem for GM and Ford, as well as investors, since it will affect the cost of the vehicles and ultimately they will have to pass it on to the consumer. Demand would be affected by the cost of EV vehicles being out of Detroit if mass adoption were to go forward with any $3k, $5k, $7k added to the slew of vehicles coming out.
Ives, who is bullish on Tesla, predicted that a prolonged strike could push the Big Three automakers to agree to major increases in labor costs, which could then be passed along to the consumer.
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In August, the Allied Pilots Association, which represents 15,000 American Airlines pilots, successfully pushed the airlines to raise pilots’ pay by more than 46% over four years, with an immediate pay raise of more than 21%.
“It’s been a long time since there’s been any financial gain,” Tajer said. “This may be a four-year deal, but nothing’s happened since January 2019 in pay.”
Tom Kochan, professor of work and employment at MIT, said 2023 is shaping up to be a pivotal year for renegotiating wage norms. Kochan said the UAW still has a lot of leverage even though it has to contend with non-union auto plants.
The Teamsters union similarly highlighted UPS’ profits throughout the COVID-19 pandemic as they pushed for higher wages for rank-and-file union members. The package delivery company made a profit of over $13 billion in just four years.
When she began working at United Parcel Service, she was paid $8 an hour. “A part-timer now would need to make in the ballpark of $25 to have the same buying power.”
Bargaining power for pilots and employees at major airlines comes from the fact that they’re not replaceable. Pilots have a specialized skill-set that can’t be easily substituted; UPS is doing well enough, despite competition, that when the company raises workers’ pay and benefits, it doesn’t substantially reduce employment.
Source: Why you shouldn’t be surprised that auto workers are asking for a 40% pay raise
Auto Workers in the American South: How the UAW is winning and why they’re asking for a 40-wage-increase-straight-ford-gm-stellantis
capital isn’t always mobile and can’t move to the non-union South and operate as many companies can. It can’t move abroad and outsource production to foreign sources of supply,” Katz said. “That’s part of their special circumstance.”
Katz said autoworkers on assembly lines can’t be easily replaced either, and they have some leverage from solidarity within their union’s ranks. These workers face more threats from competition than from the non-union workforces in the American South, which makes it difficult for UAW to negotiate.
The UAW has won in the past when it has wrangled with base pay increases, including a cost of living adjustment, and it’s predicted they will win again this year.
“We’re at a stage where worker power is certainly more than it was in the last 20 and 30 years — but it’s hardly a revolution,” Katz said. There a lot of sources of leverage for management.
“There’s great determination on the part of the union, and its rank-and-file and its leaders, to use this moment to say, now it’s time to catch up on losses due to inflation, catch up in terms of a better distribution of the profits of the company,” Kochan said.
Ford has raised their offer to 20% since opening offers, but only half of the union’s ask, according to a Facebook Live video by Fain on Wednesday.
A wave of labor unrest this summer has shown that workers are ready to go on strike when companies refuse to meet their union’s demands. Hundreds of thousands of workers have participated in at least 250 strikes so far this year, according to the Cornell University School of Industrial and Labor Relations.
In Los Angeles, Hollywood actors and writers have been on strike for months. Thousands of city hotel employees have been staging rolling strikes in recent months to demand better wages.
Source: Why you shouldn’t be surprised that auto workers are asking for a 40% pay raise
“Something’s going on”: The union’s first “big picture” presentation on a free labor market event in Washington, D.C.
“We do not yet have offers on the table that reflect the sacrifice and contributions our members have made to these companies,” Fain told union members on Wednesday. “To win, we’ll likely have to take action.”
Pedraza said everything is going up, which includes food, gas, and interest rates. A lot of people didn’t have a safety net.
