The Launch of a Historic Strike by UAW against All Big 3 Automakers

Historic Strike by UAW: At the Detroit Three automakers, a historic strike is currently under progress.

After failing to reach an agreement on a new contract by Thursday night’s deadline of 11:59 p.m., the United Auto Workers union is striking against the Big Three automakers at once for the first time in history.

However, not all of the almost 150,000 union employees who work for the three automakers would walk off the job collectively during the strike.

Instead, following UAW president Shawn Fain’s “stand up strike” approach, workers at three Midwest auto factories — a General Motors assembly facility in Wentzville, Missouri, a Stellantis assembly factory in Toledo, Ohio, and part of a Ford plant in Wayne, Michigan — were the first to leave their jobs.

As of right now, less than 13,000 employees — or less than 9% of the UAW membership at the three companies — are participating in the strike.

However, new places might be added at any time, depending on how negotiations with the corporations go. This tactic is meant to increase pressure on the businesses by keeping them in the dark about how their operations can be affected.

Fain said, this is our generation’s defining moment, at a Facebook Live event on Thursday. According to him, the world is watching, the money is there, and the cause is just.

The UAW’s traditional strategy, which has typically required having all union members at a single employer leave their jobs simultaneously, has been altered by the targeted strikes.

In another change from its prior practices, the UAW has chosen to engage in simultaneous negotiations with all three automakers.

The UAW has previously chosen one automaker to negotiate with, concentrating its efforts on that firm until it reached an agreement, and then exerted pressure on the other two Big Three members to roughly match that agreement.

Fain did not, however, completely rule out the possibility of a mass walkout of all union employees at the Big Three automakers in the future.

A confrontational approach

As the UAW’s first democratically elected chairman, Fain, a longtime union member, has adopted a more aggressive negotiating style than his predecessors, even going so far as to record himself tossing proposals from the Big Three automakers into the trash.

He has reaffirmed his commitment to the union’s main economic goals, which include cost-of-living adjustments, a 40% pay hike that would be in pace with CEO income increases, and the reinstatement of pension and retiree healthcare.

On Wednesday, Fain said to UAW members, The Big Three can afford to immediately give us our fair share.

Fain has criticized previous UAW leaders for reaching agreements with the automakers that, in his opinion, did not benefit the 150,000 union members who work for these businesses.

The UAW made significant concessions to assist auto industry in recovering from the 2008 financial crisis.

A significant factor guiding this year’s negotiations is the fact that workers are still suffering as a result of earlier concessions.

The UAW’s demands under Fain have also been based on the automakers’ recent financial success as well as the wage gaps between top executives and rank-and-file union members.

The Big Three automakers have seen their combined revenues jump during the pandemic as variables such as parts shortages have caused car prices to soar, boosting profit margins for businesses.

On Wednesday night, at a Facebook Live event, Fain contrasted the companies’ revenues, which had climbed by 65% over the previous four years, with the salary of autoworkers, which had increased by just 6% during the same period.

Additionally, the shift of the car industry to electric vehicles hangs over the negotiations. As businesses spend more in their EV production, the UAW is battling for worker safeguards amid worries about what it would mean for regular car jobs.

The economy of the United States could be threatened by a protracted strike. The impact on the economy if all 150,000 or so UAW auto union members went on a six-week strike would be equivalent to a 0.2% reduction in fourth-quarter GDP.

That’s not much in and of itself, and the economy has so far shown to be much stronger than anticipated.

However, the strikes could make the U.S. even more vulnerable to negative factors like rising gas costs etc.

The summer of labor

The UAW walkout, according to information from the Cornell University School of Industrial and Labor Relations, is the 17th strike in the United States this year that has involved more than 2,000 workers.

Many other unions have used strike threats, which have in some cases led to significant gains for workers.

After protracted talks that put 340,000 UPS employees in danger of going on strike, the Teamsters union in July won a 48% average total wage rise for current part-time workers over the life of the five-year contract.

The 15,000 American Airlines pilots who are represented by the Allied Pilots Association successfully persuaded the airlines to raise pilot compensation by more than 46% over the course of four years in August.

However, some labor experts assert that the autoworkers may not have the same negotiating power to secure such a significant salary increase as UPS employees and pilots.

Many Americans used to favor the Big Three automakers as their primary option. But today’s market is inhabited by international automakers like Toyota and Volkswagen, who are unaffected by threats of strikes and are able to keep producing automobiles at a regular rate.

Harry Katz, a professor of collective bargaining at Cornell University, said of automakers’ capacity to move production to the non-union South or abroad: They don’t have exceptional leverage because there’s a lot of competition.

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