Members of the United Auto Workers voted overwhelmingly on Friday to authorize a strike at the so-called Detroit Three automakers — Ford, General Motors and Stellantis — if those companies fail to offer a competitive contract by the current contract’s expiration on Sept. 14.
The strike authorization is the latest in a series of high-profile industrial action in the United States over the past year, including ongoing strikes by SAG-AFTRA and Writer’s Guild of America, a strike authorization by UPS that resulted in a fair contract, and a threatened strike authorization by the strike US railroad was thwarted by the government in December. While all of these measures point to a more visible presence of workers in the economy, the UAW’s strike authorization — similar to the SAG-AFTRA and WGA strikes — is about more than only the conditions under which workers perform their duties. What the UAW also wants is a say in what the industry will look like as technological developments like the shift to electric vehicles transform it.
The UAW represents about 150,000 workers from the three companies — 97 percent of whom voted to authorize the strike. Shawn Fain, the UAW president, indicated that the union would not extend September 14 Deadline for ratification of a new four-year treaty. Union talks with automakers began in July, according to Portal, but progress has been slow since then, Fain said. “We have many options that we are looking at, but a contract extension is not one of them.”
Fain and the UAW are demanding a series of wage increases and improved or reinstated benefits that would offset the labor concessions of the past few decades and eliminate the two-tier labor system that has existed at Detroit Three plants since 2007.
U.S. unions enjoyed power and popular support well into the 1970s and 1980s, when a combination of a series of corruption scandals and the Reagan administration’s 1981 crackdown on the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization (PATCO) strike Collective bargaining weakened significantly. Globalization, particularly after the enactment of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in the 1990s, also weakened workers’ power, as companies could – and did – relocate their operations to countries where labor was cheaper, and so did entire industries and parts of the country decimated.
This has led to low wages despite high inflation and a fall in social benefits such as pensions even as the cost of living increases. And in 2023, companies can now use the specter of artificial intelligence and automation as bargaining chips against the future of workers.
The UAW’s proposed treaty aims to clean up the past
Like all union contracts, the UAW contract is extremely ambitious; Unions go into negotiations knowing that they will have to compromise on some elements of their demands and aim high. In the case of the UAW, as in other striking industries, the collective bargaining agreements aim to regain lost ground and protect workers for the future.
“We’re fed up,” Fain told Portal. “We held back for decades while these companies continued to take and take and take us.”
Real wage growth, which represents actual purchasing power, has stagnated since the 1980s, only reaching 1983 levels during the Covid-19 pandemic. Overall, wages have not risen at the same rate as the cost of living, with 401(k) plans replacing pension benefits and put more pressure on workers to save for retirement – despite a boom in worker productivity over the past 50 years.
US Bureau of Labor Statistics
The UAW is striking to reverse some of these changes include a requirement for a defined benefit pension in his contract and restore the health insurance program for retirees. The union is also demanding a 46 percent wage increase over the contract period to keep up with the rising cost of living, and the reintroduction of a cost-of-living allowance, which was abolished in 2009 after the auto industry bailout. With major automakers teetering on the brink of bankruptcy, the UAW, at the behest of the federal government, renegotiated its contract.
But a key reason for the strike is actually a two-tier wage system first introduced in the 2007 UAW treaty; Previously hired workers belong to the first tier and start at about $28 an hour, while second-tier workers start at $16 to $19 an hour — a rate that has barely increased over the past decade. The second-class working class grows as first-class workers retire and are replaced by new second-class workers, ultimately leading to a decline in wages for a growing number of workers—including them are increasingly making up UAW membership.
A UAW strike would have serious repercussions for the auto industry – and for workers as a whole
There are several reasons why work has become more visible in recent years and workers seem increasingly willing to demand more from their employers. That doesn’t necessarily mean the US is in a new labor force era, and even that phrase doesn’t mean what it did in the first half of the 20th century.
Amazon’s Chris Smalls was a visible figure demanding the right to unionize and better conditions for his colleagues, and the combined SAG-AFTRA and WGA strikes were highly visible because they targeted the entertainment industry and people’s favorite TV shows and films People have been put on hold until studios and unions can agree on fair contracts — including using generative AI to write and shoot movies and TV shows.
Likewise, the UAW strike is not just about raising individual living standards, but also the prospect of the impact technology could have on jobs in the sector. As the industry transitions from internal combustion engines to battery-powered electric cars, fewer multi-skill workers will be needed in manufacturing, Peter Berg, a professor of industrial relations at Michigan State University, told Michigan State University Today.
If the strike action does go ahead – and Berg told Vox in an interview he expects it will in some form – it could cost any company up to $500 billion, according to Deutsche Bank analyst Emmanuel Rosner. dollars a week work stoppage cost.
It is the right time for workers to recoup the losses of the last few decades and gain protection and benefits for the future. There is a tight labor market, an aging workforce, high consumer demand, and political and public support for unions. “These strikes by the unions [are saying]”Okay, we need to renegotiate the fundamentals of how work gets done,” Berg said, and “use their power to redefine working conditions for the future.”
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