True to his appointment on Friday, the president of the United Auto Workers (UAW) union, Shawn Fain, intervened through his social networks to announce the latest developments in the strike against the three major automobile companies in the United States: General Motors (GM ) , Ford and Stellantis. Now that the strike is three weeks old, Fain has announced important progress in the negotiations and has given up on extending the strike to other employees for the time being.
The UAW union has 146,000 members in these three groups in the USA, of which around 20,000 are on strike. The union is calling for salary improvements, the abolition of the double pay scale and ensuring a fair transition to electric cars. The companies are already offering increases of between 20% and 23% in four years and have made concessions on other key points that vary from company to company, such as the ability to call strikes to avoid factory closures, including in sector agreements for electricity factory workers , relax the double wage scale and introduce adjustments for inflation.
Fain has defended his attack strategy as gradual, aggressive when necessary, and strategic in its implementation. “We are not here to start a fight, but to end it,” he said this Friday. “Our strike is working, but we have not achieved the goal yet,” he explained.
The strike is called “Stand Up” and is reminiscent of the historic sit-down strikes of the first half of the last century that formed the origins of the union. However, Fain has renewed his conflict management manual with a strategy of selective and gradual pressure. On the one hand, this prevents the strike fund, which the union uses to compensate workers who quit, from being quickly used up. On the other hand, it keeps companies busy because they cannot plan their activities until the last moment. Additionally, this strategy allowed companies to be rewarded and punished based on the negotiations.
For many workers in the industry, this is the first strike in decades. In addition, for the first time, the UAW union has decided to take simultaneous action against Detroit’s Big Three. It is a conflict between workers trying to hold on to the middle class from which they are being pushed out while companies make record profits and pay their top managers multimillion-dollar salaries. This came after years of loss of purchasing power due to high inflation and worker concessions during the financial crisis, when the profitability of large companies was threatened.
Inflation is exacerbating labor tensions in the country, which is experiencing a resurgence of trade unionism after decades of decline. The latest major strike to be launched is in the healthcare sector. More than 70,000 Kaiser Permanente workers were called to a 72-hour protest across seven states to demand better conditions and benefits after the pandemic took great toll on them. This is the first negotiation of their collective agreement after the health crisis.
The motor strike began three weeks ago with the closure of a General Motors plant in Wentzville, Missouri, that makes the GMC Canyon and the Colorado; another from Ford in Wayne, Michigan, where the Bronco model and the Ranger truck are assembled, and a third from Jeep, from Stellantis, in Toledo, Ohio, where the Gladiator and Wrangler models come from. In total they employ around 14,000 people.
Two weeks ago, Fain called on about 6,000 more workers from 28 Stellantis and GM distribution centers in 20 states to resign, saving Ford from burning because it had shown greater willingness to negotiate.
On Friday last week, the union leader called for 7,000 additional UAW workers to strike at two plants: Ford in Chicago, Illinois, which makes the Explorer and Lincoln Aviator models, and GM Lansing Delta. in Lansing (Michigan), which assembles the models Buick Enclave and the Chevrolet Traverse. In this third round, it was Stellantis that was saved from further disruption thanks to a last-minute offer.
Last week, striking workers received a historic visit from United States President Joe Biden at a picket line at a General Motors plant in Belville, Michigan. “Stay firm,” he urged them with the megaphone in his hand next to the union leader. This Thursday, White House spokeswoman Karine Jean-Pierre also showed her support for Kaiser Permanente workers: “You have the right to strike. And they have the right to negotiate together, which we have seen several times in recent months: when both parties work together in good faith, everyone wins,” he said at the daily press conference.
“The president will always be proud of being the most pro-union president in history. He said it. It is a label that the unions have applied. And that’s because he has done everything in his power to ensure that union members are respected and have their dignity, and he will continue to defend them. “This is something he will never back down from,” he added.
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