The United Auto Workers, the labor union that represents car assembly workers for Ford,
General Motors, and Stellantis, ended its strike barely a week ago, having finally reached a tentative agreement with General Motors on October 30. In the process, the UAW got something unions almost never get: exactly what it asked for. At the outset of the strike, the UAW, spearheaded by firebrand new president Shawn Fain, demanded a 46% increase in wages, a four-day workweek that includes overtime past 32 hours, strengthened worker protection from factory shutdowns, and especially the abolition of employment tiers – a system that split auto employees and their pay based on seniority. Fain considers these significant wage increases, more than any other union would normally demand, fair recompense for the auto companies’ failure to account for inflation and losses that occurred during the 2007-2008 financial crisis.
Credit: KWCH
The strike began in earnest on September 15 of this year, bouncing cleverly between isolated auto plants or companies to protect workers and keep executives on their toes, but its seeds first germinated during March, when Shawn Fain entered office and immediately expressed his intentions to make significant renegotiations to auto workers’ contracts.
Those negotiations started up in June, growing heated when Fain threw Stellantis’ first offered contract, the details of which were not released to the public, in the trash. He proposed a strike vote a month later, which passed with 97% support. Approximately 13,000 workers marched on the picket line outside the most profitable factories in the US on September 15. A day later, Bernie Sanders joined them.
The auto companies laid off several hundred workers in the next week, which was likely not retaliatory. Fain expanded the strike to encompass distribution centers. The number of plants included in the strike exploded, covering most of the country and halting a 3.5 billion dollar Ford project. Automakers continued to offer revised contracts, all of which Shawn Fain rejected. Joe Biden visited the picket line, making him the first president in history to do so. Donald Trump imitated him a few days later.
The UAW continued to target high-value factories, hitting the crowning jewels of Stellaris and Ford with pinpoint precision. The deal with Ford came less than a week later, presaging the collapse of the automakers’ resolve. They all aquisitioned to Fain’s admittedly significant demands, though at great cost.
The UAW’s 46% pay increase is meant to unfold over four years but includes an immediate 20% increase to all auto worker wages. Meanwhile, the strike itself has cost the manufacturers millions of dollars in lost revenue, which is slowly being made up. Healthcare, retirement, and other new expenditures will only increase the price of the UAW’s great victory. For the Big Three automakers, competition with electric vehicle companies like Tesla is now much harder, the yoke of reasonable contracts and appropriate wages falling exclusively on their broad shoulders. Internal company economists project a consequent rise in prices, moving the cost onto consumers.
Despite its nearly unprecedented success, the UAW doesn’t plan to stop. Its new contracts are set to expire on April 30, 2028, after which Fain plans to initiate another strike, possibly in conjunction with other unions. However, American labor laws prohibit sympathetic strikes, in which one union strikes to support another, in addition to political strikes, in which a union strikes as a form of political protest. There is only so much power American unions are allowed to exercise, and Fain seemingly wishes to go past that limit.
But Fain isn’t wary of the limitations of labor power, now is he unwilling to challenge precedent. He is the first UAW president to be elected by its membership, and the first not to shake the hands of the bosses prior to contract renegotiation. He has accomplished more in his short tenure than almost any UAW leader before him, determined to achieve better conditions for workers as well as address internal issues within the union.
Other union organizers, feeling the pressures of inflation and rising cost of living, can only watch him rise with cautious optimism, hoping the former electrician and current firebrand doesn’t crash and burn.