United Auto Workers Members March In Detroit Labor Day Parade

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UAW strike continues, in Wayne, Michigan

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United Auto Workers Hold Limited Strikes As Contract Negotiations Expire

UAW Layoffs

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US President Joe Biden  contract negotiations United Auto Workers and Big 3 auto companies

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United Auto Workers Union Holds Practice Picket As Strike Looms

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FILE PHOTO: United Auto Workers President Shawn Fain greets UAW autoworkers to mark the beginning of contract negotiations in Sterling Heights

FILE PHOTO: UAW President Shawn Fain chairs the 2023 Special Elections Collective Bargaining Convention

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FILE PHOTO: U.S. President Biden visits the Detroit Auto Show in Detroit, Michigan

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The United Auto Workers union is poised to launch a historic strike against all three of Detroit’s biggest automakers at midnight, when labor contracts expire, mounting one of the biggest challenges to corporate America amid a<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2023/09/14/uaw-strike-labor-movement/" target=_blank> season of fresh labor activism.</a>

The strikes would come as the union and the Big Three — General Motors, Ford and Jeep maker Stellantis — remain far apart on wages, benefits and worker schedules after weeks of acrimonious talks. The union is demanding a wage increase of 36 percent over four years, while the carmakers have boosted their offers to between 17.5 percent and 20 percent over 4½ years.

The union’s president, Shawn Fain, has called those offers inadequate after years of sharp inflation and fat corporate profits and executive pay.

On Thursday night, Fain said the strike will begin at a Ford plant in Wayne, Mich., that produces Rangers and Broncos, a GM plant in Wentzville, Mo., that makes Chevy trucks and vans and a Stellantis plant in Toledo, Ohio, that produces Jeep Wranglers, unless there is some breakthrough in talks before the contracts expire.

“UAW family, that deadline is nearly here. Tonight for the first time in our history, we will strike all three of the big three at once,” Fain said in a Facebook Live address at 10 p.m. Thursday.

Fain has said the union would initially strike at “a limited number of targeted locations” at each company and broaden the strike if talks remain unsuccessful. It would be the first time the union launched a strike on all three companies at the same time, albeit in a limited capacity. The last national auto strike was against General Motors in 2019.

Alarmed by the possibility of a broad work stoppage in an industry that makes up about 3 percent of the nation’s gross domestic product, the White House is urging all sides to come to a deal. <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/elections/candidates/joe-biden-2024/" target="_blank" class="contextual_link">President Biden</a> spoke with Fain and the executives of the auto companies on Thursday, a White House spokesman said. The White House is also preparing economic measures to protect suppliers to the auto industry from long-term damage, concerned that they will be particularly vulnerable in any strike, according to three people aware of internal conversations who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private deliberations.

What are the UAW strike demands? Here are issues amid negotiations

The automakers have stressed that they are striving to negotiate a fair deal, with bigger wage hikes than they have offered in years. But they have said they can’t meet all of the union’s demands and still remain viable. Those demands include a 32-hour workweek, defined-benefit pensions for all workers instead of 401(k) accounts, and company-financed health care in retirement.

Ford chief executive Jim Farley on Thursday said that had the company provided such a package to its workers over the past four years, it would have racked up losses of $15 billion and “gone bankrupt by now.”

“There is no way we can be sustainable as a company” under these terms, Farley told <a href="https://twitter.com/CNBCOvertime/status/1702421619413807142" target=_blank>CNBC</a>. “You want us to choose bankruptcy over supporting our workers? Here’s our proposal — let’s work through this.” Farley this week also accused the union of staging “PR events” and failing to respond to Ford’s latest offer. (The union is planning a rally with Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) in Detroit on Friday.)

FILE PHOTO: "UAW on strike" picket signs lay on a pile of wood outside the General Motors Detroit-Hamtramck Assembly in Hamtramck

The United Auto Workers union <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2023/09/15/uaw-strike-updates/" target=_blank>went on a historic strike o</a>n Sept. 15 against all three of Detroit’s biggest automakers.

The strike widened to <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2023/09/15/uaw-strike-map-michigan-ohio-missouri/" target=_blank>38 Stellantis and GM parts distribution centers</a> in late September. <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2023/09/15/uaw-strike-updates/">Here are key demands the UAW is making</a> and <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2023/09/15/uaw-workers-striking/" target=_blank>why workers say they’re striking</a>.

This year has already been one of the biggest years for strikes in recent history. More than 353,000 workers in the United States have walked off the job to demand higher wages, according to Bloomberg Law’s database of work stoppages. That includes 180,000 Hollywood actors and screenwriters who have been on strike for months, the largest work stoppage since 1997.

Impending UAW strike caps off hot labor summer

At the UAW, striking workers will stop receiving wages from the companies and get paid $500 a week out of the UAW’s strike fund instead. Ford officials on Thursday cautioned that workers in nonstriking plants will also be hurt if a location that lacks parts from striking plants is forced to halt production. In that case, many of those workers will be sent on temporary unemployment, in line with Ford’s usual policy when plants are idled over a lack of parts, said the officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the negotiations.

GM Chair and CEO Mary Barra on Thursday said the company had boosted its wage raise offer to 20 percent over the life of the contract with the aim of avoiding a strike. Full-time UAW workers today earn between $18 and $32 an hour.

“We’re at a crossroads on our path to building a company that can sustain all of us for decades to come,” she wrote in a letter to employees. “Today, we put a compelling and unprecedented economic package on the table that reflects the significance of this critical moment.” She added that “nobody won” after the UAW strike against GM in 2019.

Fain said workers at all Ford, General Motors and Stellantis facilities should be ready to strike at a moment’s notice if called upon. That will keep the companies guessing about which factories could be hit, he said.

The UAW strike could be a tipping point for the U.S. labor movement

“This is going to create confusion for the companies. It’s going to keep them guessing on what might happen next, and it’s going to turbocharge the power of our negotiators,” Fain said in his Facebook Live address.

The UAW’s 150,000 automotive members produce nearly half of the light vehicles manufactured in the United States, according to analytics firm GlobalData.

A strike that significantly hurts auto production would quickly ripple out to affect suppliers and other businesses in auto manufacturing communities. As auto factories shut down, those businesses would stop ordering parts. Many auto parts suppliers are still trying to recover from long shutdowns during the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/coronavirus/" target="_blank" class="contextual_link">coronavirus</a> pandemic and would be clobbered by another disruption, analysts say.

While the Biden administration is not expected to intervene in a strike, Biden aides are worried that a protracted walkout could wipe out the thousands of suppliers that depend on business from the three key automakers, said the people familiar with the discussions. Widespread failure of these smaller supplier firms — which number as many as 5,600 — could impede the broader U.S. auto supply chain even after the possible strike ends, according to the people.

It is unclear what form the aid would take, but one option would be for the Labor Department to provide grants to assist workers at firms affected by a strike, two of the people said. Another option could be for the Small Business Administration to provide favorable loans to these firms. The discussions about these measures are preliminary, and talks remain fluid.

“The administration wants to be sure to do what it can to protect the Detroit supply chains,” one administration ally said. This person also spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private conversations. “They have to worry about how some of the less well-capitalized firms could be at risk.”

A White House spokeswoman declined to comment on any internal planning.

“If there is a strike, the impact will be felt much more quickly than people realize, and I am worried about those consequences,” said Rep. Debbie Dingell (D-Mich.). “For a lot of the suppliers, their profit margins are not very big. A strike will have real economic consequences very quickly, and we cannot leave the workers behind.”

Stellantis on Wednesday said it was “still awaiting the UAW’s response to the offer we presented yesterday.” It added: “Our focus remains on bargaining in good faith to have a tentative agreement on the table before the collective bargaining agreement expires.”

Fain is a <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2023/08/18/united-auto-workers-strike-vote-deadline/" target=_blank>fiery leader</a> who won the UAW presidency by convincing members that the union had been too complacent and cozy with industry for too long. He has made bigger demands in these contract talks than the union has attempted in decades.

The automakers haven’t agreed to many of those demands but have made other concessions. All three companies are offering to allow workers to progress to the highest wage level at a faster rate than in the past.

They’ve also made concessions on <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2023/08/31/uaw-strike-temporary-workers-big-three-automakers/" target=_blank>temporary workers</a>, who make far less than full-time workers do and often get stuck in temp status for years. Ford is proposing converting all of its current temporary workers to full-time status after 90 days of work, while GM and Stellantis are offering an immediate 20 percent raise over temps’ starting wage, to $20 an hour.

The automakers have argued that a big hike in their labor costs, or a prolonged shutdown, would undermine their efforts to scale up production of electric vehicles, a major undertaking that is costing the global auto industry tens of billions of dollars.

It’s been a busy summer for the labor movement. In July, 340,000 UPS employees <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2023/07/25/ups-strike-deal-teamsters/?itid=lk_inline_manual_16" target=_blank>negotiated </a>one of the strongest contracts in <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2023/08/20/ups-strike-deal-facts-teamsters/?itid=lk_inline_manual_16" target=_blank>UPS history</a>, which included a promise to abolish a two-tiered pay system for delivery drivers. Citing the UPS contract, the UAW is also demanding an end to a two-tiered system that pays newer employees worse than veteran employees.

“There is a contagion factor here,” said Eric Blanc, professor of labor studies at Rutgers University. “When workers see other workers fight back and win, that tends to spread, and spread quickly. Autoworkers are looking at [UPS employees] who were able to win a great contract just by threatening to go on strike. They also see Hollywood actors who have gone out en masse.”

Workers all over the country have fought for better wages that have not kept up with inflation for workers across industries. Consumer prices have jumped by 20 percent since the UAW signed its last contract in 2019, and starting wages at the Big Three are about $10 lower than what they would be had they kept up with inflation since 2007, the UAW said.

Finalist for a 2016 Pulitzer Prize as part of a WSJ team

National Institute for Health Care Management print award, 2017

Association of Health Care Journalists first-place award, 2015

Newswomen's Club of New York award, 2017

Cornell University, BA in English

Jeanne Whalen is a reporter covering business around the world. She previously reported for the Wall Street Journal from New York, London and Moscow. 

Jeanne Whalen

New York State Associated Press Young Journalist of the Year

Cornell University, BA in history

Jeff Stein is the White House economics reporter for The Washington Post. He was a crime reporter for the Syracuse Post-Standard and, in 2014, founded the local news nonprofit the Ithaca Voice in Upstate New York. He was also a reporter for Vox.

Jeff Stein

Newswomen’s Club of New York's Best New Journalist Award, 2021

Sidney Hillman Foundation's Sidney Award, 2021

University of Chicago, BA in Comparative Literature

New York University, MA in Journalism and Latin American Studies

Lauren Kaori Gurley is the labor reporter for The Washington Post. She previously covered labor and tech for Vice's Motherboard. 

Lauren Kaori Gurley

UAW expected to strike tonight against Detroit automakers if deal isn’t reached

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