Faithful to his Friday appointment, the president of the United Auto Workers (UAW) union, Shawn Fain, has intervened through his social networks to announce the latest developments in the strike against the Big Three motor companies in the United States: General Motors (GM), Ford and Stellantis. When the strike is three weeks old, Fain has announced important progress in the negotiations and has given up on expanding the strike for now to more workers.
The UAW union has 146,000 members in these three groups in the United States, of which there are about 20,000 on strike. The union demands salary improvements, the elimination of the double salary scale and the guarantee of a fair transition towards electric cars. The companies are already offering increases of between 20% and 23% in four years and have made concessions on other key points, which vary from company to company, such as the possibility of calling strikes to avoid plant closures, including in sector agreements for power plant workers, soften the double salary scale and introduce adjustments for inflation.
Fain has defended his strike strategy as gradual, aggressive if necessary and strategic in its execution. “We are not here to start a fight, but to finish it,” he said this Friday. “Our strike is working, but we have not reached the goal yet,” he explained.
The strike is called Stand Up, an echo of the historic Sit Down strikes of the first half of the last century that are at the origin of the union. However, Fain has innovated his conflict management manual with a strategy of selective and gradual pressure. With it, on the one hand, he avoids quickly consuming the strike fund with which the union compensates workers who stop. On the other hand, it keeps companies in suspense, since they cannot plan their activity until the last moment. And, furthermore, this strategy has allowed it to reward and punish companies based on the negotiations.
For many workers in the sector, this is the first strike in decades. For the first time, furthermore, the UAW union has decided to hit the Big Three of Detroit at the same time. It is a conflict of workers trying to hold on to the middle class, from which they are expelled while companies achieve record profits and pay multimillion-dollar salaries to their top executives. It has come after years of loss of purchasing power due to high inflation and the concessions made by workers in the midst of the financial crisis, when the viability of large companies was compromised.
Inflation is exacerbating labor conflict in the country, which is experiencing a resurgence of the union movement after decades of decline. The last major strike that has been launched is in the health sector. More than 70,000 Kaiser Permanente workers have been called to a 72-hour protest in seven states to demand better conditions and benefits after the intense sacrifice that the pandemic demanded of them. This is the first negotiation of their collective agreement after the health crisis.
The motor strike began three weeks ago with the paralysis of a General Motors plant in Wentzville (Missouri), which manufactures the GMC Canyon and the Colorado; another from Ford in Wayne (Michigan), which assembles the Bronco model and the Ranger truck, and a third from Jeep, from Stellantis, in Toledo (Ohio), where the Gladiator and Wrangler models come from. In total, they employ about 14,000 workers.
Two weeks ago, Fain called about another 6,000 workers from 28 Stellantis and GM distribution centers spread across 20 states to stand down, saving Ford from burning for having shown greater willingness to negotiate.
On Friday of last week, the union leader called 7,000 additional UAW workers to strike at two plants: Ford’s in Chicago, Illinois, where the Explorer and Lincoln Aviator models are produced, and GM’s Lansing Delta. in Lansing (Michigan), which assembles the Buick Enclave and the Chevrolet Traverse. In that third round it was Stellantis that was saved from being affected by additional stoppages thanks to a last-minute offer.
Last week, striking workers received a historic visit from the President of the United States, Joe Biden, to a picket line at a General Motors facility in Belville, Michigan. “Stand firm,” he asked them, megaphone in hand, next to the union leader. This Thursday, White House spokesperson Karine Jean-Pierre also showed support for Kaiser Permanente workers: “They have the right to strike. And they have the right to negotiate collectively, which we have seen in multiple cases in recent months: when both sides come together in a good faith effort, everyone wins,” she said at the daily press conference.
“The president will always be proud of being the most pro-union president in history. He has said it. It is a label that the unions have put on it. And that’s because he’s done everything he can to make sure that union workers are respected and have dignity, and he’s going to continue to defend them. That is something you will never back down from,” he added.
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