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<\/figure>\n\n\n\nIt was the first time in the union\u2019s 88-year history that it walked out on all three companies simultaneously as four-year contracts with the companies expired at 11:59 p.m. Thursday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The strikes\u00a0will likely chart the future of the union and of America\u2019s homegrown auto industry<\/strong>\u00a0at a time when U.S. labor is flexing its might and the companies face a historic transition from building internal combustion automobiles to making electric vehicles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If they last a long time, dealers could run short of vehicles and prices could rise. The walkout could even be a factor in next year\u2019s presidential election by testing Joe Biden\u2019s proud claim to be the most union-friendly president in American history.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWorkers all over the world are watching this,\u201d said Liz Shuler, president of the AFL-CIO, a federation of 60 unions with 12.5 million members.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The strike is far different from those during previous UAW negotiations. Instead of going after one company, led by its pugnacious new president, Shawn Fain, the union is striking at all three. But not all of the 146,000 UAW members at company plants are walking picket lines, at least not yet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Instead, the UAW targeted a handful of factories<\/strong> to prod company negotiators to raise their offers, which were far lower than union demands of 36% wage increases over four years. GM and Ford offered 20% and Stellantis, formerly Fiat Chrysler, offered 17.5%.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Outside the Ford plant in suburban Detroit, worker Britney Johnson, 35, who has worked for the company about 3 1\/2 years and has yet to reach top union wages, said she\u2019d like higher pay, the return of pensions, and cost of living increases. \u201cI like the job. It\u2019s just that we deserve more,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n She joined about 400 workers on the picket line outside the plant.<\/p>\n\n\n\n At the Toledo Jeep plant, assembly line worker Candace Bowles, 52, said it felt \u201cstrange\u201d to walk off the job. \u201cI didn\u2019t want to have to do it, but got to do it,\u201d said Bowles. <\/p>\n\n\n\n As the deadline approached, she cleaned up her workstation and walked out when the midnight bell rang. \u201cI\u2019m really happy that everyone stood together,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The limited strikes will help to preserve the union\u2019s $825 million strike fund, which would run dry in about 11 weeks if all workers walked out. But Fain said more plants could be added if the companies don\u2019t make better offers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Even Fain has called the union\u2019s demands audacious, but he maintains the automakers are raking in billions and can afford them. He scoffed at company statements that costly settlements would force them to raise vehicle prices, saying labor accounts for only 4% to 5% of vehicle costs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThey could double our raises and not raise car prices and still make millions of dollars in profits,\u201d Fain said. \u201cWe\u2019re not the problem. Corporate greed is the problem.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n The strikes capped a day of both sides griping that the other had not budged enough from their initial positions<\/strong>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n In addition to general wage increases, the union is seeking restoration of cost-of-living pay raises, an end to varying tiers of wages for factory jobs, a 32-hour week with 40 hours of pay, the restoration of traditional defined-benefit pensions for new hires who now receive only 401(k)-style retirement plans, pension increases for retirees and other items. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Starting in 2007, workers gave up cost-of-living raises and defined benefit pensions for new hires. Wage tiers were created as the UAW tried to help the companies avoid financial trouble ahead of and during the Great Recession. Even so, only Ford avoided government-funded bankruptcy protection.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Many say it\u2019s time to get the concessions back because the companies are making huge profits and CEOs are raking in millions. They also want to make sure the union represents workers at joint-venture electric vehicle battery factories<\/strong> that the companies are building so workers have jobs making vehicles of the future. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Top-scale assembly plant workers make about $32 per hour, plus large annual profit-sharing checks. Ford said average annual pay including overtime and bonuses was $78,000 last year. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The Ford plant that\u2019s on strike employs about 3,300 workers, and it makes Bronco SUVs and Ranger midsize pickup trucks. The Toledo Jeep complex has about 5,800 workers and manufactures the Jeep Wrangler SUV and Gladiator pickup. GM\u2019s Wentzville plant has about 3,600 workers and makes the GMC Canyon and Chevrolet Colorado midsize pickups, as well as the GMC Savana and Chevrolet Express full-size vans.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The union didn\u2019t go after the companies\u2019 big cash cows, which are full-size pickup trucks and big SUVs, and went more for plants that make vehicles with lower profit margins, said Marick Masters, a business professor at Wayne State University in Detroit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThey want to give the companies some space without putting them up against the wall,\u201d Masters said. \u201cThey\u2019re not putting them right into the corner. You put an animal in the corner and it\u2019s dangerous.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Automakers say they\u2019re facing unprecedented demands as they develop and build new electric vehicles while at the same time making gas-powered cars, SUVs and trucks to pay the bills. They\u2019re worried labor costs will rise so much that they\u2019ll have to price their cars above those sold by foreign automakers with U.S. factories. <\/p>\n\n\n\n GM CEO Mary Barra told workers in a letter Thursday that the company is offering historic wage increases and new vehicle commitments at U.S. factories. GM\u2019s offer, she wrote, \u201caddresses what you\u2019ve told us is most important to you, in spite of the heated rhetoric from UAW leadership.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n On CNBC Thursday, Ford CEO Farley said if Ford had agreed to the union\u2019s demands, it would have lost $15 billion during the last decade and gone bankrupt. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Under the UAW strategy, workers who go on strike would live on $500 per week in strike pay from the union, while others would stay on the job at full pay. It\u2019s unlikely the companies would lock the remaining workers out of their factories because they want to keep building vehicles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It\u2019s tough to say just how long it will take for the strikes to cut inventories at dealers and start hurting the companies\u2019 bottom lines.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Jeff Schuster, head of automotive for the Global Data research firm, said Stellantis has the most inventory and could hold out longer. The company has enough vehicles at or en route to dealers to last for 75 days. Ford has a 62-day supply and GM has 51. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Still, Schuster predicted the strikes could last longer than previous work stoppages such as a 40-day strike against GM in 2019. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThis one feels like there\u2019s a lot more at risk here on both sides,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" About 13,000 U.S. auto workers stopped making vehicles and went on strike Friday after their leaders couldn\u2019t bridge a giant gap between union demands in contract talks and what Detroit\u2019s three automakers are willing to pay. Members of the United Auto Workers union began picketing at a General Motors assembly plant in Wentzville, Missouri, a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":37799,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_post_source_name":"","_post_source_url":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[8299,8491,5178,8173,13175,5520,7331,8580,6672,5262,7396,12326,10600,9309,911,11365,6397,9643,3577,5491,5861,9739,8380,10601,2264,7407,2471,5525,9974,10634,11128,3334,9683,735,8000,9534,11973,6558,10302,3805,11377,1776,12103,10390,10313,6069,8443,5807,5470,5818,5611,11599,7231,10698,9262,214,6348,10333,10415,36,594],"class_list":["post-37795","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world-news","tag-animal","tag-bankruptcy","tag-biden","tag-bridge","tag-car","tag-cars","tag-cash","tag-colorado","tag-cost-of-living","tag-cut","tag-data","tag-decade","tag-detroit","tag-dollars","tag-election","tag-factory","tag-ford","tag-fund","tag-future","tag-gas","tag-general-motors","tag-gladiator","tag-gm","tag-gmc","tag-government","tag-jobs","tag-joe-biden","tag-labor","tag-leadership","tag-lost","tag-masters","tag-michigan","tag-millions","tag-missouri","tag-negotiations","tag-ohio","tag-one","tag-pension","tag-plant","tag-president","tag-presidential","tag-presidential-election","tag-price","tag-prices","tag-professor","tag-recession","tag-retirement","tag-risk","tag-space","tag-strike","tag-suv","tag-toledo","tag-union","tag-united-auto-workers","tag-united-states","tag-university","tag-us","tag-wages","tag-work","tag-world","tag-who"],"blocksy_meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37795","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37795"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37795\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":37800,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37795\/revisions\/37800"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/37799"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37795"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37795"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37795"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/pub\/2023\/09\/IMG_3142-1024x664.webp\")
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