Countdown to UAW strike against the Big Three.
Shawn Fain, the first president of the United Auto Workers union directly elected by the rank and file membership, has threatened to strike any of the three companies that hasn’t reached an agreement by the time its contract with the union expires at 11:59 p.m. Eastern time Thursday.
On Friday, 150,000 UAW members could be on strike.
The UAW is demanding 40% general pay raises over four years, an end to wage tiers, restoration of pensions for new hires, cost-of-living increases, and more benefits. Fain claims auto workers are being exploited and unfairly compensated for their work, declaring the Big Three automakers’ “record profits deserve record contracts” for UAW members.
The Big Three made more than $20 billion in profits in the first half of 2023 alone. Their CEOs are financially compensated to the tune of tens of millions of dollars a year. Meanwhile, even the top-paid autoworkers earn less than six figures a year. Temporary workers start at only $17 an hour.
97% of the UAW membership voted for strike authorization.
An additional key issue centers on the transition to electric vehicles.
Some in the media have tried to paint the UAW as being opposed to green technology and EV.
It isn’t so.
The concern of auto workers and the union is that the Big Three will attempt to use EV technology to reduce the work force covered by union contracts, driving down the living standards of all autoworkers.
Most of EV battery and car production are in factories not covered by collective bargaining agreements.
The UAW is withholding a reelection endorsement for Biden until concerns about the auto industry’s transition to all-electric vehicles such as job security, pay and organizing are addressed, Fain has said.
“Our endorsements are going to be earned not freely given and the actions are going to dictate who we endorse,” Fain said again last week.
Fain has said he believes another Trump presidency “would be a disaster,” citing the need for the union to “get our members organized behind a pro-worker, pro-climate, and pro-democracy political program that can deliver for the working class.”
Last week, Fain said he was “shocked” to hear Biden say he was “not worried about a strike until it happens” and that he didn’t “think it’s going to happen.”
“He must know something we don’t know. Maybe the companies plan on walking in and giving us our demands on the night before.”
“I don’t know but he’s on the inside on something I don’t know about,” Fain told reporters during a Labor Day event in Detroit.