The president of United Auto Workers (UAW) said on Friday, September 22 that the union will expand its strike against major United States automakers by walking out of 38 General Motors and Stellantis plants in 20 American states.
Ford was spared additional strikes because the company has met some of the union’s demands during negotiations over the past week, said UAW president Shawn Fain.
The union is pointing to the companies’ huge recent profits as it seeks wage increases of 36% over four years. The companies have offered a little over half that amount. The UAW has other demands, including a 32-hour work week for 40 hours of pay and a restoration of traditional pension plans for newer workers.
The companies say they can’t afford to meet the union’s demands because they need to invest profits in a costly transition from gas-powered cars to electric vehicles .
The UAW’s contract with the automakers expired at midnight on September 14, and workers walked out of a Ford assembly plant near Detroit, a GM factory in Wentzville, Missouri, and a Jeep plant run by Stellantis in Toledo, Ohio. The initial strike has involved about 13,000 of the union’s 146,000 members.
The impact is not yet being felt on car lots around the US, and it will probably take a few weeks before the strike causes a significant shortage of new vehicles, according to analysts. Prices could rise sooner however, if the prospect of a prolonged strike triggers panic buying.
Friday’s decision is a crucial one for Fain, who won a close election in March to unseat the previous UAW president. He has followed an unusual strategy of negotiating simultaneously with all three of Detroit’s big carmakers.
In contrast, Unifor, which represents Canadian auto workers, chose a more traditional approach: it picked a target company last month, Ford, and announced a tentative agreement this week, just hours before a strike deadline. If the deal is ratified, Unifor expects that GM and Stellantis will agree to similar contracts for Canadian workers.