The union strategy has been changed, with a new Friday deadline for the strike
The United Auto Workers’ Strikes: “The End is Near,” Fain said in a Facebook Live Social Media Post on Monday, September 22
As autoworkers enter a fifth day of strikes at plants in Missouri, Michigan and Ohio, United Auto Workers President Shawn Fain has set a new deadline in the contract talks.
“If we don’t make serious progress by noon on Friday, September 22nd, more locals will be called on to stand up and join the strike,” he announced in a video posted to Facebook Monday night, while not revealing which plants or how many would be called on next.
The auto companies normally give some pay to workers who are temporarily laid off because of production disruptions, to supplement unemployment. They aren’t doing that in the case of the strike. The union says it will pay affected workers out of the strike fund, whether or not they are technically on strike or laid off.
“We are far from there, and if the company doesn’t respect the demands of our workers, we will escalate action,” he said.
Labor historians see the deployment of this new strategy as a reflection of newfound militancy at the UAW under Fain’s leadership, but also some sharp and strategic thinking about how to put pressure on companies while maintaining flexibility and limiting fallout.
According to professor of history at the University of Rhode Island, the goal of the UAW isn’t to bring down Ford, GM and Chrysler. That’s not what the point is. The point is to get a good deal for them.
It’s too early to say whether the strategy will work or not, but the unions seem to have an advantage with companies having to figure out which parts of their supply chain might be hit next.
There have been effects on non-striking workers. 600 workers at Ford were laid off Friday because they needed to use materials that the paint department was on strike for.
General Motors has temporarily laid off most of the approximately 2,000 unionized workers at its Fairfax assembly plant in Kansas as a result of the ongoing UAW strikes.
The union may eventually send striking workers back to their jobs while others are brought out if it burns through its strike fund too quickly.
Fain’s View of Automakers: Implications for the Fairfax Assembly Plant and for the Future of the Motor Cosmic Automobile Industry
While there doesn’t appear to be a big breakthrough in the negotiations so far, Fain has emphasized that the talks have not broken down, as President Biden suggested last week.
Sharon Block is the executive director of the Center for Labor and a Just Economy at Harvard Law School.
But automakers have warned a strike threatens to make them uncompetitive against rivals, especially as the companies spend billions of dollars to transition to electric vehicles.
“If the Big Three decide to lay people off who aren’t on strike, that’s them trying to put the squeeze on our members to settle for less,” UAW President Shawn Fain said this past weekend, responding to GM’s announcement of the coming layoffs.
The effect of the assembly plant shutdowns are smaller than engine plant strikes could have on the company.
GM said it was forced to idle most of the Fairfax assembly plant because it relies on metal parts produced at the striking GM plant in Wentzville, Missouri. The Fairfax plant assembles the Cadillac XT4 and Chevrolet Malibu.
More than a thousand Ford employees have been sent home from Wayne, Mich., and more than a hundred are likely to be laid off in the near future.
