The UAW will strike certain Detroit 3 plants starting early Friday without new agreements in place, President Shawn Fain said, but two of the automakers said they haven’t gotten responses from the union to their latest offers.
Fain, during a livestream Wednesday afternoon, called proposals giving raises of up to 20 percent insulting and said the union would begin announcing the first plants to be targeted by strikes at 10 p.m. EDT on Thursday — two hours before its current contracts expire. He has called the strategy, which the UAW has never used against all three automakers simultaneously, a “stand-up strike,” similar to the sit-down strikes in the early days of the union.
"The stand-up strike will keep the companies guessing," Fain said. "It's going to rely on discipline, organization and creativity. I do believe the beauty of the stand-up strike is that it provides us the maximum flexibility moving forward to have the most effective means of striking that we can put forth to get the best result for our membership."
Fain said a full-on strike against every plant also was still possible.