UAW adds Stellantis' Ram 1500 plant to strike; 6,800 more workers join pickets in Mich.; company 'outraged'

The UAW on Monday ordered 6,800 members to strike at Stellantis' largest assembly plant, halting output of the automaker's profitable Ram 1500 pickup.

"Stellantis has the worst proposal on the table regarding wage progression, temporary worker pay and conversion to full-time, cost-of-living adjustments (COLA), and more," the union said in a statement.

The Sterling Heights Assembly Plant north of Detroit is Stellantis' only source of the current-generation Ram 1500.

The abrupt move is the UAW's first expansion of the strike since Oct. 11, when it added Ford Motor Co.'s Kentucky Truck Plant. That plant builds Super Duty pickups as well as the Ford Expedition and Lincoln Navigator large SUVs.

More than 40,000 UAW workers are now on strike.

“We’ve had talks through the weekends,” UAW President Shawn Fain told WXYZ Channel 7 in Detroit. “We just felt like it was time to turn it up.”

“They know where we need to be,” Fain said. “We can get there. We can get a deal done this week. But the company’s got to get serious and get down to business.”

Stellantis issued a blistering response.

"We are outraged that the UAW has chosen to expand its strike action against Stellantis ... The UAW’s continued disturbing strategy of 'wounding' all the Detroit 3 will have long-lasting consequences," the company said. "With every decision to strike, the UAW sacrifices domestic market share to non-union competition. These actions not only decrease our market share, but also impact our profitability and therefore, our ability to compete, invest and preserve the record profit sharing payments our employees have enjoyed over the past two years."

Rickey Lawrence, a strike captain and steward at the Sterling Heights plant, said halting 1500 output is going to shake the company. He said Fain “hit them hard” by going after the company’s “bread and butter.”

Lawrence said he knew the plant would get chosen eventually. He just wants the strike to be over with, especially with the holidays coming up.

He was expecting the pickup plant to get called on earlier.

“We actually thought we were going be the first one,” Lawrence said. “It shocked us that it was Toledo, but Fain had his own strategy. We follow him. I support what he's doing 100 percent.”

Sheushea Anderson, who’s been at the Sterling Heights plant for 13 years, said the 23 percent wage increase that Stellantis proposed is the “least they can do.”

Anderson doesn’t see the strike lasting much longer now that Sterling Heights workers are on the picket line.

Anderson assumed the 1500 plant was going to be the first Stellantis site chosen to strike, but she said Fain is playing chess with the strike choices, not checkers.

“I think they were just being hopeful, too, meaning if we do a little bit, then [Stellantis will] see that we mean business, especially with them doing all three at the same time, as opposed to the way they used to do it back in the day [with] one at a time,” Anderson said.

Byron Ray thought the union was making sufficient progress with Stellantis after seeing Fain’s address last Thursday, so he was surprised to see the strike expand.

Ray, a steward at the plant, said he’s happy with the 23 percent wage bump that’s on the table.

“If [Fain] says he can give us a little more, he thinks there's more on the table for us to get,” Ray said. “Not trying to be greedy… They're in negotiations, we aren’t, so I’m going to stick it out with him.”

Fain on Monday morning met workers at the Sterling Heights plant as they left, shaking hands and handing out picket signs, according to a union post on X, the social media site formerly known as Twitter.

In going after the Sterling Heights plant, Fain is pressuring CEO Carlos Tavares, who has transformed the underdog of Detroit to the most profitable by tightly managing costs. About 12 percent of the company’s production work force is made up of lower-paid temporary workers, the highest proportion of the Detroit 3 and a labor cost advantage.

Going into the negotiations, Stellantis, which was formed from the 2021 merger of Fiat Chrysler and France’s PSA Group, pushed to expand its pool of temporary workers to help navigate the transition to electric vehicles. Tavares says EVs will cost 40 percent more to make than internal combustion cars — a burden he can’t pass to consumers.

Wells Fargo analyst Colin Langan estimated that production losses at the truck plant will cost Stellantis $110 million in operating earnings per week, doubling the automaker's overall hit from the strikes to about $200 million a week.

The plant accounted for about 16 percent of North American production for Stellantis and is proportional to the strike against Ford's Kentucky plant in terms of production, said Marick Masters, professor of business at Wayne State University.

Many dealers are unlikely to feel the loss of Ram 1500 production anytime soon. Ram in mid-October maintained a 114-day supply of 1500s compared with 108 days in early September, according to Cox Automotive.

Nyle Maxwell, a Stellantis dealer in pickup-heavy Texas, said he hopes the automaker continues to be aggressive with incentives for the pickups.

“It’s not the best of markets right now,” he said, so additional deal sweeteners are important to continue moving inventory.

Maxwell, who chairs the Stellantis National Dealer Council, wasn’t expecting the union to take down the Sterling Heights plant.

“I think that caught everybody off guard,” he told Automotive News. “I guess that's what [Fain’s] intending to do these days. I heard from a couple of Stellantis sources that they were pretty positive on everything going into the weekend and that they thought they'd made progress. … It truly was a surprise.”

Maxwell said dealers are “at the mercy” of the union and Stellantis. “Most retail guys like to be in control, right? We've built businesses, family businesses,” Maxwell said. "When we find ourselves somewhat out of control, that's a little bit worrisome for us. That’s the position both the UAW and Stellantis have put us in.”

Dealer Steven Wolf said he has ample supply of Ram 1500s at his Houston store, Helfman Dodge-Chrysler-Jeep-Ram-Fiat, but hopes Monday’s escalation by the union is the “impetus that gets the deal done.”

Wolf said he had been optimistic the talks were nearing an end because the union hadn’t added any Stellantis facilities to the strike since Sept. 22, when workers at 20 Mopar parts depots around the U.S. hit the picket lines. But Wolf said Monday’s news suggests the two sides may be further apart than he thought.

Fain on Friday warned of more walkouts at U.S. truck and SUV factories unless the automakers improved wage and benefit offers, insisting companies could afford more than the record packages on the table.

He said the Detroit 3 had converged on a 23 percent wage hike offer and made progress on other issues but told UAW members "there is more to be won". GM and Ford say additional cost-of-living increases already take their total compensation offers to a hike of over 30 percent.

"Last Thursday morning, Stellantis presented a new, improved offer to the UAW, including 23 percent wage increases over the life of the contract, nearly a 50 percent increase in our contributions to the retirement savings plan, and additional job security protections for our employees," Stellantis' Monday statement said. "Following multiple conversations that appeared to be productive, we left the bargaining table expecting a counter-proposal, but have been waiting for one ever since...

"Our very strong offer would address member demands and provide immediate financial gains for our employees. Instead, the UAW has decided to cause further harm to the entire automotive industry as well as our local, state and national economies."   

Fain has acknowledged some UAW members want to vote on the offers in hand but last week urged them not to give in to "fear, uncertainty, doubt and division" that he said were sowed by the companies.

Fain also told UAW members the talks were nearing an end.

"That's the hardest part of a strike," he said. "Right before a deal is when there's the most aggressive push for that last mile. "

ACR Alpine Capital Research portfolio manager Tim Piechowski, who owns GM shares, said he was concerned by the strike expansion.

"I don't know where this really stops with the UAW," he said. "What if Stellantis says, 'We have nothing more to give.' Then he's stuck. It's hard for me to be optimistic about any incremental strike regardless of the thought that it might be bringing you closer to the end."

On Oct. 16, Ford Chairman Bill Ford warned of the growing impact to the automaker and the U.S. economy from the strike.

The total economic losses from the UAW strike have reached $9.3 billion, according to data released Monday by economic consultancy Anderson Economic Group, with the Detroit 3 suffering losses of $4.18 billion.

Bloomberg and Reuters contributed to this report.