UAW pickets meet a truck outside Ford's Michigan Assembly Plant on Friday.
After months of negotiations with the Detroit 3 failed to produce new labor agreements, the UAW went on strike against the automakers at midnight on the morning of Sept. 15. Here are answers to common questions about the strike and what might be ahead.
The UAW's four-year contracts with General Motors, Ford Motor Co. and Stellantis expired Sept. 14 at 11:59 p.m. In past years, the union has agreed to extend its contracts while it continued to negotiate with one or more of the automakers, but it refused to do so this time.
Shawn Fain, who narrowly won the UAW's presidency earlier this year in the union's first-ever direct election of officers, has taken a hard line against the automakers, warning them well ahead of the deadline that workers would strike if new deals weren't in place. As the walkout began, Fain called it a "righteous fight" against the rich to get better wages and benefits for America's working class.
After making concessions to help the Detroit 3 before and during the 2008-09 recession, UAW members want to recover those lost benefits and receive a larger portion of the billions in profits the companies have generated since then. Pay increases are a top priority, with the union requesting raises totaling 40 percent over the four years of a new contract. The automakers are willing to give raises but say they can't afford to increase pay as much as the UAW wants.
The UAW also wants to get rid of the wage tiers that result in workers with different hire dates and seniority levels being compensated unequally. However, the automakers are unwilling to restore costly benefits such as pensions and the jobs bank that contributed to their previous financial troubles that culminated in the federal government-sponsored Chapter 11 bankruptcy reorganizations for GM and then-Chrysler.
The companies' use of temporary workers is another sticking point. The automakers use temps to fill in for absent and vacationing workers so they can avoid disruptions on the assembly lines, but the UAW argues that they should be paid the same as regular employees and quickly graduate to full-time status.
2023 UAW-Detroit 3 negotiations: The stakes are high as a new UAW president fights for a self-described “audacious and ambitious” list of demands from Ford, General Motors and Stellantis. Automotive News will provide in-depth coverage of the talks until the final deal is ratified.Detroit 3 hourly workers at the top of the pay scale earn about $32 an hour. Including health care and other benefits, each worker costs the automakers $112,000 to $134,000 a year. Getting to that level currently takes eight years for newly hired workers, though the companies have offered to cut that time to four years. The UAW wants to have workers reach top wages in 90 days, as its contracts used to be structured.
The 40 percent raises the union initially demanded — based on the union's calculation that compensation for the companies' CEOs rose 40 percent during the previous four-year contract — would bring top pay up to nearly $47 an hour in 2027. When the strike began, the automakers (which disagree with the union’s methodology for calculating their CEOs’ pay) were offering raises of about half as much as the union wanted, which would bump top hourly pay to about $39. The UAW also wants to have members work only 32 hours a week instead of today's 40-hour standard without getting reduced weekly pay.
Workers also have received significant profit-sharing payments over the past decade. This year's payments averaged $14,760 at Stellantis, $12,750 at GM and $9,176 at Ford. The Stellantis and GM payouts were record highs.
Fain calls the strategy he's using a "stand-up strike." It's a nod to the famous sit-down strikes that led GM to recognize the UAW in 1937. Instead of ordering all UAW members at the automakers to go on strike at once, Fain started with about 13,000 workers at three assembly plants — one at each company — and warned the automakers that he would expand it at unspecified intervals.
The approach is meant to give the union leverage to amp up pressure as time goes on, while also keeping it from depleting its $825 million strike fund too quickly. Click here for an analysis of how the strategy has affected the companies' production.
The UAW, which was founded in 1935, had never gone on strike against all three Detroit automakers until now. The union also had not been on strike against Ford at all since the 1970s. For more about previous strikes by the UAW, from the sit-down strikes that inspired the union's strategy this year to the 40-day walkout against GM in 2019, see our story here.
Also historic is the Detroit 3's simultaneous negotiations with Unifor, the union representing Canadian auto workers. Unifor, taking an approach less confrontational than the UAW's, this week reached a tentative agreement with its initial target, Ford. Terms haven't been made public yet. Rank-and-file workers are expected to vote on the tentative pact this weekend.
Once it reaches a tentative agreement with a company, the UAW can either continue its strike until ratification occurs, as it did with GM in 2019, or call workers off the picket lines immediately, as it did in 2007 with GM and Chrysler. The process starts with local union leaders signing off on the deal. Then, details are shared with workers, who are asked to vote yes or no. If the agreement is supported by more than half of those voting, the contract is approved. If it's voted down, the union must go back to the bargaining table and could resume the strike if workers already had gone back to their jobs.
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