DETROIT — The United Auto Employees strike is bringing a blue-collar versus billionaire battle to the Motor City, just as UAW President Shawn Fain wanted.
The outspoken union leader has weaponized striking — historically a final resort for the union — after lower than 24 hours right into a work stoppage arguably higher than any UAW president has in modern times.
It wasn’t by accident.
Fain, a unusual yet emboldened leader, has meticulously brought the UAW back into the national highlight after many years of near irrelevance. He desires to represent not only union members but additionally America’s embattled middle class, which UAW helped create.
United Auto Employees union President Shawn Fain joins UAW members who’re on a strike, on the picket line on the Ford Michigan Assembly Plant in Wayne, Michigan, September 15, 2023.
Rebecca Cook | Reuters
To achieve this, he has leveraged a yearslong national labor movement and a growing disgust for wealthy individuals and corporations amongst many Americans — starting together with his first time addressing the union’s greater than 400,000 members during his inauguration speech in March.
“We’re here to return together to ready ourselves for the war against our just one and only true enemy, multibillion-dollar corporations and employers who refuse to provide our members their fair proportion,” Fain said on the time. “It is a recent day within the UAW.”
Fain’s comments Friday morning as he joined UAW members and supporters picketing outside a Ford plant in Michigan — certainly one of three facilities the corporate is currently striking — echoed every thing he said during that first speech.
“We got to do what we got to do to get our share of economic and social justice on this strike,” Fain said outside the Ford Bronco SUV and Ranger pickup plant. “We’ll be out here until we get our share of economic justice. And it doesn’t matter how long it takes.”
Fain’s upbringing plays into his strong unionism and non secular beliefs, which he has growingly talked about with members as he emphasizes “faith” within the UAW’s cause. Two of his grandparents were UAW GM retirees, and one grandfather began at Chrysler in 1937, the 12 months the employees joined the union. Fain, who joined the UAW in 1994, even keeps certainly one of his grandfather’s pay stubs in his wallet as “a reminder” of where he got here from.
National media and others really began listening to Fain when he said the union would withhold a reelection endorsement of President Joe Biden, who has called himself the “most pro-union president in history.” Fain and Biden have spoken and met, however the union leader has not shown much support for the president. In response to comments by the president Friday, Fain said: “Working people should not afraid. You understand who’s afraid? The company media is afraid. The White Home is afraid. The businesses are afraid.”
While many past union leaders have talked such talk, Fain has up to now delivered on his guarantees to members without batting a watch — causing General Motors, Ford Motor and Stellantis to enter crisis mode this week because the UAW follows through on that promise to members.
“We have never seen anything like this; it’s frustrating,” Ford CEO Jim Farley told CNBC’s Phil LeBeau Thursday as he criticized Fain and the union for what he said was a scarcity of communication and counteroffers. “I do not know what Shawn Fain is doing, but he isn’t negotiating this contract with us, because it expires.”
In an announcement Friday, Ford said that the UAW’s partial strike at its Michigan Assembly Plant has forced it to put off about 600 staff.
“This just isn’t a lockout,” Ford said. “This layoff is a consequence of the strike at Michigan Assembly Plant’s final assembly and paint departments, since the components built by these 600 employees use materials that have to be e-coated for defense. E-coating is accomplished within the paint department, which is on strike.”
GM CEO Mary Barra echoed Farley’s feelings Friday morning on CNBC’s “Squawk Box.”
“I’m extremely frustrated and disillusioned,” she said. “We do not have to be on strike straight away.”
Each CEOs said every thing they may to point they imagine Fain is probably not bargaining in good faith without using those exact words, which could justify a grievance with the National Labor Relations Board.
The UAW in late August filed unfair labor practice charges against GM and Stellantis with the NLRB, alleging they didn’t bargain with the union in good faith or a timely manner. It didn’t file a grievance against Ford. GM and Stellantis have denied those allegations.
Several past union leaders and company bargainers who spoke to CNBC hailed the best way Fain has been capable of propel the UAW into the national highlight, including pausing bargaining for a Friday rally and march with Sen. Bernie Sanders, the progressive lawmaker from Vermont. Sanders, whose surprise 2016 Democratic presidential primary win in Michigan helped cement his national prominence, has lent support to quite a few labor movements across the country as he rails against the billionaire class.
“I believe they’re just doing an excellent job,” said respected former UAW President Bob King, who cited growing support for the union amongst the general public and the union’s own members. “Each those measurements say that UAW communications has been outstanding.”
UAW members have taken notice — especially after lots of them disdained union leadership during and after a yearslong federal corruption investigation that landed two past UAW presidents and greater than a dozen others in prison.
“For all of the years that I’ve worked here, it’s never been this strong,” said Anthony Dobbins, a 27-year autoworker, early Friday morning while picketing the Ford plant in Michigan. “That is going to make history right here because we are attempting to get what we deserve.”
Dobbins, a UAW Local 600 union representative, balked at current record offers by the automakers which have included roughly 20% pay increases, hundreds of dollars in bonuses, retention of the union’s platinum health care and other sweetened advantages.
“That is not working for us. Give us what we asked for,” Dobbins said. “That is what we wish. We now have to work seven days, time beyond regulation, simply to make ends meet.”
United Auto Employees President Shawn Fain, center, poses with Anthony Dobbins, right, a 27-year autoworker, and others because the union pickets a Ford plant in Wayne, Michigan, Sept. 15, 2023.
Michael Wayland / CNBC
Key demands from the union have included 40% hourly pay increases; a reduced, 32-hour, workweek; a shift back to traditional pensions; the elimination of compensation tiers; and a restoration of cost-of-living adjustments. Other items on the table include enhanced retiree advantages and higher vacation and family leave advantages.
Automakers have argued such demands would cripple the businesses. Farley even said the corporate would have “gone bankrupt by now” under the union’s current proposals and members wouldn’t have benefited from $75,000 in average profit-sharing during the last decade.
Ford sources said the automaker would have lost $14.4 billion during the last 4 years if the present demands had been in effect, as an alternative of recording nearly $30 billion in profits.
Such profits are exactly what Fain has said UAW members should share in. But his technique to get staff a bigger piece of the pie carries great risks.
“This just isn’t going to be positive from an industry perspective or for GM,” Barra said Friday.
Many outside the union imagine if Fain pushes too hard, it may lead to long-term job losses for the union. A former high-ranking bargainer for certainly one of the automakers told CNBC that it’s nearly guaranteed the businesses cut union jobs through product allocation, plant closures or other means to offset increased labor costs.
“They will need to pay up. The query is how much,” said the longtime bargainer, who agreed to talk on the condition of anonymity. “This finally ends up with fewer jobs. That is how the automakers cut costs.”
Fain and other union leaders have argued that meeting the businesses in the center has led to dozens of plant closures, fewer union members and a growing divide between blue-collar staff and the rich.
So why not fight?
“That is about us doing what we got to do to care for the working class,” Fain said Friday. “This is not just concerning the UAW. That is about working people all over the place on this country. Irrespective of what you do for a living, you deserve your fair proportion of equity.”
