trade unions

By staff - Labor Network for Sustainability, October 30, 2023

In the on-going strike by UAW auto workers against the auto industry Big Three, one of the central objectives is to win a just transition to climate safe vehicle production for auto workers. At press time the strike continues, but the union has already won significant concessions that will contribute to a just transition. (See next story for more on what a just transition means for auto workers.) 

While collective bargaining is often shrouded in darkness, the UAW has revealed to union members and the public news of what is happening at the bargaining table. In addition to negotiations over wages, hours and working conditions, a central just transition demand has already been met by one of the Big Three.

GM has agreed that all its electric vehicle and battery plants will be included in the UAW master agreement. This puts an even floor under worker conditions and prevents worker-against-worker competition leading to “race to the bottom.” It thereby reduces the incentive for the company to site new EV and battery facilities in low-wage, anti-union states in the South and elsewhere. 

UAW president Sean Fain said, “GM has agreed to lay the foundation for a just transition.” Fain said GM agreed to the concession in response to the union’s threat to extend the strike to some of the company’s more profitable plants. Harley Shaiken, labor professor at the University of California, Berkeley, said, “This defines the transition to EVs. Clearly, GM’s concession on the master agreement will positively be matched by Ford and Stellantis.”

By staff - Labor Network for Sustainability, October 30, 2023

Picket lines are an essential way that workers show their determination and collective power. And they are a key way that others can show their support. Environmental, environmental justice, community, and other supporters have been joining picket lines at auto plants around the country to show their solidarity with striking auto workers.

Not on strike yourself but want to help workers who are? Then a new LNS publication, “How You Can Support Striking Workers: An LNS Guide to Solidarity,” is for you. It will tell you

• How to get informed about a strike even if you are not a participant
• How to find out about joining a picket line
• How to prepare to join a picket line
• Picket line do’s and don’ts
• Other ways to support strikers

As the Guide concludes,

When you turn out to support strikers, you are doing more than helping to win the strike. You are contributing to creating new relationships and helping create a movement based on common interests and mutual aid. 

Download a copy of this publication here (PDF).

By Union Jake and Adam Keller - Valley Labor Report, October 30, 2023

By Jake Johnson - Common Dreams, October 30, 2023

The United Auto Workers on Monday secured a tentative agreement with General Motors that reportedly includes a 25% general wage increase over the life of the four-and-a-half-year contract as well as cost-of-living adjustments.

According toBloomberg, the UAW's agreement with GM has similar economic terms as the historic tentative deal the union reached with Ford last week and a subsequent agreement with Stellantis over the weekend.

By Jake Johnson - Common Dreams, October 30, 2023

With three historic tentative agreements in hand after six weeks on strike, the United Auto Workers is looking to galvanize the rest of the U.S. labor movement by calling on other unions to align their contract expiration dates with the UAW's—a move that would give workers maximal leverage at the bargaining table and the ability to strike together, if necessary.

If ratified by UAW members, the union's four-and-a-half-year contracts with General Motors, Ford, and Stellantis would expire on April 30, 2028. Should the contracts lapse without an agreement before that deadline, the UAW would be positioned to strike on International Workers' Day, commonly known as May Day.

In a speech on Sunday night in Detroit, UAW president Shawn Fain made clear that the April 2028 expiration date was chosen strategically, with an eye toward invigorating a labor movement that has been under coordinated assault by corporations and their political allies for decades.

"May Day was born out of the intense struggle by workers in the United States to win an eight-hour day. That's a struggle that is just as relevant today as it was in 1889," Fain said. "Even though May Day has its roots here in the United States, it is widely celebrated by workers all over the world. It's more than just a day of commemoration, it's a call to action."

Aligning contract expiration dates, Fain argued, would allow unions to "begin to flex our collective muscles."

"If we are going to truly take on the billionaire class and rebuild the economy so that it starts to work for the benefit of the many and not the few, then it's important that we not only strike, but that we strike together," said Fain, the first UAW president to be directly elected by rank-and-file members.

By Chris Townsend - Marxist-Leninism Today, October 30, 2023

Any knowledgeable observer of the United Auto Workers Union (UAW) over the past 50 years would have inevitably been forced to note that over recent decades the union’s membership had been dramatically slashed by hostile employers and politicians, that both union activity levels and influence had declined massively, and in many quarters the auto union had been transformed into a particularly virulent company union.

So addled and company-captured was the UAW top leadership that by 2014 a series of federal government criminal investigations and prosecutions grew, expanded, and eventually led to the removal of more than 30 national UAW leaders. The resulting U.S. government-ordered union election which produced Shawn Fain as new President of the UAW in March of this year was an earthquake both inside and outside the union.

Auto union old guarders and employers alike both feared the election of Fain. But by the narrowest margins Fain was elected to the top spot, and in just several months the union is already well into an expanding process of renewal. It is still early, and only time will tell, but the current strike struggle is clearly solid evidence of the new leadership’s intention to restore the union to a serious trade union path.

By Larisa Manescu - Common Dreams, October 30, 2023

WASHINGTON - The United Auto Workers has announced tentative agreements in their contract negotiations with the “Big Three” Automakers: Ford, Stellantis, and General Motors.

Wins from the tentative agreements:

• All three agreements will increase base wages by 25% through April 2028;
• Ford’s deal creates a pathway to allow workers at future battery plants, including the new EV complex in Tennessee, to join the union and be included in the master agreement;
• Stellantis’ deal will reopen the idled Belvidere Assembly Plant in Illinois and add a new battery plant in Belvidere;
• General Motors battery production workers will be included under the master UAW contract.

Tens of thousands of UAW workers have been on strike across the U.S. since the UAW contract expired on September 16. The Sierra Club, alongside many in the environment movement, has loudly echoed the demands of auto workers to ensure that the clean energy transition is a just transition.

Next, the tentative agreements for each automaker must be voted on and ratified by UAW members.

In response, Sierra Club Executive Director Ben Jealous released the following statement:

“As UAW President Shawn Fain has said from the start, ‘Record profits mean record contracts.’ For workers and further ensuring a just transition to clean energy, these tentative contracts are truly historic.

“The transformation of the auto sector – and the economy more broadly – to meet U.S. climate commitments represents a generational opportunity to build an economy that works for everyone. This work will not be easy, but in negotiating historic contracts, UAW has reminded the world what is possible!”

By Laura Clawson - Daily Kos, October 30, 2023

“Record profits mean record contracts” sounded like an aspirational slogan as the United Auto Workers went on strike against the Big Three automakers. But it’s what the union made happen over a six-week strike that now ends thanks to a tentative agreement with General Motors. Ford and Stellantis had agreed to tentative deals in recent days. Workers still need to ratify those contracts, but workers are back on the job at Ford and Stellantis and will be heading back to work at GM.

The union made big gains on pay and ending the two-tier system that left newer workers making much less than their longer-tenured coworkers. But that’s not all: The agreements offer both hope for a more just clean energy transition and a rebuttal to the top Republican talking point about the strike.

By Jake Johnson - Common Dreams, October 26, 2023

Nearly six weeks into its historic strike against the Big Three U.S. car manufacturers, the United Auto Workers late Wednesday announced a tentative contract deal with Ford that includes significant wage increases and cost-of-living adjustments that were scrapped during the 2008 financial crisis.

In a statement, the UAW's leadership said the gains achieved in the deal amount to four times what workers received in the 2019 contract that recently expired. Ford's original proposal for a new contract included wage increases of just 9% while the union demanded a 46% boost, pointing to the automakers' surging profits over the past decade.

The tentative deal calls for a 25% general wage increase over four years, including an 11% boost in the first year. The UAW said the top wage under the tentative agreement would rise to more than $40 an hour over the life of the contract and the starting wage would jump to over $28 an hour—a 68% increase—thanks to cost-of-living adjustments.