AFL-CIO

By Mike Elk - Payday Report, November 10, 2023

his week, nearly 12,000 Brazilian autoworkers are celebrating a victory after a roughly two-week strike against three central factories in the suburbs outside of Sao Paulo. 

The workers went on strike after G.M. illegally fired 1,244 workers on October 23rd. On Wednesday, the union celebrated as they won the cancelation of those layoffs and back pay for the three weeks they were on strike. 

“Our victory of back pay and the canceling of layoffs is the fruit of the big fight that united workers at three factories and showed our force,” said Valmir Montaeo of the Metalworkers union of São José dos Campos.

G.M. workers in Brazil said that they had been closely watching following the UAW’s strike in the U.S. 

“The strike of American workers served as an inspiration for Brazilians as well,” CSP-Conlutas union leader Luiz Carlos Mancha told Payday Report last month. “It inspired us because the process of reducing salaries and taking away rights is also happening in Brazil. The strike that is happening in the U.S. is a turning point in the situation.” 

Brazilian and American workers have had a long relationship that has impacted trade unionists in both countries. In the 1970s and 1980s, Brazilian and American solidarity played a crucial role in toppling the dictatorship in Brazil. 

By Dave Kamper - The Forge, November 10, 2023

In a monumental labor victory echoing the 1937 Flint Sit-Down Strike, the UAW's triumphant strike against top automakers marks a defining moment in modern labor history.

When I was a kid, my church youth group in the summers would often go to a water park in Rockford, Illinois. To get there we’d take Interstate 90, and even now, I remember what it looked like when we drove past the Chrysler plant in Belvedere. Even on Sundays, that place was humming. It looked like what a factory was supposed to look like - a steady hum of activity, car carriers rolling onto the highway, people coming and going.

Earlier this year, Stellantis, the successor to Chrysler, closed the plant. Its workers were scattered to backup jobs across the country. I marched with some of them on the picket line at the parts distribution center in Plymouth, Minnesota.

Last week, the United Auto Workers settled their contract with Stellantis. It includes the reopening of the Belvedere plant. That’s… that’s never happened before.

The United Auto Workers have won a signal victory in their strike against the Big 3 Automakers. It’s easily the most important strike win since the 1997 Teamsters strike. If you’re feeling particularly enthusiastic, you can even make the case that the last time a US strike was this successful - in terms not just of the size of the victory, but its importance for the moment - was the original Sit-Down Strike in Flint, Michigan, in 1936-37, that launched the UAW and the modern American labor movement. A stretch, to be sure, but this was a pretty big win.

From where we sit now, it’s easy to feel like it was always going to go this way. But while we like to repeat the mantra, “strikes work,” the more accurate formulation is, “strikes can work.”

Sometimes they don’t work. A strike is a risk.

By Teddy Ostrow, Barry Eidlin, and Ruby Walsh - The Upsurge, November 10, 2023

By Shawn Fain and Ryan Grim - Deconstructed, November 10, 2023

In late October, after a six-week strike, the United Auto Workers reached a historic contract deal with the big three Detroit automakers. This week, as membership votes to approve the contract are underway, President Joe Biden rallied with the UAW president in Illinois to celebrate the tentative agreement between the union and the automakers. This week on Deconstructed, UAW President Shawn Fain joins Ryan Grim to discuss the victory. Fain was elected president of the union earlier this year by the union membership, in the first UAW election in which members could directly vote for the union president. Fain discusses the recent win, the union election that led to his victory, corruption inside union ranks, and the broader labor reform movement for direct democracy within unions.

By Union Jake, Adam Keller, and Yaffee - Valley Labor Report, November 9, 2023

By Steven Greenhouse and Shawn Fain - In These Times, November 8, 2023

When Shawn Fain won the presidency of the United Auto Workers last March as an insurgent candidate, promising to transform the union and take on Detroit’s automakers, he spoke with veteran labor journalist and Century Foundation senior fellow Steven Greenhouse for In These Times. Fain laid out a militant agenda.

“We need to run contract campaigns where we engage the membership and go after their demands,” he said. ​“We haven’t done this in my lifetime.”

Six months later, Fain led targeted strikes against Ford, GM and Stellantis that have secured tentative agreements that include a 25% wage increase — more than all the raises that auto workers have received over the last 20 years combined. As UAW members began voting on the agreements, Greenhouse spoke with Fain again on November 5.

By Julie Grant - Allegheny Front, November 7, 2023

Transportation is responsible for one-third of the nation’s greenhouse gases, more than any other sector of the economy. To slash these emissions, President Joe Biden set a goal for half of all new US passenger vehicle sales to be electric vehicles by 2030. The 2022 Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) is providing billions of dollars to assist U.S. automakers with this transition. 

As part of the process, automakers have been building or planning battery plants, including about a dozen in the southeast US, six in Michigan, and two in Ohio.

By Peter Dreier - The Progressive, November 7, 2023

If it weren’t for the war in Israel-Palestine, and the election of an abortion absolutist and lesser-known election denier as Speaker of the House, the recent settlement of the United Auto Workers strike with the three major auto companies would have been the biggest news story in the country.

After the strike began on September 15, the union staggered the walkouts at different facilities at different times in order to keep the companies guessing and to escalate when additional pressure was needed, rather than have all 150,000 members who work at the three companies walk out at once.

ltogether, about 34,000 workers at nine auto factories and thirty-eight parts warehouses in over twenty states walked off the job. It marked the first time in the union’s history that it went on strike at all three companies simultaneously. Ford was the first company to reach an agreement with the union, followed by Stellantis (the parent of Chrysler, Jeep, and Ram), and then General Motors on October 30. GM caved in less than forty-eight hours after the union walked out at its largest North American factory in Spring Hill, Tennessee. 

The workers scored one of the most impressive union triumphs in the past fifty years. They included: 

• 67 percent boost to the starting wage for new hires to over $30 per hour over the next four and a half years.
• 33 percent increase on the top wage from $32 to no more than $42 an hour over that period.
• 25 percent overall pay increase and reinstatement of annual cost-of-living adjustments that the UAW lost in 2009.
• An end to the two-tier wage system through which some workers make lower starting salaries and get lower pay increases. 
• Boosts to retirement income, including an increase in 401(k) contributions from 6.4 percent to 10 percent. 
• The right to strike if the automakers seek to close factories and lay off workers.

Temporary workers will also become full-time employees after nine months of continuous employment. “We have slammed the door on having a permanent underclass of temporary workers,” UAW president Shawn Fain said.

The UAW also scored a pioneering victory for both union jobs and climate justice—two goals that some pundits consider to be at odds. The tentative contract includes Stellantis’ agreement to re-open a factory in Belvidere, Illinois, that once employed 1,200 UAW members and to add a new electric vehicle battery plant nearby that will employ 2,000 to 3,000 workers. The company also agreed to invest $155 million into three electrical vehicle factories in Kokomo, Indiana. The UAW’s tentative contract with GM will allow workers at the company’s currently operational and future joint-venture battery plants to hold votes on unionizing and decide whether they want their contracts to be included in the UAW’s master contract.

The tentative contract settlement between the UAW and the two large automakers still needs to be ratified by the union’s rank-and-file members. 

The union’s core message throughout the strike was simple: After years of stagnant wages and painful concessions, workers should share in the auto industry’s prosperity.

By Union Jake and Adam Keller - Valley Labor Report, November 2, 2023

By Union Jake, Adam Keller, et. al. - Valley Labor Report, November 6, 2023