Labor Notes

By Luis Feliz Leon - Labor Notes, November 30, 2023

“The company knows that Toyota workers are watching,” said Auto Workers President Shawn Fain on November 3. “And when the time comes, Toyota workers and all non-union auto workers are going to be ready to stand up.”

That time has come—yesterday the UAW announced its plan, already in motion, to organize the whole auto sector. “Workers across the country, from the West to the Midwest and especially in the South, are reaching out to join our movement and to join the UAW,” said Fain in a new video.

The union says thousands of workers have reached out asking for support in unionizing their auto plants. They’ve scoured the old websites from previous union drives and filled out forms to be put in touch with an organizer.

“To all the auto workers out there working without the benefits of a union: Now it’s your turn,” he said, inviting auto workers to join the organizing push and telling them where they can electronically sign union cards, at UAW.org/join.

Thousands of non-union auto workers are already organizing across the 10 foreign-owned transplants, including Toyota, Hyundai, and Mercedes, as well as in the electric vehicle sector at Tesla, Rivian, and Lucid. Overall, the organizing drive will cover 150,000 workers—roughly the same number of workers covered under the Big 3 contracts—across 13 automakers.

By Dan DiMaggio - Labor Notes, November 22, 2023

Is it time for a big, united strike by millions of union members against the billionaire class?

We get pitched this idea sometimes at Labor Notes. Usually we dismiss it as coming from starry-eyed dreamers eager to pass over the hard work of organizing and skip ahead to the “general strike.”

But now the call is coming from a major international union: the United Auto Workers, whose new contracts covering 146,000 workers at the Big 3 are strategically set to expire on May 1, 2028. The union wants others in the labor movement to align their own expirations for that date, setting up a battle with some of the country’s biggest corporations in four-and-a-half years.

“If I could have a dream scenario,” UAW President Shawn Fain told In These Times, “it would be that all of organized labor maps their expiration dates to May 1.”

By Dan DiMaggio - Labor Notes, November 17, 2023

After a six-week escalating strike, the Auto Workers (UAW) ratified agreements with each of the Big 3 automakers. The deals are a sharp about-face from decades of concessions.

The new contracts go further than many people thought possible, on issues that the companies had insisted were off the table. Stellantis agreed to reopen its idled Belvidere, Illinois, assembly plant. The companies will include most new battery plant workers in their master agreements.

While the contracts don’t abolish tiers for benefits, they mostly get rid of the wage tiers the Big 3 had created to drive down pay. Some workers will see their pay more than double.

The gains are a testament to the UAW’s aggressive strategy under its new leaders, which ramped up the strikes slowly at first and then faster until the companies caved one by one. The strategy threw the companies off guard and kept them guessing throughout.

The Stand-Up Strike began September 15 when 13,000 workers walked out at three Ford, General Motors, and Stellantis assembly plants; by the end it grew to 50,000, out of 146,000 UAW members at the Big 3. The agreements came after a major escalation: striking each company’s most profitable truck plant.

Workers approved the deals at GM, Ford, and Stellantis this week.

At Ford and Stellantis, two-thirds voted in favor. But at GM, the numbers were close. Just 55 percent of workers voted yes, reflecting workers’ heightened expectations and frustration with years of givebacks. Many higher-seniority assembly plant workers at all three companies voted no, saying the raises and retirement gains were not enough.

“They wanted higher increases in pay, higher than the 25 percent, and they wanted it all up front,” said Katie Deatherage, the recently elected president of Local 2250 at GM’s plant in Wentzville, Missouri. “Pensions and post-retirement health care were a huge topic and have been for a long long time.”

Deatherage estimates that 70 to 75 percent of workers at her plant have been hired since 2007, meaning they don’t get a pension or retiree health care. Still, in her 20 years at GM, “it’s the best contract I’ve seen in my career.” She voted yes.

By Keith Brower Brown - Labor Notes, November 10, 2023

On breaks between harnessing wires and bolting fenders, Auto Workers across the country are debating the contract offers their strike wrenched out of Ford, General Motors, and Stellantis.

Just a fraction of plants have voted, with the rest set to cast ballots in the next two weeks. Contract details are here.

Ford locals have been the first to weigh in. Three larger locals voted heavily in favor of the deal. Two other major locals passed the offer with a narrower majority, reflecting that members’ expectations were raised sharply by new leaders and an aggressive contract fight.

The first Ford plant to strike was Michigan Assembly near Detroit. With about four-fifths of the 5,000 members casting ballots, the local voted ‘yes’ by 82 percent.

Longtime production worker Audrey Bell says she and her co-workers had few qualms about the major gains made: “I think it’s basically good, especially for the new workers. We made big progress on two tiers. Got the COLA [cost-of-living adjustment] back.”

At Ford Chicago Assembly, members passed the deal by a slimmer 57 percent, on 56 percent turnout. This local has often rejected tentative contracts, turning down the 2019 deal by nearly two-thirds. Members there joined the Stand-Up Strike on September 29.

Scott Houldieson, who’s worked as an electrician at the plant for 34 years, supported the agreement. (He is chair of the caucus Unite All Workers for Democracy, UAWD, which opted for a neutral stance.) “It was a strike that was trying to dig us out of 40 years of concessions, 40 years of cooperating with the companies, 40 years of corruption,” Houldieson said.

By Dan DiMaggio - Labor Notes, October 31, 2023

All three dominoes fell in a few days.

The Auto Workers (UAW) now have agreements with each of the Big 3 automakers. The new contracts are a sharp about-face from decades of concessions.

The tentative agreements go further than many thought possible on issues that the companies insisted were off the table. Stellantis agreed to reopen its idled Belvidere assembly plant. GM and Stellantis will include new battery plant workers in their master agreements.

While the contracts don’t abolish benefit tiers, they get rid of the many wage tiers the Big 3 had created to drive down pay. Some workers will see their pay more than double as a result.

The gains are a testament to the UAW’s bold, aggressive strategy under its new leadership, which ramped up the strikes, at first slowly and then faster until the companies caved one by one. It was a master class in worker power.

On Monday, the UAW announced it had reached a tentative agreement with General Motors, the last holdout. Workers at GM’s Spring Hill, Tennessee, Cadillac factory had joined the strike Saturday night.

The union announced tentative agreements with Ford and Stellantis last week. The agreements came after UAW members struck at each company’s most profitable truck plant, the latest escalation in the union’s six-week Stand-Up Strike.

The 146,000 UAW members at all three automakers will vote on the contracts in the coming weeks. In the meantime, 50,000 strikers are headed back to work.

By Jane Slaughter and Amy Goodman - Democracy Now!, October 31, 2023

By Jane Slaughter - Labor Notes, October 26, 2023

Since 1979, union auto workers have endured round after round of concessions. That era is over. On Wednesday, the 41st day of the union’s Stand Up Strike against the Big 3, Auto Workers (UAW) President Shawn Fain announced a deal with Ford. The contract gains are substantial.

The union added the straw that broke the camel’s back this week when it hit General Motors’s and Stellantis’s two biggest moneymakers, SUV and truck assembly plants in Texas and Michigan, on Monday and Tuesday. Workers at Ford’s top cash cow, Kentucky Truck, had gone out October 11.

Ford caved on Wednesday rather than see the next domino fall at “the Rouge,” its F-150 plant in Dearborn, Michigan, which builds the country’s best-selling truck.

Throughout, the union’s strategy has been to play the Big 3 automakers against each other. The strike began September 15 with just one plant at each company called out. The union has escalated weekly, with negotiators rewarding a company that had made concessions to the union, by sparing it more strikes, and punishing those tardy to the table.

By Luis Feliz Leon and Lisa Xu - Labor Notes, October 23, 2023

Today 6,800 Auto Workers (UAW) struck the most profitable Stellantis plant in the world.

At 10 a.m. workers streamed out of the Sterling Heights Assembly Plant (SHAP), near Detroit, where they build the Ram 1500 pickup.

“It’s just real now,” said Crystal Pasarcik, the sergeant-at-arms at Local 1700, which represents the plant.

“Some of the younger people have been bugging us every day, wondering when we were going to go out,” said Charles Archard, a first-shift committeeman (full-time steward). “We understand General Motors and Ford came to the table with some more concessions and Stellantis didn’t want to do it, so they hit ’em where it hurt.”

They join 34,000 UAW members already walking picket lines at six Big 3 assembly plants and 38 parts distribution warehouses nationwide.

Local President Charles Bell thinks it’s “very likely” that striking SHAP will be the straw that breaks the camel’s back at Stellantis. “We put out the most profitable vehicle the company has, in large quantities,” he said. “The guy [CEO Carlos Tavares] didn’t help when his salary was revealed, at least $26 million.”

SHAP works around the clock, on three shifts, with much Saturday overtime scheduled.

By Luis Feliz Leon - Labor Notes, October 20, 2023

The Auto Workers (UAW) have thrown the Big 3 on the back foot.

For the first time in recent history, the union is playing the automakers against each other—departing from its tradition of choosing one target company and patterning an agreement at the other two.

And its gradually escalating Stand-Up Strike strategy has multiplied the pressure that can move the companies off the dime.

Every Friday for four weeks, the CEOs waited with bated breath for UAW President Shawn Fain to announce strike targets.

Two Fridays in a row, one company moved on major bargaining issues just minutes before workers were scheduled to walk out.

On September 29, Stellantis was spared—after frantically calling the union with a new offer.