Auto workers empower union leaders to call strike
Members of the United Auto Workers edged closer to a strike, with 97% voting to give their leaders permission to call a work stoppage at the Big Three automakers after their contract expires Sept. 14, if contract negotiations don’t succeed before then, the union announced Friday.
The strike authorization vote, a routine step that usually passes during contract negotiations with Detroit’s big automakers, doesn’t always lead to a strike. But many workers say it is likely to this time.
Led by an aggressive new union president, Shawn Fain, the UAW is demanding a 40% pay increase over four years and other big concessions, a push that is causing tension with the automakers and making a strike likely, workers and industry experts say.
“This is our time to take back what we are owed. Working together with the companies doesn’t work for us,” Fain said Friday in a livestream update to members. “The only way the working class advances is if we stand together … the only way we’re ever going to have a better quality of life for ourselves and our families is if we fight for it.” But he also added: “Our goal is not to strike. Our goal is to bargain good agreements.”
A UAW strike against one or all of the Big Three automakers — General Motors, Ford and Stellantis, the parent company of Jeep and Chrysler — would destabilize an industry that makes up about 3% of the nation’s gross domestic product. UAW workers produce nearly half of the light vehicles manufactured in the United States, according to GlobalData.
It would come after several years of tumult in the auto industry, brought on by global shortages of computer chips that forced some factories to halt production for weeks at a time.
It could also interrupt the Big Three’s transition to electric vehicles, a multibillion-dollar retooling project of vital importance to the industry and the Biden administration.
“I’m talking with the UAW. Obviously I’m concerned,” President Joe Biden said Friday when asked about the risk of a strike.