Threats of UAW strike brewing before negotiations begin
DETROIT — Whenever the United Auto Workers union begins negotiating a new contract with Detroit’s three automakers, threats of a strike are typically heard on the floor of the old Chrysler transmission plant in Kokomo, Ind.
This year, the talk is a little louder. Besides the usual haggling over wages, pensions, and health care, the union has set its sights on a more consequential goal: It is determined to secure a foothold in the joint-venture plants that will manufacture electric vehicle batteries in the years and likely decades ahead.
As the industry undergoes a historic transition from internal combustion engines to EVs, the automakers will likely need many thousands of workers to staff electric-battery plants. The UAW, representing 146,000 employees of the automakers, sees this year’s contract as a crucial opportunity to ensure representation in the industry’s jobs of the future.
“I’ve got almost 30 years in, and this contract seems a little different,” said Michael Hunter, a tool inspector who fixes gauges on the Kokomo plant’s equipment. “I think it’s a very strong possibility of a strike.”
Contract talks will begin this week between the union and two of the automakers, Ford and Stellantis, a company that was formed from the 2021 merger of Fiat Chrysler and PSA Peugeot. Negotiations with the largest US automaker, General Motors, will start next week.
At the union’s behest, gone is the traditional friendly handshake between UAW bargainers and auto executives, a sign that the talks will be even more contentious than usual. Four-year contracts between the union and the companies will expire at 11:59 p.m. on Sept. 14.
The negotiations will be the first big test for Shawn Fain, who took office this year as UAW president. Fain, who himself began his career in Kokomo — as an electrician at a Chrysler metal casting plant — has laid the groundwork for the union’s position: He has said the UAW will seek general pay raises, the elimination of wage tiers, and the restoration of cost-of-living pay and pensions for new hires that were eliminated years ago when the automakers were struggling financially.
He also wants to halt any plant closings in the wake of Stellantis’ plan to shutter a factory in Belvidere, Ill., to cut costs. But paramount to Fain is getting a foot in the door at battery plants and then securing wages that exceed the top assembly-line wage of $32 an hour now paid at UAW-represented plants.
“A new industry is being born,” Fain said in a video message to UAW members. “This is our defining moment. Our communities and our country deserve good, safe, livingwage union jobs.”
All three automakers have announced plans to build joint-venture factories with battery companies, in Indiana, Michigan, Kentucky, and Tennessee. Once gas-powered vehicles are phased out, the union sees these plants as places where the automakers will move thousands of workers who now make engines and transmissions. Industry analysts expect EV sales to surge from 7 percent of US new-vehicle sales to about 40 percent by 2030.
Workers who now assemble vehicles may also need other places to work, and some might lose their jobs altogether. Because EVs are simpler to build, it takes as many as 40 percent fewer workers to produce them.
Harley Shaiken, a professor emeritus specializing in labor at the University of California at Berkeley, suggested that the industry is undergoing a seismic shift akin to the introduction of the moving assembly line, with new competitors and huge capital outlays for electric vehicles.
Though the automakers clearly don’t want a strike, Shaiken said, they’re determined to contain battery costs, including wages, to remain competitive with nonunion companies.