UAW Strike News Roundup

by Matt Posky

Published: October 3rd, 2023

With the United Auto Workers (UAW) still striking, there have been some minor updates. Though nothing that’s likely to result in any major changes.

The union has submitted a response to a General Motors offer as picketing continues against all three Detroit-based automakers, Ford is laying off an additional 300 employees due to supply chain complications created by the strike, and the UAW has successfully negotiated a tentative deal on its 5-year contract with Mack Trucks.

Starting at the top, General Motors has confirmed that a meeting was held on Monday between itself and UAW leadership. The union has issued a counter offer and GM doesn't seem wholly enamored with the proposal. The company has said it would be assessing the deal, noting that there's some distance to go before anyone shakes hands.

However, the automaker previously stated that the union had not yet presented any counter-offers to its earlier proposals.

CEO Mary Barra (and other automotive executives) have become much more critical of the strike as it has continued. Expanding the strike last week to include 25,300 union members and factories that are undoubtedly more important to the automakers’ bottom line seems to have been the tipping point. Barra accused the UAW of having no real intent of making a deal with the industry, adding that GM hadn’t received what she considered a “comprehensive” counteroffer in over a week.

Executives from the other automotive brands weren’t really any kinder and UAW President Shawn Fain has called any claims that the union is negotiating in bad faith utterly ridiculous.

"We've been countering back and forth daily,” he said on Friday. “The entire thing they're talking about is misinformation.”

Meanwhile, Ford has asked 330 employees not to come into its Chicago Stamping Plant and Lima Engine Plant. According to a release issued by Ford spokesman Dan Barbossa, formal layoffs are scheduled to commence this weekend.

"Our production system is highly interconnected, which means the UAW’s targeted strike strategy has knock-on effects for facilities that are not directly targeted for a work stoppage," Barbossa explained.

"These are not lockouts," he continued. "These layoffs are a consequence of the strike at Chicago Assembly Plant, because these three facilities must reduce production of parts that would normally be shipped to Chicago Assembly Plant."

Ford has already started dumping an estimated 600 employees from the Michigan Assembly Plant responsible for the Ford Bronco and Ranger. Those job cuts are also supposed to be related to complications stemming from the labor strike.

Lastly, the UAW appears to have cut a deal with Mack Trucks (currently owned by Volvo Group). While the contract agreement is said to be tentative, it’s further than the union has managed to get with Stellantis, Ford, and General Motors. Assuming the deal goes through, the agreement will cover roughly 4,000 workers spread across three states.

"The terms of this tentative agreement would deliver significantly increased wages and continue first-class benefits for Mack employees and their families," Mack President Stephen Roy stated. "At the same time, it would allow the company to successfully compete in the market, and continue making the necessary investments in our people, plants and products."

The union celebrated its victory in Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Florida (UAW Regions 8 and 9), adding that terms of the deal had not yet been reviewed and ratified by members. Those terms have not yet been made public.

[Image: UAW]

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Matt Posky

A staunch consumer advocate tracking industry trends and regulation. Before joining TTAC, Matt spent a decade working for marketing and research firms based in NYC. Clients included several of the world’s largest automakers, global tire brands, and aftermarket part suppliers. Dissatisfied with the corporate world and resentful of having to wear suits everyday, he pivoted to writing about cars. Since then, that man has become an ardent supporter of the right-to-repair movement, been interviewed on the auto industry by national radio broadcasts, driven more rental cars than anyone ever should, participated in amateur rallying events, and received the requisite minimum training as sanctioned by the SCCA. Handy with a wrench, Matt grew up surrounded by Detroit auto workers and managed to get a pizza delivery job before he was legally eligible. He later found himself driving box trucks through Manhattan, guaranteeing future sympathy for actual truckers. He continues to conduct research pertaining to the automotive sector as an independent contractor and has since moved back to his native Michigan, closer to where the cars are born. A contrarian, Matt claims to prefer understeer — stating that front and all-wheel drive vehicles cater best to his driving style.

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10 of 49 comments

George on Oct 04, 2023

Who’s winning the UAW strike? Nobody.
Who’s losing the UAW strike? Everybody.

1 Reply
- See 6 previous
- Art_Vandelay on Oct 04, 2023
  
  Everybody? I'd say most of us don't care one way or another. Even if I do need a car at some point and they are on strike it simply means a vehicle I had likely already long crossed off my list won't be available. Hardly a loss.
  
  1
- Jeff on Oct 04, 2023
  
  Some states have already passed laws allowing child labor and being exempt from minimum hourly rate for child labor. Maybe the auto companies could move to those states and pay maybe $5 an hour. I don't believe that the UAW members will get a 40 percent raise but they will get a raise one that the UAW and the auto companies agree on. As Lou once brought up in another one of these strike articles that many complain about the loss of American jobs but go to Walmart and buy Chinese made goods driving there in a vehicle made in Mexico or a low cost country. But you are correct that many will not be effected by this strike because many vehicles are made in nonunion factories or made offshore. That is our choice to buy whatever vehicle we choose. I don't hate on the auto workers like many do but I don't think they should or will get all of what they are asking for. Again that is why the auto companies and UAW will negotiate a settlement and if the UAW leadership is unwilling to negotiate eventually its members will demand that they will negotiate because there is only so long UAW membership can live on strike benefits. Just trying to get real and not take a side like many on this site seem to do. Both the UAW and the auto companies have something to lose if the strike is prolonged. To some of those who are against the UAW workers getting anything how many of you would be willing to work at a manufacturing plant and if so how many of you would be physically able to work on an assembly line? Much different to work on a assembly line than in an air conditioned office staring at a computer screen.
  
  Like
- Art_Vandelay on Oct 05, 2023
  
  I suppose I'd be willing to work on an assembly line. I did far more dangerous and physically demanding work for less in the past. I'm sure it is difficult, but it probably isn't 130 degrees with stuff exploding either so why not. And nice try on your child labor BS...Their are federal laws in place with respect to child labor. And drop the living wage BS too...they already make a living wage. Call it like it is man. They just want more money because somebody else got more money. Give them cost of living increases to include catch ups for any they didn't get in years past and tell them to get back to work.
  
  1
- 28-Cars-Later on Oct 05, 2023
  
  While everyone else may be losing, UAW leadership, Ford, GM and possibly the White House are all winning.
  
  Like
- Jeff on Oct 05, 2023
  
  Art--The following is some of that BS you called me out on. You obviously don't read the news. I call BS on your above remark especially when you have nothing to back it up with.
  "In February 2023 the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) issued new findings on an ongoing investigation of Packers Sanitation Services, Inc. (PSSI) for illegally employing over 100 children between the ages of 13 and 17 in hazardous occupations at 13 meatpacking facilities owned by JBS, Cargill, Tyson, and others (DOL 2023). These children worked illegally on overnight shifts cleaning razor-sharp saws and other high-risk equipment on slaughterhouse kill floors. At least three of them suffered injuries, including burns from caustic cleaning chemicals. The Department of Homeland Security has announced a parallel investigation into whether these young workers, many of whom may be unaccompanied migrant children, were connected to illegal employment by traffickers who profited from their labor (Strickler and Ainsley 2023).
  Multiple factories in Hyundai-Kia’s supply chain in Alabama are also under DOL investigation for employing children as young as 14 (DOL 2022a). Many of these children are from Guatemalan migrant families. Like meatpacking plants across the Midwest, “many of the Alabama [auto] plants relied on staffing firms to recruit low-wage assembly line workers” (Schneyer, Rosenberg, and Cooke 2023).
  Violations uncovered in recent federal enforcement actions are not isolated mistakes of ill-informed individual employers. PSSI, one of the country’s largest food sanitation services companies, is owned by the Blackstone Group, the world’s largest private equity firm (PESP 2022). DOL investigators found PSSI’s use of child labor to be “systemic” across eight states, “clearly [indicating] a corporate-wide failure.” DOL (2023) reports that “the adults—who had recruited, hired, and supervised these children—tried to derail our efforts to investigate their employment practices.”
  "While federal agencies are ramping up enforcement of child labor protections in response to increasing violations (DOL 2022b), industry groups are working to roll back child labor protections via state legislation.
  Already in 2023, seven bills to weaken child labor protections have been introduced in six Midwestern states (Iowa, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, Ohio, and South Dakota) and in Arkansas, where a bill repealing restrictions on work for 14- and 15-year-olds has now been signed into law. One bill introduced in Minnesota would allow 16- and 17-year-olds to work on construction sites. 1 Ten states have introduced, considered, or passed legislation rolling back protections for young workers in just the past two years" https://www.epi.org/publication/child-labor-laws-under-attack/
  
  1
- IH_Fever on Oct 05, 2023
  
  All that word vomit proves is it's still illegal to exploit child labor in the US. (We do that overseas to get our stuff.) A state can pass whatever law it wants, but the federal law is still the law.
  
  Like
- Art_Vandelay on Oct 05, 2023
  
  So they employed children and are in legal trouble. Doesn't that prove that as IH stated that we do have functioning protections against the behavior you describe?
  
  Like
- VoGhost on Oct 05, 2023
  
  Oh, there is one winner of the UAW strike. It starts with 'T' and rhymes with Fesla.
  
  Like
28-Cars-Later on Oct 05, 2023

"Meanwhile, Ford has asked 330 employees not to come into its Chicago Stamping Plant and Lima Engine Plant. According to a release issued by Ford spokesman Dan Barbossa, formal layoffs are scheduled to commence this weekend."

"Ford has already started dumping an estimated 600 employees from the Michigan Assembly Plant responsible for the Ford Bronco and Ranger. Those job cuts are also supposed to be related to complications stemming from the labor strike."

Nice work, Mr. Fain.

Mr. Fain: Casualties of war [I couldn't care less about].

Meanwhile Mrs. Barra reads her lines in the script D.C. sent her by private courier and pretends the layoffs she and her industry peers are now conducting are not desired. This all strikes me as Kabuki theatre which drags on to Thanksgiving or later.

The Mack truck issue is interesting and this is the first I have even heard of it, I do wonder how this will impact things. I can't imagine Volvo/Geely et al gave in to a dozen or so demands so what was on the table for them and what was agreed?

1 Reply
- VoGhost on Oct 05, 2023
  
  You're confusing Volvo the truckmaker with Volvo the automaker. Completely separate.
  
  Like

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