Here’s what to know as the two sides continue deliberations:
When is the deadline?
The four-year contracts signed in 2019 are scheduled to expire at 11:59 PM ET Thursday night. The expiration of current deals would not automatically trigger a strike, although the UAW is unlikely to hold off on calling a work stoppage unless it believes it is close to an agreement and a strike would hurt those efforts.
UAW President Sean Fine said in a message Wednesday evening to members on Facebook Live that absent a breakthrough, the union planned to strike an unspecified number of locations at each of the three companies.
He said that he would announce the targeted factories at ten o’clock on Thursday evening.
Fine described the limited set of initial strike targets as a new tactic for the union, which would allow it to show its dissatisfaction with the automakers’ current offers while allowing it to increase pressure if talks continue.
The union described it as a “reserve strike” in reference to what happened The 1936 sit-down strike in Flint, Michigan.against General Motors, which established the UAW.
Striking workers will be eligible for $500 weekly from the UAW’s $825 million fund. In theory, this would cover all 146,000 members for about 11 weeks, and could allow the strike to continue for longer under Fain’s more limited strategy.
People at Ford expressed frustration Thursday afternoon with the pace of the UAW’s negotiations, and said the union’s strike plans would be extremely disruptive to workers across the industry and ultimately its supply chains.
They suggested that closing one plant could have ripple effects on other plants, and that Ford would not continue to pay wages to people who were out of work because of the downstream effects of the strike. People were granted anonymity to discuss Ford’s position in the ongoing negotiations.
What does the union want?
The union’s initial demands included a wage increase of about 40 percent in addition to future increases in the cost of living. The UAW has argued that this amount is roughly equivalent to what corporate executive compensation has risen in recent years, and that workers deserve similar increases.
Full-time employees at the three companies earn more than $30 an hour under the current contract, and part-time workers earn about half that amount.
The UAW is also fighting to reduce the two-tier pay structure put in place after the auto industry bailout in the late 2000s, under which new employees receive less generous wages and benefits than their peers in more senior positions — creating disparities that last for years. .
The union also demanded better retirement and health benefits for its members, restrictions on the use of temporary workers, a four-day work week, and additional protection in the event of factory closures.
The companies counter that the union’s demands are unrealistic and that increased labor costs would raise car prices and put them at a severe disadvantage with foreign automakers and non-unionized American competitors like Tesla.
The trio previously responded by offering increases of between 9 and 14.5 percent, although they have since risen slightly and the two sides have moved toward each other in recent days.
GM said Thursday afternoon that it had made another offer that morning, and that “we remain in ongoing, direct, good faith negotiations with the UAW.” “Any outage will negatively impact our employees and customers, and will have an immediate ripple effect across our communities,” she added.
GM’s offer on Thursday included a 20 percent pay increase over the life of the contract, in line with what Ford had proposed.
Ford spokeswoman Jessica Enoch said Thursday afternoon that the company is still awaiting a response from the union on its latest offer. “We want to negotiate, but we have not received a counteroffer yet,” she said.
What are the risks?
Democrats, especially those in Michigan and other competitive Midwestern states, are watching the state of negotiations with great concern. For many of them, labor unions — and the UAW in particular — are a core part of their political electorate, and a big contract win could energize those members ahead of 2024.
Meanwhile, the ripple economic effects of a prolonged strike could cause parking shortages, push parts suppliers to the brink, and potentially erode the economy. Record public support for unions.
As it stands, Americans support a potential UAW strike against auto companies by 2-1, according to A.J The Morning Consult poll was released Monday.
The union’s demands also complicate the industry’s ongoing shift from internal combustion to electric vehicles, a shift the Biden administration is trying to spur along with tightened environmental regulations and billions of dollars in incentives. The UAW is concerned that these new factories will not employ the same number of workers, or pay them as well, as the previous generation of auto lines — or will cut off union work entirely.
A long putt can also hamper the big three Major plans to increase the production of electric carscreating an opportunity for foreign-owned or non-union auto companies to strengthen their positions in this growing market.
Where is Biden?
Biden often boasts that he is the most union-friendly president since Franklin Delano Roosevelt. However, the White House is juggling the competing priorities of wanting to get behind organized labor, protecting the economy and supporting the shift to electric vehicles — a balancing act that has caused some tension between the administration and the UAW.
The White House has enlisted a number of other senior officials, including senior adviser Gene Sperling, to closely monitor the negotiations without intervening directly, to continue a policy deployed in recent high-profile contract battles, such as the one between United Postal Service and United Postal Service. Truck drivers.
Biden himself has reached out directly to Fain, calling the three top executives in recent weeks to encourage them to make more future offers and stay at the table, according to a person familiar with the conversations. The person was granted anonymity to discuss behind-the-scenes communications.
“What we’re doing is we’re urging the parties to stay at the table, working 24/7 to negotiate a win-win solution that works for workers,” Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said Thursday on MSNBC. “Government officials were not at the table during those talks, but what we are doing is urging the parties to reach this agreement that will make sense for workers and build the next generation of middle-class jobs.”
The president dismayed allies in organized labor late last year when the White House intervened with Congress to prevent a potential nationwide strike in the rail freight industry that threatened to shatter the U.S. supply chain. Administration officials say there are unique factors at play in this situation and that they support the collective bargaining process.
Guaranteed sick leave was one of the biggest sticking points in those negotiations, and rail unions subsequently secured some concessions from freight operators in the months following the saga.
A dynamic leader, Biden has made the auto industry’s transformation a feature of the 2012 election cycle — most famously when he declared “Osama bin Laden is dead and GM is alive” as a campaign applause line.
Separately, Congress is at loggerheads over funding the federal government for the next fiscal year, raising the possibility of a shutdown that would pose a similar headache for the administration heading into an election year.
Who is Sean Fein?
Fine emerged from relative obscurity this winter after ousting current UAW leader Ray Curry along with a number of other reform-minded insurgents.
Fine joined the UAW in the 1990s as a Chrysler electrician working at a plant in Indiana.
He won by pledging to be less conciliatory with the big auto companies, reaching out to UAW members who believed the entrenched power structure was too cozy with automakers and had bred a culture of corruption that sapped union resources.
Fine has kept his campaign promises, foregoing the symbolic handshake to mark the start of negotiations Literally garbage One of the proposals for the Stellantis contract.
At the same time, he does not have a long-standing relationship with the administration, as is the case with other influential union leaders, although he met with the president this summer and spoke with Biden as recently as Labor Day.
What happened the last time the UAW struck?
In 2019, the UAW launched a strike against General Motors, putting nearly 50,000 workers on the picket line for 40 days. Ultimately, workers won some concessions, but failed to achieve some of their more ambitious demands.
The work stoppage also slowed deliveries of tens of thousands of GM vehicles and briefly pushed Michigan into an economic recession, according to Recent analysis from Anderson Economics Group.
GM itself estimated the impact of that year’s strike at $3.6 billion. It is possible that a strike at all three automakers, even for a short period, would have a much greater impact throughout the economy.
Olivia Olander, Alex Dougherty and Holly Otterbein contributed to this report.
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