Less than two hours before the strike deadline, United Auto Workers revealed the first wave of plants to be targeted if the union and the Big 3 automakers fail to reach a deal just before midnight.
A historic strike at the Detroit Three automakers appears nearly inevitable.
Less than two hours before the strike deadline, United Auto Workers president Shawn Fain revealed the first group of plants that would go on strike starting at 11:59pm Thursday night if the union and the companies — Ford, General Motors and Stellantis — fail to reach agreements on new contracts.
Workers at three plants — a GM assembly plant in Wentzville, Missouri, a Stellantis assembly plant in Toledo, Ohio, and part of a Ford plant in Wayne, Mich. — would be among the first to walk off the job under Fain’s new strike strategy.
Dubbed the « stand up strike, » the plan entails having only some of the nearly 150,000 members at targeted auto plants walk off their jobs.
Additional locations would follow at a moment’s notice, depending on how bargaining with the companies progresses — a strategy intended to ramp up the pressure on companies by keeping them guessing about how their operations would be disrupted.
« This is our generation’s defining moment, » Fain told UAW members at a Facebook Live event on Thursday night. « The money is there, the cause is righteous, the world is watching. »
The targeted strikes are a departure from the UAW’s traditional playbook, which has usually involved having all union members at a single company walk off the job at once.
The UAW is also taking the unprecedented step of striking against all three companies at once — another departure from its traditional practice.
Previously, the UAW had picked one automaker to hash out a deal with, focusing its actions on that company until it got a deal — and then pushed the other two of the Big Three members to more or less match that deal.
Still, Fein did not rule eventuallly having all union workers at the Big Three automakers walk off the job at once.A confrontational UAW approach to bargaining
As the first-ever democratically elected leader of the UAW, Fain, a long-time union member himself, has taken a more confrontational approach to negotiations than his predecessors — including filming himself throwing Big Three automaker proposals in the trash.
He has repeatedly doubled down on the union’s key economic demands – including 40% pay raises he says would be in line with CEO wage increases, the restoration of pension and retiree healthcare and cost of living adjustments.
