UAW Launches Historic Strike Across the Big Three

It’s the first time in US history that autoworkers have targeted Ford, GM, and Stellantis at once.

UAW President Shawn Fain stands with members striking at Ford's Michigan Assembly Plant in Wayne, Michigan, at the start of the strike.Paul Sancya/AP

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.

For the first time in US history, UAW members at the Big Three automakers are on strike at the same time. The walkout began when the union’s contract expired early Friday morning.

UAW President Shawn Fain announced the initial strike targets during a Thursday night speech. The short notice is part of a new strategy under which the union is striking at targeted sites, rather than across a company. The goal is to maximize leverage by keeping automakers guessing about when and where workers will withhold their labor.

The initial targets are the General Motors assembly plant in Wentzville, Missouri, the Stellantis (formerly Chrysler) assembly complex in Toledo, Ohio, and part of a Ford assembly plant in Wayne, Michigan. Roughly 13,000 UAW members are striking at those facilities. All three make trucks and SUVs, which have been key to US automakers’ profitability.

The UAW has more than 145,000 members across the Big Three. Fain said on Thursday that the union is prepared for everyone to go on strike if needed—stressing that all options remain on the table.

The UAW and the Big Three remain far apart in their negotiations. The union is pushing for a more than 30 percent increase in pay over the course of the four-year contract. Members also have been fighting for guaranteed cost-of-living adjustments, an end to tiered-pay systems that put new hires at a disadvantage, a return to defined-benefit pension plans, a four-day work week without a reduction in pay, and a right to strike over plant closures. The auto companies have offered to increase pay by between 17.5 and 20 percent, but remained opposed to the UAW’s top demands, Fain said earlier this week.

The union is estimated to have $825 million in its strike fund. Workers will be paid $500 per week by their union while they are on strike. The UAW’s strike authorization vote passed last month with 97 percent support. In a recent Gallup poll, 75 percent of Americans said they sympathize more with autoworkers than their employers in the ongoing labor dispute.

In the past, the UAW has targeted one auto company, rather than all three at once. The goal was to get one company to agree to a contract, which would then be adopted by the other members of the Big Three. In 2019, more than 48,000 workers at GM struck for 40 days before reaching an agreement.

Full-time autoworkers start at $18 per hour under the expired contract. They can reach the top rate of $32 per hour after eight years. The UAW sees the current negotiations as a chance to make up for concessions such as the suspension of cost-of-living adjustments that autoworkers accepted to help automakers survive the 2008 crisis that resulted in GM and Chrysler declaring bankruptcy. The lack of a COLA has contributed to US autoworkers’ average hourly earnings falling by nearly 20 percent in real terms since 2008, according to the Economic Policy Institute.

The Big Three have made roughly $250 billion in profits over the past decade, while spending nearly $66 billion on dividend payments and stock buybacks. CEO pay increased 40 percent during that period. In the first half of this year, they recorded an additional $21 billion in profit. The UAW’s stance is that “record profits mean record contracts.” 

Fain was elected by members earlier this year as part of an effort to take the union in a more militant direction and push aside the old guard following years of high-level corruption. In a break with tradition, Fain did not publicly shake hands with Big Three CEOs when negotiations began in July. He later threw a contract proposal from Stellantis into the trash during a Facebook livestream. On Friday afternoon, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) will join Fain and other UAW members at a rally in Detroit. 

Fain has framed the strike as a way to fight against a system rigged against workers. During a Wednesday livestream, he turned to scripture to make that case. “Why is it easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God?” he asked, citing the Gospel of Matthew. “I have to believe that answer, at least in part, is because in the kingdom of God, no one hoards all the wealth, while everybody else suffers and starves.”

“In the kingdom of God, no one puts themselves in a position of total domination over the entire community,” Fain continued. “In the kingdom of God, no one forces others to perform endless backbreaking work just to feed their families, or put a roof over their heads. That world is not the kingdom of God. That world is hell.”

Editor’s note: The author of this post and other Mother Jones workers are represented by UAW Local 2103.

THE FACTS SPEAK FOR THEMSELVES.

At least we hope they will, because that’s our approach to raising the $350,000 in online donations we need right now—during our high-stakes December fundraising push.

It’s the most important month of the year for our fundraising, with upward of 15 percent of our annual online total coming in during the final week—and there’s a lot to say about why Mother Jones’ journalism, and thus hitting that big number, matters tremendously right now.

But you told us fundraising is annoying—with the gimmicks, overwrought tone, manipulative language, and sheer volume of urgent URGENT URGENT!!! content we’re all bombarded with. It sure can be.

So we’re going to try making this as un-annoying as possible. In “Let the Facts Speak for Themselves” we give it our best shot, answering three questions that most any fundraising should try to speak to: Why us, why now, why does it matter?

The upshot? Mother Jones does journalism you don’t find elsewhere: in-depth, time-intensive, ahead-of-the-curve reporting on underreported beats. We operate on razor-thin margins in an unfathomably hard news business, and can’t afford to come up short on these online goals. And given everything, reporting like ours is vital right now.

If you can afford to part with a few bucks, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones with a much-needed year-end donation. And please do it now, while you’re thinking about it—with fewer people paying attention to the news like you are, we need everyone with us to get there.

payment methods

THE FACTS SPEAK FOR THEMSELVES.

At least we hope they will, because that’s our approach to raising the $350,000 in online donations we need right now—during our high-stakes December fundraising push.

It’s the most important month of the year for our fundraising, with upward of 15 percent of our annual online total coming in during the final week—and there’s a lot to say about why Mother Jones’ journalism, and thus hitting that big number, matters tremendously right now.

But you told us fundraising is annoying—with the gimmicks, overwrought tone, manipulative language, and sheer volume of urgent URGENT URGENT!!! content we’re all bombarded with. It sure can be.

So we’re going to try making this as un-annoying as possible. In “Let the Facts Speak for Themselves” we give it our best shot, answering three questions that most any fundraising should try to speak to: Why us, why now, why does it matter?

The upshot? Mother Jones does journalism you don’t find elsewhere: in-depth, time-intensive, ahead-of-the-curve reporting on underreported beats. We operate on razor-thin margins in an unfathomably hard news business, and can’t afford to come up short on these online goals. And given everything, reporting like ours is vital right now.

If you can afford to part with a few bucks, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones with a much-needed year-end donation. And please do it now, while you’re thinking about it—with fewer people paying attention to the news like you are, we need everyone with us to get there.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate