1 year ago
The UAW has amassed enough money to pay all of its members to stay out on strike against Detroit’s Big Three automakers for as long as 11 weeks.
But the union’s decision to target just a few plants at a time is one of its biggest tactical ploys — and could allow it to keep the strike going far longer.
Past UAW strikes have ranged from 40 days in 2019, to 113 in the 1940s. In each, every member walked off the job at the same time — and needed to be paid from the strike fund simultaneously. This time around, the targeted work stoppages are just one of several “X” factors that make it difficult to predict just how long they could last.
“There really isn’t anything to compare it to,” said Kate Bronfenbrenner, who has studied organized labor in the U.S. since the 1980s and now helms research at Cornell University's School of Industrial and Labor Relations.
Other unknowns include the blend of employers involved and the short track record of Shawn Fain as the union’s president.
The strike enters its fifth day Tuesday as talks continue between the UAW and General Motors, Ford and Stellantis. For now, under 13,000 workers out of the Big Three’s 150,000 are off the job. The longer the work stoppage lasts and whether it expands to other plants will determine whether it is a minor blip or a more festering problem for the economy and President Joe Biden’s political fortunes.
Here are five reasons the UAW strike is in uncharted territory:
The union is pioneering a novel approach to walking off the job.
Initial work stoppages took place Friday at a General Motors plant in Wentzville, Mo., a Stellantis plant in Toledo, Ohio; and a Ford plant in Wayne, Mich. Other local unions, meanwhile, have said they are on standby to walk off the job “at any minute, any hour, any day.”
The staggered, cross-employer approach is much less common and much harder to execute than a traditional strike, experts said, making the outcome difficult to predict.
“Striking all three companies at the same time and then doing the kind of rolling strike is really, really smart,” said Steve Rosenthal, a former political director at the AFL-CIO, who served in the Labor Department during the Clinton administration. “The amount of discipline that it takes to organize something like this is quite extraordinary, and they seem to be ready for the fight.”
The strategy also has the benefit of stretching the union’s $825 million strike fund. The UAW is paying striking workers $500 a week, which means it could cover its nearly 150,000 members at the Big Three for about 11 weeks if they went on the picket line at the same time.
The initial work stoppage included less than a tenth of that total, though the union is also promising to extend aid to workers laid off by companies as a byproduct of the strikes — as Ford did not long after the limited strike was announced.
Europe-based Stellantis is not subject to the same public opinion pressures as GM and Ford.
Ford and GM are both headquartered in the U.S., where the president has publicly sided with union members and a recent poll found that adults back them 2 to 1.
“Political support within the progressive community and the labor movement is really solid,” Rosenthal said. And “the public numbers have been through the roof.”
Stellantis, however, is based in the Netherlands — making it less likely to cave to pressure created by Americans’ perceptions.
“Everybody pretty much agrees they're not as subject to public influence because they're a foreign corporation,” Bronfenbrenner said. On the other hand, “Ford and GM are truly invested in U.S. consumers in a way that they care more about public opinion. They care more about what the president is saying.”
Current law doesn’t require White House involvement as in some other strikes.
Federal labor law empowers the White House to force a resolution when contract negotiations affect airlines, railroads, or the flow of commerce — pretty much “anything where the food supply chain of the nation would be in jeopardy,” Bronfenbrenner said.
But “these three companies don’t have a monopoly, so there are other places people can go,” she said. “I just can’t envision a national emergency from this.”
It's Fain's first big test as UAW president after winning office by a narrow margin.
Fain beat out incumbent chief Ray Curry earlier this year by only a couple hundred votes. The narrow margin and short runway to the work stoppage make it unclear whether he can inspire the kind of solidarity required to pull off the ambitious strike.
So far, the reviews seem to be going in his favor.
“I think he’s winning over the people,” Jody Calemine, director of labor and employment policy at the Century Foundation and a former chief of staff at the Communications Workers of America, said. “He’s been transparent, explained what’s happening, and why he’s doing what he’s doing.”
But the strike is less than a week old. A resounding win could cement Fain’s place at the top of the union for years to come, whereas contract terms that fall short of members’ expectations may prompt them to turn elsewhere.
There’s still a big gap between the union and the Big Three.
The companies have offered raises in the neighborhood of 20 percent, while the UAW is calling for double that. Talks between the parties have been ongoing in the days since the strike began, a person familiar with the situation, who wasn't authorized to speak publicly, said Monday.
Beyond wages, there are many other issues that will be difficult to bridge.
The union has said it seeks to wipe away concessions made when the industry was on the brink of collapse following the Great Recession — namely, a new tiered compensation structure that afforded newer employees a lower rate and skimpier benefits.
“Tiering is an issue that causes a lot of division within the workforce itself,” Calemine said. “A contract that doesn’t address tiers may not get ratified.”
The UAW also wants the ability to strike in protest of plant closures, which the car companies believe would only further disrupt their operations as they navigate a complicated transition from internal combustion engines to electric vehicles.
“They're going to have to address ending tiers," Fain said Monday on MSNBC. "They're going to have to address the pay rates, cost of living allowance. The majority of our workers now do not have any retirement security. That's a big issue. And then you have our retirees … There's a lot of concerns with this.”
The companies contend that the UAW’s proposals are unworkable. They say implementing them would put them at a disadvantage against foreign automakers and non-union competitors — specifically, Tesla.
Stellantis officials met with the UAW on Monday, and afterward the company reiterated its belief in the "compelling and strong package" it put on the table last week.
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