Autoworkers strike enters its fourth day. Now automakers face another walkout

The union representing Canadian autoworkers at Ford has put its strike plans there on hold, keeping its more than 5,000 members on the job at three plants there and providing some good news for an industry dealing with unprecedented labor disruptions.

According to an update posted on the union site: “Unifor is extending negotiations with Ford Motor Company for a 24-hour period. The union received a substantive offer from the employer minutes before the deadline and bargaining is continuing throughout the night. Unifor members should continue to maintain strike readiness.”

Click here for more…

Unifor, the union that represents autoworkers in Canada, posted Monday night on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, that negotiations are continuing down to the wire in efforts to avert a strike.

The union tweeted: “Negotiations between Unifor and Ford Motor Company are continuing with a late caucus meeting scheduled to take place within the hour. A reminder that Unifor Ford members should remain on shift UNLESS they receive explicit instructions from the union indicating otherwise.”

While negotiations between the Big Three automakers and the union are ongoing, there are no main table meetings with lead negotiators scheduled for Tuesday, a source with knowledge of the meetings told CNN. 

The next main table meetings with both sides are scheduled with GM and Ford on Wednesday, and Stellantis on Thursday, the source said.

However, the timing of those main table talks could move up after UAW President Shawn Fain announced a new deadline for targeted strikes late Monday, the source added. 

 In a video message posted to X Monday night, UAW President Shawn Fain said more strikes could happen Friday.

 “If we don’t make serious progress by noon on Friday, September 22nd, more locals will be called on to Stand Up and join the strike,” Fain said in the message. 

United Auto Workers President Shawn Fain

United Auto Workers President Shawn Fain on Monday said that more local UAW units would go on strike if the Big Three automakers don’t make what Fain called “serious progress” in their contract negotiations with the union.

In a video, Fain announced a new deadline of noon on Friday, September 22.

“If we don’t make serious progress by noon on Friday, September 22nd, more locals will be called on to Stand Up and join the strike,” Fain said. “That will mark more than a week since our first members walked out. And that will mark more than a week of the Big Three failing to make progress in negotiations toward reaching a deal that does right by our members.”

Former President Donald Trump will skip the second Republican presidential primary debate in California next week and instead will travel to Detroit to deliver a speech in front of current and former union members, according to a source familiar with his plans.

His prime-time remarks will serve as counterprogramming to the September 27 debate at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley.

The revelation comes as the United Auto Workers’ strike has entered its fourth day.

Read more here.

United Auto Workers man the picket line outside the Stellantis Toledo Assembly Complex on Monday, September 18, in Toledo, Ohio.

Stellantis and the UAW resumed negotiations on Monday.

Stellantis said its most recent economic offer included “nearly 21% in cumulative raises for hourly employees, an inflation protection measure, reduction of tiers from eight years to four and $1 billion in retirement funding.”

The union initially demanded an immediate 20% raise, and then four additional raises of 5% each — together that equates to a 46% hourly pain increase over the four-year life of the contract.

CNN has reached out to UAW for comment.

Stellantis said the discussion was “constructive” and was focused on where the two sides can reach an agreement that also helps the carmaker “meet the challenges of electrification.”

Stellantis said a framework will help in “identifying a solution for Belvidere,” an Illinois plant it idled citing increasing costs in the electric vehicle market.

“Together with the UAW, we have the opportunity to establish a framework in this contract that will allow the Company to be competitive during this historic transformation and bring our workforce along on this journey,” Stellantis said.

Tony Totty, the president of UAW Local 14 in Toledo, Ohio

Tony Totty, the president of UAW Local 14 in Toledo, Ohio, told CNN’s Jake Tapper on Monday that the labor movement is spreading “across the country.”

Totty represents the GM facility that was on strike in 2019 and could possibly shut down again in the current strike.

Workers are still “structurally broken” from the bankruptcy deal over a decade ago, Totty said, while GM CEO Mary Barra made $29 million last year, representing a 34% increase over the last four years.

“They do all the stock buybacks for the shareholders but when it gets to us, they say, ‘whoa, we can’t afford that,’” he said.

The Toledo GM factory was on strike for 40 days. It made a major impact on the local community from tax revenue for emergency services to the local businesses workers frequented.

“Nobody’s excited to go on strike once you’ve been on strike recently. But we’re prepared,” Totty said.

An aerial view shows recently manufactured vehicles at Ford's Oakville Assembly Plant in Oakville, Ontario, Canada, on May 26.

Ford faces a growing chance of another union strike on Monday night, according to Unifor, the union representing 5,600 workers at its facilities in Canada.

The union’s contract expires at 11:59 pm Monday. The union said Monday afternoon that talks with the company continue, but chances of reaching an 11th deal to avert a strike are growing slim.

“The likelihood of a strike increases with each passing hour,” Unifor’s president Lana Payne said in a statement.

The union’s contracts with General Motors and Stellantis were also due to expire Monday night, but the union granted an extension to those companies as it tried to reach a pattern-setting deal with Ford.

The issues in Canada are similar to those in the US negotiations between the “Big Three” unionized automakers and the United Auto Workers Union, which started its first-ever simultaneous strike against all three on Friday when it picked one assembly plant at each to strike.

The Canadian strike could affect Ford operations at some of its US plants. The union represents two engine plants in Windsor, Ontario, just across the river from Detroit, that makes V-8 engines for the F-150 pickup, its best selling vehicle, as well for the Mustang sports car. It also represents an assembly plant that builds the Ford Edge and Lincoln Nautilus SUV, so a strike in Canada could have a larger impact on Ford than the lone UAW strike in Wayne, Michigan.

Ford did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Unifor’s statement.

Erika Mitchell during her interview with CNN's Gabe Cohen outside Stellantis Toledo Assembly Complex in Toledo, OH, today.

Erika Mitchell, who works at Jeep’s Toledo, Ohio, factory is partaking in the United Auto Workers strike that started on Friday.

Even though she makes almost $32 an hour as a top-tier worker, she said it’s not fair that under the two-tier worker system, lower-tier workers get paid less when they are often doing more cumbersome work.

“At the end of the day I’m still breaking down my body,” Mitchell said on Monday in an interview with CNN’s Gabe Cohen outside the Toledo factory. She said she arrives at work at 5:30 a.m. and doesn’t leave until 4 p.m. and as a result has to pay for childcare services for her kids.

Mitchell, a single mom, told CNN she signed up for Instacart so she could earn more money to support her kids while on strike. That’s in addition to the $500 a week she receives in strike pay from UAW.

But union rules prohibit Mitchell from earning more than $500 a week from outside jobs.

In the meantime, Mitchell said she’s sticking to a tight budget. That includes packing her kids’ lunches instead of them buying food at school and refraining from dining out. But on the flip side, she said she’s saving some money during the strike because she doesn’t have to pay for childcare.

General Motors CEO Mary Barra during an interview with CNN's Vanessa Yurkevich in Detroit on Friday.

In an interview with CNN on Friday, GM CEO Mary Barra sought to defend her compensation package, noting that “92% of it is based on performance on the company.”

That comment refers to the fact that most of her compensation is tied to GM’s stock and bonus incentives set by the automaker’s board. (Barra enjoys a base salary of $2 million.) Critics of performance-based executive pay say those metrics are less than objective.

For example, a CEO may get a multimillion-dollar bonus as a reward for the company hitting a profit target (as Barra did in 2021). But a company’s profit depends not only on bringing in hearty revenue, but also on keeping costs — including workers’ pay — low.

Among the other Big Three: Stellantis’ CEO Carlos Tavares made $24.8 million last year, a 22% increase from the year before. And Ford CEO Jim Farley took in $21 million in compensation last year, a figure that has nearly doubled since he was promoted from chief operating officer in 2020.

UAW President Shawn Fain has argued that the union workers are simply asking for a similar raise that reflects the companies’ performance in recent years.

“In the last four years, the price of cars went up 30%. CEO pay went up 40%… No one had any complaints about that, but God forbid the workers ask for their fair share,” he told CNN last week.

This year, the Big Three are expected to bring in more than $32 billion in collective profit.

The companies argue those profits are needed to finance the biggest change in the industry in nearly a century: the shift to electric vehicles.

Read more

Members of the United Auto Workers (UAW) union march through the streets of downtown Detroit following a rally on the first day of the UAW strike in Detroit, Michigan, on September 15.

Since 1978, the CEO compensation among America’s 300 biggest companies has gone up 1,460%, while the typical worker’s pay grew by just 18% (both adjusted for inflation), according to the Economic Policy Institute, a progressive think tank.

In the same period, those CEOs’ compensation grew 37% faster than stock market growth, according to EPI.

That frustration is particularly acute in the US auto industry, which nearly collapsed in 2008 before the federal government injected $80 billion in taxpayer money into bankrupt Chrysler and GM.

At the time, President Barack Obama emphasized how the government assistance would ensure “a new beginning for a great American industry” that would create new jobs and unleash “new prosperity.”

To save the auto industry, union workers agreed to temporarily freeze wages and give up certain pension and health care benefits.

Their reward? Average hourly earnings for workers in car manufacturing have fallen about 19%, adjusted for inflation, EPI Senior Economist Adam S. Hersh wrote last week.

Over the same period, CEO pay at the Big Three Detroit automakers — GM, Ford and Chrysler parent Stellantis — has jumped an average of 40%, or roughly how much of a raise striking workers are now demanding.

Read more

Secretary of Treasury Janet Yellen in Las Vegas, Nevada, on August 14.

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said it’s too early to assess how the United Auto Workers union strike will hit the United States economy.

“It would depend very much on how long the strike lasts and exactly who’s affected by it,” Yellen said Monday morning in an interview with CNBC. Ultimately, she said she and President Joe Biden would like to see “a contract that’s good for the workers and the industry as well.”

Yellen also said that the recent string of strikes, including the Hollywood writers’ strike and nurses’ strikes, is being driven by tight labor market conditions. That’s giving workers more leverage to negotiate for higher wages with employers, she said.

“It’s important for workers to be able to realize gains,” Yellen added.

Asked if she felt the economy was at risk of entering a recession she said, “I don’t see any signs that the economy is at risk of a downturn. This is the best of both worlds to see continued strength in the economy, a good strong labor market and inflation moving down.”

GM workers with the UAW Local 2250 Union strike outside the General Motors Wentzville Assembly Plant on September 15 in Wentzville, Missouri.

If the UAW launches a full-scale strike against the Big Three automakers and it lasts through the end of the year, economic growth could come to a “virtual standstill” during the fourth quarter, according to Moody’s Analytics chief economist Mark Zandi.

The unprecedented strike entered day four on Monday and negotiations on a deal are ongoing.

A full-scale UAW strike that lasts six weeks would reduce annualized GDP growth in the fourth quarter by an estimated 0.2%, Zandi told CNN in an email.

“This is a small impact, but meaningful, particularly in the context of other potential headwinds to growth in coming months,” Zandi said.

Those headwinds include a potential government shutdown, higher mortgage rates, the return of federal student debt payments and higher energy prices as gasoline hit fresh 2023 highs on Monday.

Given those obstacles and the UAW strike, Moody’s Analytics is projecting GDP will grow at an annual rate of just 0.8% in the fourth quarter.

“Real GDP would flatline in the fourth quarter if the UAW strikes the three automakers for the entire fourth quarter and all other assumptions hold,” Zandi said.

Another impact: A long strike would reduce low vehicle inventories.

Zandi said this will “forestall additional vehicle price declines, and even potentially push prices up, stymying the current disinflation and putting added pressure on the Fed.”

S&P Global Market Intelligence is warning of an even bigger hit to GDP of up to 2.17 percentage points in the fourth quarter if the strike lasts 15 weeks.

“A lasting strike…is looking highly probable,” S&P analysts wrote in a report on Monday. “The current political and economic conditions increase the odds of a longer strike.”

UAW President Shawn Fain warned over the weekend the union is prepared to escalate the strike.

“If we don’t get better offers, and we don’t get down to taking care of the members’ needs, then we’re going to amp this thing up even more,” Fain told CBS News.

Congressman Ro Khanna during an interview with CNN's Vanessa Yurkevich at the Ford Michigan Assembly Plant in Wayne, MI, today.

California Democratic Representative Ro Khanna, walking the picket line at a Ford plant in Wayne, Michigan, told CNN’s Vanessa Yurkevich Monday that President Joe Biden and other members of the administration should join him.

“They should be walking the picket line,” Khanna said. “I don’t think they need to do any negotiations.”

“I’d love to see the president out here,” he added, arguing the Democratic party needs to demonstrate it’s “the party of the working class.”

Khanna said he joined the picket line because the fight is about more than just the UAW – it’s a “fight for the American working class” as a whole, he said.

“You’ve got CEOs who are making $30 million dollars … and all these workers are asking for is: ‘Let us make enough so we can buy the cars we made. Let us make enough so we can have a decent house, raise our kids,’” he said.

UAW President Shawn Fain on 'Morning Joe' earlier today.

United Auto Workers President Shawn Fain said he doesn’t see a role for the Biden administration in bringing an end to the union’s strike against the nation’s three unionized automakers.

“Not at all,” he said when asked on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” Monday if there would be a role in brokering an agreement for Acting Labor Secretary Julie Su and presidential advisor Gene Sperling, who President Joe Biden announced Friday he was sending to Detroit because of the strike.

“This is our battle,” he said. “Our negotiating teams are working hard. Our members are out there manning the picket lines. Our allies are out there with us. This battle is not about the president. It’s not about the former president. This battle is about the workers standing up for economic and social justice and getting their fair share.”

In his comments Friday, Biden took a pro-union position on the negotiations, saying that the companies were not offering workers enough of the record or near-record profits they were making.

“The companies have made some significant offers. But I believe they should go further to ensure record corporate profits mean record contracts for the UAW,” he said.

Despite endorsing that key union talking point, Fain expressed frustration with a statement from Biden that talks had “broke down.”

“We agree with Joe Biden when he says ‘record profits mean record contracts.’ We don’t agree when he says negotiations have broken down,” said a statement from Fain on Friday. As to the impact of the strike he said, “Working people are not afraid. You know who’s afraid? The corporate media is afraid. The White House is afraid. The companies are afraid.”

The exterior of Kunes Chevrolet GMC dealership in Elkhorn, Wisconsin. 

Dealerships will stay open

You will still be able to shop for cars, even at Ford, GM and Stellantis dealers. They’re not going to shut down, as car dealerships are independent franchises that aren’t owned by the company whose logo is on the building.

Vehicles could get more expensive

Not all automakers are facing a strike right now. Not even most of them. Toyota, BMW, Hyundai, Nissan, Tesla, Volvo and Subaru, just to name some, are still producing cars, trucks and SUVs in the United States, and their workers are not unionized.

But dealerships for the Japanese and South Korean automakers have always tended to have less vehicle inventory on-hand than those for the Michigan-based automakers. Ultimately, this could translate to pricing pressure as domestic automaker inventories start to run low and their competitors may not have the vehicles ready to pick up the demand.

Not all production will stop immediately

At plants where workers aren’t out on strike, production will presumably continue. So, if you’re in the market for, for instance, a Ford Bronco, a Jeep Wrangler or a GMC Canyon pickup, you should probably get to the dealership soon before inventories start to get really thin in a few weeks.

You may be waiting longer

While pickup truck inventories are well-stocked, they will run down if the strikes go on a long time. And truck buyers, being especially brand loyal, will probably just wait it out rather than shopping for competitive models like the Toyota Tundra or Nissan Frontier.

It pays to be flexible

Dealers will still have vehicles to sell for a few weeks, but, as the strike wears on, the choices available will start to dwindle. As the options dwindle you could try making a deal on one of the “ugly duckling” vehicles left hanging around on the showroom floor.

Read more

Contracts expire tonight: Unifor’s contracts expire at 11:59 p.m. ET on Monday with all three of the traditional Big Three automakers – Ford, General Motors and Stellantis, which makes vehicles for the North American market under the Jeep, Ram, Dodge and Chrysler names.

Only Ford would face a strike: The union has chosen Ford as its “target,” concentrating on its negotiations with the company and granting contract extensions to the other two. Once Unifor reaches a deal with Ford, either with or without a strike, it will work to get the other two to accept the Ford deal as a pattern for those contracts.

A rarity: This is the first time since 2009 – when GM and Chrysler went through bankruptcy and bailouts and Ford was also nearly out of cash – that the Canadian and US auto unions have negotiated at the same time in a previously unscheduled round of bargaining. Normally contracts expired in different years, but when Unifor negotiated its previous contracts during the pandemic in 2020, a year after the UAW contracts were reached, it demanded a slightly shorter contract to be on the same schedule as the UAW.

Ford has traditionally had good labor relations on both sides of the US-Canada border. It has not had a US strike since 1978, nor a Canadian strike since 1990. But Payne said her members at Ford are prepared to strike Monday night if the company doesn’t step up to its demands.

Demands: Members are demanding significant improvements in both wages and pensions to deal with higher prices they’ve seen in Canada just as US autoworkers have. Canadian workers are demanding similar raises as the 40% American autoworkers want.

An aerial view shows Ford's Oakville Assembly Plant in Oakville, Ontario, Canada, on May 26.

The strike by the United Auto Workers union isn’t the only labor problem that automakers, and US car buyers, need to worry about. Unifor, the union that represents autoworkers in Canada, is preparing to go on strike against Ford on Monday night.

Ford isn’t speaking about how it sees the contract negotiations going but Unifor President Lana Payne told CNN on Saturday that the two sides are far apart, especially on financial issues, saying the union has rejected the first two offers from Ford.

“We’re not close at all. There’s a lot of work to get done to get an agreement by midnight Monday,” Payne said.

Unlike the UAW, which has spelled out its initial bargaining demands, including a 40% pay raises over the life of the contract, neither Unifor nor Ford are saying where they stand on wage increase offers, but the union is looking for substantial wage hikes, pension improvements, as well as job security guarantees as the auto industry invests billions in its plans to switch from traditional gasoline powered cars to EVs in the years ahead – all issues at the center of negotiations between the UAW and the automakers it is striking.

Ford has one assembly plant in Canada, which is located in the Toronto suburb of Oakville, Ontario. The 3,400 Unifor members at the plant produce the Ford Edge and the Lincoln Nautilus SUVs.

Ford also has two engine plants in Windsor, Ontario, just across the river from Detroit. The two plants have a total of 1,700 Unifor members.

The plants make V-8 engines used in Mustangs and the company’s best-selling F-150 pickup. While buyers will be able to get versions of those vehicles with a 6-cylinder engine if there’s a strike, the Windsor plants are the only ones that make the V-8 engines should a customer want those

Read more

United Auto Workers members attend a rally in Detroit on Friday.

When the United Auto Workers called a strike last week against General Motors, Ford and Stellantis, one of their demands focused on an idea circulating on the periphery of labor reform circles.

In addition to calling for a 36% pay raise and increased job security, union members want a 32-hour, four-day workweek with no pay cuts.

Proposals to shorten the workweek have gained traction in recent years, with the flexibility of pandemic-era remote work fueling many of these calls. The accelerating use of artificial intelligence in the workplace has also pushed some workers to question the necessity of a 40-hour week.

Several countries have conducted trials of four-day workweeks, with the largest held in the United Kingdom last year. The trial lasted six months and encompassed about 2,900 workers across 61 companies. Participants reported better sleep, more time spent with their children and lower levels of burnout.

“It would be an extraordinary thing to see people have more time to spend with their kids, with their families, to be able to do more cultural activities, get a better education,” said Sanders. “People in America are stressed out for a dozen different reasons, and that’s one of the reasons why life expectancy in our country is actually in decline.”

Read more

Members of the nascent United Auto Workers Union (UAW) during a sit-down strike in the General Motors Fisher Body Plant in Flint, Michigan, January 1, 1937.

During the final days of 1936, about 50 autoworkers at General Motors shut down their machines at Fisher Body Plant No. 2 in Flint, Michigan, and sat down.

The workers, members of the tiny United Automobile Workers union founded just a year prior, sought to improve brutal working conditions at mighty General Motors, the world’s largest manufacturer. They also demanded GM recognize the union as workers’ bargaining agent in negotiations.

The UAW’s sit-down strike across GM plants lasted 44 days. It is considered the most important work stoppage of the 20th century and a turning point in relations between companies and workers in America. It was a breakthrough for unions and led to a wave of labor organizing across the country.

Now, the UAW is on strike against Detroit’s Big Three — General Motors, Ford and Stellantis —for the first time. The strike comes at a critical moment for both a re-energized labor movement and an auto industry in transition as the electric vehicle era dawns.

The UAW, led by upstart president Shawn Fain, has updated its tactics. The UAW is calling its new strategy a “stand up strike,” a reference to the sit-down strike that started 87 years ago, and has launched targeted strikes at selected plants.

“Shawn Fain is drawing from the union’s long history and modernizing the UAW tradition,” said Thomas Sugrue, a historian at New York University. “The union is relying on understandings of the past, but a reinvention to respond to current conditions.”

Read more