With 20 days to go before contracts between the United Auto Workers and the Detroit Three expire, UAW President Shawn Fain got authority from rank-and-file members at General Motors, Ford and Stellantis to call a strike if there’s no deal by the Sept. 14 deadline.
The UAW said 97% of members who voted backed a strike, if necessary. Fain told members via a Facebook Live address that he expects contracts to be resolved at all three automakers by Sept. 14. “We have a lot of options but extensions on the contract is not one of them,” he said. (You can watch Fain’s address here.)
(In South Korea, auto union workers authorized a strike by nearly 89% vote.)
Fain and UAW leaders have organized practice picket lines this week, and posted a video celebrating the UAW “flying squadrons” – teams of activists in the 1930s and ‘40s who would don Air Force-style uniforms and deploy to help local unions organize walkouts over grievances.
On Thursday, the UAW and Ultium LLC, the battery-making joint venture of GM and South Korean battery company LG Energy Solution, agreed to a deal that the union said will raise pay for workers at Ultium’s Lordstown, Ohio plant by $3-$4 an hour.
That’s a roughly 25% boost from the current base wage of $16 an hour. The agreement is a victory for the UAW’s campaign to shame Ultium (and by extension GM) into raising wages by calling attention to the fat, $45/kilowatt-hour subsidies Ultium gets from Washington for each battery produced.
The UAW is not done with Ultium. Fain wants GM to cover Ultium workers under its national agreement with the union – where workers would earn much more than $20 an hour. GM has so far refused.
