United Auto Workers President Shawn Fain on Friday said he’s done with the routine of deciding at the end of each week whether to strike at another Detroit Three factory, and he had a pointed message for Ford CEO Jim Farley: “Go get the big checkbook.”
Fain did not order new walkouts on Friday. Instead, he said that from now on new strikes against General Motors, Ford and Stellantis North America could come at anytime, anywhere.
Fain acknowledged the weekly strike decision ritual he set in motion a month ago was encouraging automakers to wait a week before making any new offers, dragging out the days in which now more than 34,000 UAW members are walking picket lines and receiving just $500 a week in UAW strike pay.
The anytime/anywhere strike threats are reminiscent of the approach trademarked by the U.S. airline flight attendants union – who would have crews walk off flights just before takeoff, stranding passengers. The flight attendants called their approach Creating Havoc Around Our System…or CHAOS.
Fain and the UAW only needed one action to create chaos at Ford: A snap decision on Wednesday for 8,700 workers at Ford’s Kentucky Truck plant near Louisville, KY to walk off their jobs and paralyze the automaker’s largest and most profitable factory anywhere.
Some Wall Street analysts greeted the Kentucky Truck walkout as a sign that the union’s “Stand Up Strike” campaign is nearing its endgame.
The logic is that taking down the truck plants that print nearly all the profits at Ford and GM is the hammer that could force resolution of the impasses over battery plant union representation, retirement funding and other economic issues.
Fain said as much himself. “We are gunning for a deal, and soon.”
How soon is not clear.
Kumar Galhotra, head of the Ford Blue combustion vehicle business, said on Thursday that Ford is “at the limit” of what it can spend in total on the UAW contract without compromising future investments and competitiveness.
Ford Blue – home to most of Ford’s UAW workers – has a $7 billion cost disadvantage compared to its rivals, Galhotra told investors earlier this year. (See page 7 here.)
Not all of that gap is due to UAW labor costs. But Ford does have the largest number of UAW workers among the Detroit Three and builds all its large pickup trucks in the United States. GM and Stellantis’ Ram brand have large pickup plants in Mexico bringing down their average labor costs.
Fain’s response to Galhotra was the demand that Farley “get the big checkbook” – and re-think how much cash Ford sends to investors by way of dividends and share repurchases.
Galhotra said Ford is open to shifting money around among the different elements of the deal it has proposed – pay, retirement security, profit sharing.
But Fain and the companies have been so explicit about the terms of interim deals on many of those pieces that cutting one – say Ford’s current 23% pay hike proposal – to build up another could put ratification in jeopardy.
