The auto workers’ strike against Detroit’s Big Three entered its fourth day with no sign of an early breakthrough and against the threat that the walkout could soon spread.
A General Motors spokesman said representatives of the company and the United Auto Workers continued to negotiate Monday.
So far, the strike is limited to about 13,000 workers at three plants — one each at GM, Ford Motor and Stellantis. However, GM warned that 2,000 UAW-represented workers at an assembly plant in Kansas City “are expected to be idle as soon as early this week” due to a lack of supplies from a GM plant near St. Louis, where the workers walked away. work on Friday.
Workers know Kansas City facility build the Chevrolet Malibu and Cadillac XT4.
Ford moved Friday to temporarily dismiss 600 non-striking workers at its assembly plant in Wayne, Michigan, just hours after other employees at the plant had walked off the job.
“This layoff is a consequence of the strike at Michigan Assembly Plant’s final assembly and painting departments because the components built by these 600 workers use materials that must be e-coated for protection,” the company said in a statement Friday. “E-coating is finished in the painting department, which is on strike.”
Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said she hopes for a quick resolution and that it is too early to assess the impact of the strike.
“It’s too early to make predictions about what it means for the economy. It will depend on how long the strike lasts and who would be affected by it,” she said on CNBC.
Experts say the strike could drive up the prices of new and used cars and cause a loss of $5.6 billion in wages and earnings for automakers.
In a sign of the potential economic and political ramifications of a long strike, President Joe Biden is sending two top administration officials to Detroit this week to meet with both sides. Biden has sided with the UAW in brief public comments, saying the automakers have not fairly shared their record profits with workers.
An administration official said Monday that Acting Labor Secretary Julie Su and Senior Assistant Gene Sperling will not serve as mediators — they will not be at the negotiating table — but will go to Detroit “to help support the negotiations in any way that the parties feel is constructive .” The official was not authorized to discuss private discussions and spoke anonymously.
UAW President Shawn Fain on Sunday rejected an offer from Stellantis — which owns Chrysler, Dodge, Jeep and RAM, along with major foreign brands including Citroën, Peugeot and Maserati — to raise its workers’ wages by 21% over four years.
Ford and GM have also each offered a pay bump of around 20%. The union is asking for a 36% raise over a four-year contract.
The union also wants the big three automakers to eliminate their two-tier wage model, which results in many workers earning less than the average wage of $32 an hour; offer defined benefit pensions to all employees; limit the use of temporary workers; offer a four day work week; and provide more job protection, including the right to strike over plant closures.
“Our demands are just,” Fain said on “Face the Nation.” “We ask for our fair share in this economy and the fruits of our labor.”
Instead of initiating an all-out strike by its 146,000 members, the union chose to target three factories a plan that could make the union’s $825 million strike fund last longer. Workers walked out of a GM plant in Wentzville, Missouri, a Ford plant near Detroit and a Stellantis plant in Toledo, Ohio, which makes Jeeps.
A key feature of the UAW strategy is the threat to escalate the strike if the union is unhappy with the pace of negotiations. On Friday, Fain said more factories could be targeted: “It could be in a day, it could be in a week.”
Strategically, targeting three factories “definitely created more uncertainty,” Harry Katz, the Jack Sheinkman Professor of Collective Bargaining at Cornell University, told CBS Newsadding that Fain signals that “he’s a tough, militant guy who won’t make concessions.”
The UAW “will get a strong deal — it’s a matter of how and when they reach a compromise,” Katz predicted.