On Friday, Sept. 29, the United Auto Workers (UAW) officially expanded the scope of its strike to include an additional 7,000 union members. These members are located in the Ford Motor Company Factory in Chicago and a General Motors plant in Michigan, according to the Wall Street Journal.
The strike started on Sept. 15 after the Detroit Big Three — Ford, General Motors and Stellantis — and the Union did not agree on renewing the workers’ contracts. The Union had many demands that were not met, one of them being a 40% wage increase.
This strike expansion came after a warning to the Detroit Big Three that if they did not negotiate in good faith and made progress in their negotiations with the union, the strike would expand. This comes after a previous expansion of the strike on Sept. 22, which only expanded against GM and Stellantis.
In a video livestream on Friday, Sept. 29, UAW president Shawn Fain announced the strike expansion as he called on “an additional 7,000 members across Ford and GM to go on strike starting on noon, eastern today.”
In that live stream, Fain expressed why the UAW was not calling for additional members from Stellantis to go on strike.
“Moments before this broadcast, Stellantis made significant progress on the 2009 cost of living allowance, the right not to cross a picket line, as well as the right to strike over product commitments and plant closures and outsourcing moratoriums,” Fain said. “We are excited about this momentum at Stellantis and hope it continues.”
The UAW’s strategy is interesting as they have limited their strikes to a few plants. It’s likely the plan going forward is to threaten to strike at more plants if progress is not made on negotiations.
The UAW strike has been an interesting event in the history of unions, not only because of their striking methods, but also because of the support they have received. On Tuesday, Sept. 26, President Joe Biden walked the picket line with striking UAW workers in solidarity.
Biden told UAW workers to “stick with it” and said “The fact of the matter is that you guys, the UAW, you saved the automobile industry back in 2008… You made a lot of sacrifices. You gave up a lot. And the companies were in trouble. Now they’re doing incredibly well, and guess what? You should be doing incredibly well.”
This strong showing of support is unprecedented, as no president has gone to walk the picket line with striking workers.
Fain also condemned violence against UAW picketers in the live stream.
“We’ve heard of multiple instances from California to Michigan to Massachusetts of violence against our picketers from people crossing our picket line,” Fain said. “We’ve had guns pulled on us, trucks and cars rammed through us and violent threats hurled at us.”
