The company and union are very close on pay and benefits, Farley said. “But so far the UAW is holding the deal hostage over battery plants,” he added.
Union members walked out of a Ford factory in Chicago and a GM plant in Lansing, Mich., at noon, adding 7,000 workers to the strike. That brings the total to about 25,000 of the UAW’s 150,000 autoworker members.
A last-minute proposal from Stellantis on Friday morning offered enough progress for the union to hold off on widening its work stoppage against the Jeep maker for now, UAW President Shawn Fain said. The company made new offers on cost-of-living adjustments to wages, on workers’ right to strike over plant closures and other matters, Fain said in a Facebook Live address.
“We are excited about this progress at Stellantis and hope it continues,” Fain said. He added that “Ford and GM have refused to make meaningful progress at the table,” though he said talks continue.
Stellantis said it has made progress in negotiations “but gaps remain.” It said it is working “intensely” to complete a deal with the union.
A week ago, Ford was the company that the UAW spared from further strikes. The union at the time cited significant progress in negotiations with Ford.
The GM factory in Lansing builds the Chevrolet Traverse and Buick Enclave and employs 2,300 UAW members, GM said. Ford’s Chicago factory is one of the city’s largest manufacturers, employing about 5,700 hourly workers, according to Ford’s website. The plant builds the Ford Explorer and the Lincoln Aviator.
Gerald Johnson, head of global manufacturing at GM, said company negotiators “still have not received a comprehensive counteroffer from UAW leadership to our latest proposal made on September 21.”
“Calling more strikes is just for the headlines, not real progress,” Johnson said in a statement. “The number of people negatively impacted by these strikes is growing. … We continue to stand ready and willing to negotiate in good faith to reach an agreement that benefits you and doesn’t let the non-union manufacturers win.”
With Friday’s announcement, about 17 percent of the union’s autoworker members are now involved in the work stoppage, across 43 warehouses and factories in 21 states. The UAW is trying to make its $825 million strike fund last longer by targeting its walkouts as long as it can.
The strike this week drew President Biden to a picket line in Michigan, where he joined UAW workers calling for better pay and benefits.
New signs of acrimony appeared this week as the union accused GM and Stellantis of “enabling” attacks on picketing workers. Stellantis for its part also accused union members of “dangerous” and “violent” behavior on the picket line.
In a video Thursday, Fain said that a non-union contractor driving an SUV hit five picketers while leaving a GM parts depot in Flint, Mich. Two of the workers went to the hospital for treatment. The driver fled in the SUV, Fain said.
At a Stellantis parts depot in California, non-union truckers crossing the picket line have pulled guns on strikers, Fain said. In Massachusetts, a UAW member and a state senator were hit by “cars on the picket line,” Fain said, without clarifying whether the drivers were connected to the automaker.
Stellantis said Thursday it was “appalled by the UAW’s characterization of the incidents,” and it accused union members of dangerous and violent behavior.
At several facilities, union members have been “slashing truck tires, jumping on vehicles, following people home and hurling racial slurs at dedicated Stellantis employees who are merely crossing the picket line to do their jobs,” the company said Thursday. Stellantis accused Fain of making “misleading and inflammatory statements, which will serve only to escalate the situation.” The UAW didn’t respond to a request for comment on that.
GM said Thursday that a third-party housekeeping contractor “is suspected” of striking five picketing employees with his vehicle while trying to leave the Flint facility. GM said it is cooperating with local investigators and has banned the suspects from its property.
The company also accused Fain of certain “false” accusations about picketing safety, and said he was “prioritizing inflammatory rhetoric over serious efforts to reach an agreement.”
An expanded work stoppage among the Big Three automakers will exacerbate disruptions to an industry that makes up about 3 percent of the nation’s gross domestic product.
Much depends on how long the strike lasts, Austan Goolsbee, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, said Thursday during a talk at the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington. The Chicago Fed serves a seven-state Midwestern region that is home to many of the Big Three auto factories.
Past strikes show that if the work stoppage is short, say a month or less, it has little effect on GDP, Goolsbee said. “The longer it goes and the more spread across multiple companies, the more the short-run impact,” he said.
Historically, strikes haven’t had much effect on inflation, he said. But he said that his staff is keeping a close eye on the inventory of vehicles in the marketplace. “We saw during covid times that when there’s extremely low inventory, that can do wild short-run swings in prices of cars, both used and new,” Goolsbee said. “And we’re trying to get a handle on, if this thing were extended, would we have a dynamic that is different than in previous strikes.”
The strike began Sept. 15 at three vehicle-assembly factories — one at each company — and broadened last week to 38 GM and Stellantis auto-parts warehouses.
The parties remain divided on wages and benefits. The union has been asking for a 36 percent raise over four years, while the companies are offering 20 percent.
In some areas of negotiation there have been signs of progress. The UAW last week said GM had agreed to boost its auto-parts warehouse workers up to the higher wage scale that vehicle assembly workers earn (currently $18 to $32 an hour for full-timers). But Fain at the time said GM still wasn’t meeting the union’s demands on cost-of-living adjustment to wages and on job-security provisions.
As of last week, the union had made the most progress with Ford. Fain at the time said Ford had agreed to reinstate regular cost-of-living adjustments to wages, a benefit that the union lost around the time of the Great Recession, when the automakers were struggling to survive.
Ford has also agreed to let workers strike over any plant closures during the life of the next contract — a concession that no automaker has allowed before, Fain said last week.