UAW president to give update on auto talks Friday with strike in 5th week

DETROIT – The president of the United Auto Workers union is set to provide an update Friday afternoon on the progress of negotiations with Detroit’s Big Three as the union’s historic strike reaches its 35th day.

UAW President Shawn Fain is expected to address members in a live briefing on social media at 4 p.m. on Friday, Oct. 20. We’ll stream the announcement live online, or you can stream it on Local 4+.

Though Fain has previously used his weekly Friday updates to announce new strike locations, it’s unclear if he will do so this week. During last week’s bargaining update, Fain announced that the union is entering a new, more aggressive phase of negotiations and won’t be waiting until Fridays to escalate the strike — saying the strike could expand “at any time.”

It has been a fairly quiet week for Fain and the automakers, though the union was said to be exchanging deals with General Motors and meeting with the automaker on Friday, and had met with Stellantis on Thursday. It is possible the union chief could announce a deal Friday.

“Today, General Motors provided a comprehensive offer to the UAW. We have made substantial movement in all key areas in an effort to reach a final agreement with the UAW and get our people back to work,” GM said in a statement Friday. “… It is time for us to finish this process, get our team members back to work and get on with the business of making GM the company that will win and provide great jobs in the U.S. for our people for decades to come.”

In the company’s latest offer, the majority of workers would reportedly earn $40.39 an hour, which translates to about $84,000, “by the end of this agreement’s term,” officials said.

The union is seeking a 36% wage increase, restoration of pensions that autoworkers gave up during the Great Recession, cost of living allowances, an end to wage tiers, and more. Talks have progressed since starting in July, and even more so since the strike began, but no deals have been reached yet, and the carmakers have pushed back against the union’s demands.

Fain has said that he understands the union won’t be able to secure all of its listed demands this year, but the UAW has still maintained its aggressive and blunt approach throughout the bargaining process. Automakers argue their billions of dollars in profits are being used to invest in the future of the companies to remain competitive, especially amid the industry’s massive shift toward electric vehicles. The union argues that autoworkers are not appropriately compensated given the carmakers’ success in recent years.

The UAW says the Big Three automakers have amassed a combined total of $21 billion in profit in the first half of 2023, and a combined $250 billion in American profits in the last 10 years. The union argues those “record” profits made in the years after the financial crisis should equal better pay and benefits for autoworkers, who they say made sacrifices to help the companies stay afloat then.

In a rare speech on contract talks, Bill Ford, the company’s executive chair, said Monday that a major focus of theirs is to remain competitive with the “real competition” outside of the Big Three, like Toyota, Honda, Tesla and Chinese carmakers. But the UAW has shot down the competition rhetoric, saying the Big Three are mostly concerned with keeping their profit margins and CEO paychecks high.

In a video posted on social media, Fain previously said the automakers are trying to make the UAW’s demands seem “dangerous and unrealistic,” though the companies could allegedly “double our wages, not raise car prices, and still make billions of dollars in profit.” According to Fain, labor costs only make up about 4%-5% of vehicle prices, which have notably risen amid the pandemic.

Bill Ford’s comments came shortly after the UAW added a major Ford plant to the nationwide strike last week, impacting some of the carmaker’s most profitable vehicles. Fain told Local 4 that nearly 9,000 workers were told to walk out at the Kentucky Truck Plant in Louisville after Ford presented the same economic offer that day as it had two weeks ago, making “really no progress.”

In the five weeks since it began striking at Ford, GM and Stellantis, the union has been gradually expanding its strike to more facilities across 20 states. UAW leaders are taking a targeted strike approach this year in an attempt to push the automakers closer to their demands, and have been adding facilities to the strike during weeks in which they feel negotiations don’t progress enough.

As of Friday, Oct. 20, about 34,000 of the union’s 146,000 autoworkers were striking at 44 facilities across the U.S. The strike began at three vehicle assembly plants, one for each company, and has since grown to include six assembly plants and 38 parts distribution centers in total.

Before last week, the union had only closed down facilities that make midsize pickup trucks, SUVs, and commercial vans, allowing the automakers to continue producing their most profitable vehicles: pickup trucks and large SUVs. Now, the union appears to be moving into bigger territory, and could declare strikes at auto facilities that have more financial impact on the Big Three, should the strike continue to expand.

General Motors avoided a large strike earlier this month at its Arlington Assembly plant in Texas — the company’s “largest money maker” that employs over 5,000 people — after making a major last-minute concession. Just as Fain was preparing to announce a strike there, GM agreed to include electric vehicle battery production in the UAW’s national contract, a major win for autoworkers who were concerned about their place in an EV-focused future.

More UAW strike coverage here