Ohio braces for impact of potential United Auto Workers strike against ‘Big 3’ as deadline nears

CLEVELAND — Talks continue in Detroit between the United Auto Workers and the nation’s big three automakers — Ford, GM and Stellantis (formerly Chrysler) — in hopes of averting a potential strike at the end of the week impacting 146,000 U.S. auto workers. Ohio is home to about 18,000 employed by the Big 3 in 2022.

It wasn’t all that long ago when the auto industry was the economic engine that powered the Ohio economy. Consider that in 1995, General Motors was the largest employer in all of Ohio with more than 63,000 workers and Ford was right behind them at number 2 with 24,000.

But nearly three decades of plant closings have taken their toll on those numbers. In the latest figures released by the state late last year, GM’s employment numbers have dropped by 93% since 1995 to just over 4,400 workers remaining.

The latest blow for GM’s Ohio workers came in 2019 with the closing of Lordstown, the automaker’s last Ohio assembly plant.

In fact, the largest automotive employer in the state these days is Honda, with 14,400 workers.

But even though the footprint of the Big 3 in Ohio is smaller, Northern Ohio still stands to feel the brunt of a strike if workers at all three walk out on Friday. How many?

Ford has 7,000 employees at four plants in Ohio. Half of them are employed in Lorain and Cuyahoga Counties, with more than 1,700 workers each at both its Cleveland Engine Plant in Brook Park and the Ohio Assembly plant in Avon Lake.

GM has just under 4,500 workers, primarily at four locations, but 22% of them can be found in Cuyahoga County at its Parma Metals Center.

The bulk of Stellantis’s 6,600 workers can be found in and around Toledo at its Jeep Assembly complex.

While we’ve had strikes by the UAW in the past, most recently in September of 2019 that impacted only GM, never before have we had a threat against all three at the same time — something that would impact not just the workers but the local suppliers and the communities they all call home.