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auto worker strike
Why Biden's Picket Line Solidarity Is a Big Deal—Even Though It Shouldn't Be
Biden’s UAW picket line visit reflects the fact that the strike by union workers is so popular that the leader of the most pro-capitalist country on Earth believed being seen standing alongside them was politically advantageous. That's historic.
Sep 28, 2023
On Tuesday, Joe Biden became the first sitting U.S. president to join a picket line when he visited striking United Auto Workers (UAW) members outside a GM parts facility in Belleville, Michigan.
“You guys, UAW, you saved the automobile industry back in 2008 and before. You made a lot of sacrifices, gave up a lot when the companies were in trouble,” the president said to picketing workers. “But now they’re doing incredibly well, and guess what? You should be doing incredibly well too.”
The president has voiced support for the UAW’s strike at the Big Three automakers since it began on September 15. But after former President Donald Trump announced plans to hold a campaign rally at a non-union auto parts plant near Detroit — which the media grossly mischaracterized as “Trump standing with striking autoworkers” — Biden was pushed by fellow Democrats to visit a UAW picket line.
As a candidate in 2019, Biden joined workers on picket lines, including striking GM employees. Candidate Bill Clinton also walked a picket line in 1992, as did candidate Barack Obama in 2007. But no president has ever joined a picket line while in office until today.
On the campaign trail, Obama promised workers that, if elected, he would “put on a comfortable pair of shoes” and “walk on that picket line with you as President of the United States of America” — a promise he never fulfilled. As Obama’s vice president, Biden rebuffed a request from Wisconsin labor leaders in 2011 to join their massive protest against Republican Gov. Scott Walker’s push to curtail public sector union rights.
Biden’s UAW picket line visit reflects the fact that the strike by union workers is so popular that the leader of the most pro-capitalist country on Earth believed being seen standing alongside them was politically advantageous.
“This is absolutely unprecedented. No president has ever walked a picket line before,” labor historian Erik Loomis told the Associated Press.
Labor historian Nelson Lichtenstein similarly told the Guardian, “This is genuinely new — I don’t think it’s ever happened before, a president on a picket line.”
Presidents and picket lines
Almost three years into his term, much ink has been spilled debating whether Biden is living up to his promise to be the “most pro-union president leading the most pro-union administration in American history,” and today’s event will undoubtedly further fuel that discussion.
But what often goes unmentioned is what a low bar it is to earn the distinction of most pro-union president in U.S. history. Far from joining picket lines, most presidents have firmly sided with bosses, if they weren’t bosses themselves.
Twelve U.S. presidents (one in four) were literal slave owners — eight of them while in office. They physically coerced men, women and children to work for them in cruel, excruciating and humiliating conditions with no freedoms and no rights to speak of, let alone compensation.
Several presidents have deployed federal troops to break strikes and crush worker rebellions, including Andrew Jackson in 1834, Rutherford B. Hayes in 1877, Grover Cleveland in 1894, Theodore Roosevelt in 1903 and 1907, and Warren G. Harding in 1921.
Calvin Coolidge’s ascent to the White House was set in motion in 1919 when, as Massachusetts governor, he defeated the unpopular Boston police strike and declared, “There is no right to strike against the public safety by anybody, anywhere, anytime.”
During wars, Presidents Abraham Lincoln, Woodrow Wilson, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry S. Truman seized control of certain enterprises or entire industries a total of 71 times to prevent or end strikes — sometimes on the side of unions, sometimes on the side of management.
Since Congress passed the anti-union Taft-Hartley Act in 1947 over President Truman’s veto, the law’s emergency injunction provision — allowing the federal government to shut down strikes in the private sector — has been invoked by presidents 35 times.
Ronald Reagan — the only White House occupant to have previously been a union president and strike leader—infamously fired over 11,000 striking air traffic controllers in 1981 rather than negotiate a new contract with them, setting off the modern era of union busting.
Still, some presidents have also occasionally provided organized labor with moral and tangible support.
In March 1860, as the New England Shoemakers Strike was underway, candidate Abraham Lincoln addressed the situation while campaigning in Hartford, Connecticut. “I know one thing — there is a strike! And I am glad to know that there is a system of labor where the laborer can strike if he wants to,” he said.
Four years later, as the Civil War raged, a printers’ strike in St. Louis was in danger of being broken by U.S. Army troops commanded by General William Rosecrans, who saw labor disputes as impediments to the war effort. The printers appealed to President Lincoln by reminding him of his campaign remarks about the right to strike. Lincoln is said to have ordered Rosecrans to stand down.
President Teddy Roosevelt made history during the anthracite coal strike of 1902 when, instead of simply having the military stamp out the strike, he attempted to mediate a fair resolution by bringing union and management representatives to Washington to negotiate as equals.
During World War I, Woodrow Wilson rewarded union workers with shorter hours, higher wages and better conditions to avoid strikes. But Wilson was also merciless toward anti-war labor radicals, imprisoning many organizers with the Industrial Workers of the World for “obstructing” the war.
Franklin D. Roosevelt is often considered the most pro-labor U.S. president because he oversaw the New Deal — a slew of reforms in the 1930s that uplifted much of the industrial working class, including the pro-union National Labor Relations Act. A famous 1940 union poster quotes FDR as saying, “If I went to work in a factory, the first thing I’d do would be TO JOIN A UNION” — but it’s unclear if he ever actually said this.
“Earned, not freely given”
FDR’s New Deal wouldn’t have been possible without overwhelming Democratic majorities in Congress, a critical advantage not enjoyed by Joe Biden and his stalled Build Back Better agenda.
Nevertheless, Biden has made a decent effort. Under his administration, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) has been more unabashedly pro-worker than likely any time since the 1930s. Biden has also followed union leaders’ wishes on who to elevate into key positions such as Secretary of Labor and NLRB general counsel, and has used his bully pulpit to make some of the most pro-union public statements we’ve ever heard from a president (again, it’s a low bar.)
At the same time, Biden has so far failed to get Congress to pass the union-friendly PRO Act, though he was all too successful in getting Congress to preempt last year’s potential railroad strike and impose an unpopular contract on rail workers despite a majority of them voting to reject it. Anti-union actions like overriding rank-and-file democracy and denying workers’ their fundamental right to strike are unfortunately par for the course for U.S. presidents.
This seems to be something UAW President Shawn Fain understands. Just as Fain refused to engage in the traditional, ceremonial handshake with the Big Three CEOs at the start of contract bargaining, he and his union have so far refrained from endorsing Biden’s reelection (while 17 other unions and the AFL-CIO quickly endorsed him back in June).
“Our endorsements are going to be earned, not freely given,” Fain has said. This example of labor proudly standing up for itself and demanding respect, instead of reflexively bowing to those in power, likely encouraged Biden to make history by joining the picket line today. It may also be what ultimately forces the Big Three to make historic concessions to striking autoworkers.Keep ReadingShow Less
Biden on the Picket Line Is Good. But He Must Go Further
It's essential the president and other Democratic lawmakers stand unambigously on the side of working people, but even a picket line visit is not enough.
Sep 25, 2023
Kudos for joining the UAW picket line tomorrow. You’re the first president to ever join a picket line.
But please don’t stop there.
Go on to criticize the CEOs of America’s big corporations who are now raking in more than 350 times what the average American worker is earning (in the 1950s, they took in 20 times).
Blast corporations that are monopolizing their industries.
Condemn firms that are using their profits to buy back shares of stock, polluting the planet with carbon emissions and polluting our democracy with big money.
You won’t be the first Democratic president to do this.
On the eve of the 1936 election, President Franklin D. Roosevelt warned America that business and financial monopolies and war profiteers considered the U.S. government
“as a mere appendage to their own affairs. We know now that Government by organized money is just as dangerous as Government by organized mob. … Never before in all our history have these forces been so united against one candidate as they stand today. They are unanimous in their hate for me—and I welcome their hatred.”
America is again in a populist age, when a vast army of Americans have been shafted by big corporations, Wall Street, and the monied interests.
The biggest change over the last three decades — the change lurking behind the insecurities and resentments of the working middle class — has nothing to do with identity politics, “woke”ism, immigration, critical race theory, transgender kids, or any other current Republican bogeymen.
It has directly to do with a huge upward shift in the distribution of income and wealth.
Although total wealth is much greater now than it was four decades ago, the distribution of that wealth is far more unequal. The bottom 50 percent hasn’t budged. Wealth at the top has exploded.
Meanwhile, a declining share of the nation’s wealth has been going to workers, and an exponentially rising share to CEOs and big investors.
This change didn’t happen because of so-called “neutral market forces.” It happened because of policy decisions made over the last four decades. For example:
To open the American economy wide to imports from China. To deregulate Wall Street and allow it to make bets with other people’s money.
To dramatically cut taxes on big corporations and the rich. To let corporations bash unions and fire workers who try to organize.
To encourage activist investors and private equity companies to take over “underperforming” companies and then promptly fire workers and sell off assets. To allow big corporations to become far larger, monopolizing entire industries.
To allow pharmaceutical companies to extend their patents and jack up the prices of critical drugs. To allow oil companies access to federal lands and to special tax write-offs.
To bail out the biggest banks but not homeowners who get caught in the downdrafts. To privatize higher education and force students to take out massive loans. To encourage corporations to buy back their shares of stock rather than reinvest profits.
These policy decisions didn’t just happen, either. They were pushed by wealthy elites on Wall Street and in C-suites who made mammoth donations to politicians on both sides of the aisle — mostly but not exclusively Republican — to ensure that their wishes would be honored.
To your credit, you and most Democratic lawmakers in Congress have pushed for policies that will make the nation more equitable, such as child care and elder care subsidies, student loan forgiveness, and negotiated drug prices. Kudos.
But you’re reluctant to blame CEOs, Wall Street moguls, and the super-rich for what’s happened.
Yet they are to blame, as are their lackeys in Washington.
They have turned their growing wealth into increasing political power to change the rules of the game in ways that further enlarge their wealth and power, while shafting the bottom half.
Condemn them, as did FDR. Name the CEOs, leaders of finance, heads of pharmaceutical companies, defense contractors, internet moguls, and “activist” investors who have profited at the expense of the rest of America.
Be unambiguously on the side of workers in their struggle for better pay and working conditions.
Attack corporate welfare — the special tax loopholes, bank bailouts, unconditional subsidies, loan guarantees, and no-bid contracts that have lined the pockets of the wealthy, paid for by the rest of us.
Let Republicans criticize corporate “wokeness.” You should campaign against corporate greed.
Let Republicans obsess about critical race theory, immigration, and sex. You should campaign against how obscenely unfair and unequal America has become.
It’s good you’re joining the UAW picket line. But if you and other Democrats don’t tell the economic truth about what’s happened and place the blame squarely where it’s deserved, the lies of Republicans will fill the void.
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Giving the Union What It's Demanding Would Be Good for Automakers
The Big Three could unlock federal funding, avoid disruptions to their inventories, and ensure that their financial losses are spread out over several years rather than just a few months — all by simply meeting UAW’s salary demands.
Sep 22, 2023
The United Auto Workers (UAW), a union of nearly 150,000 workers at America’s “Big Three” automakers, are on strike.
On the face of it, UAW’s demands sound audacious. They’re calling for a 46 percent pay raise and a four-day workweek, among other things. But in the broader context of a decades-long decline in labor rights and wages, they’re perfectly reasonable.
What’s unreasonable is massively profitable corporations’ insistence on squeezing every last drop of productivity from their workers with paltry wages, long hours, and little-to-no job security — and then feigning outrage at union demands.
The Big Three made more than $20 billion in profits in the first half of 2023 alone. Their CEOs are compensated to the tune of tens of millions of dollars a year. Meanwhile, even the top-paid auto workers earn less than six figures a year. Temporary workers start at only $17 an hour.
After years of making concessions, auto workers believe they — and not just their bosses — should share in the industry’s record profits. “Record profits mean record contracts,” as UAW president Shawn Fain put it.
Linking worker pay to CEO compensation is a savvy move. As unions remain popular, the idea of sharing the wealth appeals to a basic sense of fairness among the public.
It also makes financial sense for the automakers themselves. When GM workers went on strike in 2019 for 40 days, the cost to the company was far greater than anticipated — nearly $4 billion.
NBC estimates that meeting the union’s salary demands today would cost the companies comparable amounts — but spread out over much longer periods. “A 40 percent wage bump for UAW members would cost GM $4 billion to $5 billion and Ford $5 billion to $6 billion over four years,” they report.
But rather than offer salaries that enable workers to budget their lives, buy homes, and project expenses, the Big Three want to pay workers individual bonuses during years when profits are high. Their ostensible reason is to remain flexible as the industry is pressured into evolving away from fossil-fuel based vehicles to all-electric vehicles in the face of a warming climate.
But President Joe Biden’s administration just announced a massive funding plan to boost EV production and tied it to labor rights. “Building a clean energy economy can and should provide a win-win opportunity for auto companies and unionized workers who have anchored the American economy for decades,” Biden said.
In short, automakers can unlock federal funding, avoid disruptions to their inventories, and ensure that their financial losses are spread out over several years rather than just a few months — all by simply meeting UAW’s salary demands.
What more incentives do the big companies need?
There’s another beautiful win-win opportunity for workers and automakers in the EV transition. It takes significantly less labor to make an EV compared to a gas-run car. According to Ford, it’s 40 percent more labor efficient to make EVs.
According to UAW, auto workers “are working 60, 70, even 80 hours a week just to make ends meet.” But if they’re making EVs, they could work fewer hours at a higher rate without impacting production or their yearly salaries. Studies show that the companies would likely remain profitable and retain employees better if they switched to a four-day workweek with no loss of pay.
UAW’s demands, in short, are hardly unreasonable. But with corporations insistent on squeezing more profits no matter the cost, merely pointing out the mutually beneficial rewards of meeting union demands isn’t enough to sway shareholders and their allies.
So the striking workers are fighting for their demands. It remains to be seen how much autoworkers can flex their power. The Big Three can certainly test their patience and find out.
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As GOP Hopefuls Champion Union-Busting, Poll Shows Majority in US Support Striking Workers
"For the first time in a generation the labor movement is held in high esteem by the American public. It is widely understood that working people need the protections only collective bargaining can provide."
Sep 21, 2023
Even as Republicans vying for the 2024 presidential nomination publicly promote their union-busting vision for the country, a new poll shows that U.S. voters across the political spectrum support Hollywood writers and actors as well as autoworkers currently on strike in demand for better pay and conditions.
The new Reuters/Ipsos poll out Wednesday found that 58% of voters, regardless of partisan affiliation, approve of the strike by the United Auto Workers (UAW), while a full 60% support the dual strike by writers and performers underway by the Writers Guild of America (WGA) and the Screen Actors Guild - American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA).
Among those not in favor of the UAW strike, 32% actually opposed the walkout, while another 10% were unsure. In terms of the writers and actors strike, just 27% opposed while 13% remained unsure. Overall, support for both strikes was higher among self-identified Democrats, with 72% backing the UAW and 79% in support of those working in the TV and film industries.
New reporting Thursday suggests that the strikes in Hollywood could be having their desired impact and heading for a conclusion as fresh talks between union negotiators and studio owners may be inching towards an agreement. Meanwhile, the autoworkers strike remains much more in its infancy stage, with UAW president Shawn Fain this week saying that more union locals are ready to join the walkout Friday if the union's demands are not met.
But as the new poll shows broad public support for the workers standing their ground, Republican presidential hopefuls this week have been outspoken in their hostility to unions trying to improve their members' lives.
On Monday, Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) invoked former president and infamous strike-breaker Ronald Reagan—who terminated over 11,000 striking air-traffic controllers in 1981—to explain what he would do if he were president.
" Ronald Reagan gave us a great example when federal employees decided they were going to strike," Scott said during a campaign event in Fort Dodge, Iowa. "He said, 'You strike, you're fired.' Simple concept to me. To the extent that we can use that once again, absolutely." While Scott didn't remark on the fact that autoworkers are not federal employees, his campaign team later emphasized that distinction to reporters.
Not to be outdone, former Republican governor and Trump appointee Nikki Haley told Fox News last weekend that she was a proud "union-buster" when leading South Carolina. "I didn't want to bring in companies that were unionized simply because I didn't want to have that change the environment in our state," Haley said.
Donald Trump, meanwhile, as Common Dreams reported Wednesday, is under fire over his plans to parachute into Michigan next week as a hero to struggling families and the working class despite his "viciously anti-worker" record when he was in the White House.
In a Los Angeles Times op-ed published Wednesday, Les Leopold, the executive director of the Labor Institute, argued that instead of blaming workers for demanding better wages and working conditions, anyone upset about the ongoing strikes should aim their ire at Wall Street greed and a financial system that rewards profit-seeking over all else.
"For the first time in a generation the labor movement is held in high esteem by the American public. It is widely understood that working people need the protections only collective bargaining can provide," argued Leopold. "This puts unions like the UAW at the forefront of the struggle to protect jobs and the environment."
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If You Need Something to Blame for UAW Strike, Try Wall Street Greed
Billions spent on buybacks means billions less not only for workers’ wages but also for developing high-quality, affordable electric vehicles to forge the transition to a green, sustainable economy.
Sep 21, 2023
The United Auto Workers are striking against General Motors, Ford and Stellantis — the Big Three — to make up for lost ground. Since 2003 the average hourly wages of UAW production workers have declined by 30%, adjusting for inflation. A large portion of those losses came when the autoworkers were compelled to help bail out GM in 2008 as it went bankrupt.
The worker concessions included a decadelong wage freeze for those hired before 2007, lower pay and benefits for new hires including the elimination of defined pensions, and the shift of the healthcare benefit fund from the company to the union. The concessions also permitted the use of lower-paid temp workers who could earn $18 an hour working alongside a longtime employee earning $32 per hour while doing the same tasks.
The union wants to end these concessions while also gaining a 40% wage increase over the next four years to match the 40% compensation increases received by Big Three chief executives over the last four years. The UAW has said that if contract negotiations don’t advance by Friday, it will expand the strike beyond the three plants currently targeted.
The federal government’s $80-billion bailout and worker concessions saved GM. Many who supported the bailout expected the company, when it returned to profitability, to invest heavily in electric vehicle research, development and production: The taxpayers saved GM, so now GM should help ameliorate global warming that harms us all.
But Wall Street had other ideas. In 2015, it swooped in to capture these newly minted profits by pressuring GM management to conduct a stock buyback of $8 billion. Made possible by the Securities and Exchange Commission’s Rule 10b-18, put in place in 1982, buybacks are a method of profit extraction allowing companies to use their profits to buy back their own shares, thus increasing the value of all outstanding shares. Hedge funds and the like take large stock positions in companies, demand buybacks that quickly increase the price of their shares and then cash out with significant profits.
This pattern happened with GM in the years following the bailout: The giant hedge fund Appaloosa Management joined with other funds to buy up 2.1% of GM shares. These efforts succeeded and then some: GM announced $5 billion in buybacks in March 2015, another $4 billion later that year and another $5 billion in 2017. At the same time, the company planned to cut 14,000 jobs and idle five automotive plants.
In addition to rewarding Wall Street share-sellers, stock buybacks also increase the pay of top corporate executives. As of 2021, stock awards and options made up 82% of total CEO compensation. Approximately 75% of all non-financial corporate profits went to stock buybacks in the decade after the automaker bailout. In the 12 months ending in March 2022, buybacks transferred $1.5 trillion of corporate profits to share-sellers. Stellantis, which purchased Chrysler, Fiat, and Peugeot in 2021, even had the audacity to announce a $1.6-billion stock buyback in February ahead of negotiations with the UAW.
Today none of the Big Three are worried about bankruptcy: Collectively they are expected to earn $32 billion in profits in 2023. The automakers claim those profits are desperately needed to make the historic shift to electric vehicles and fend off their nonunion competitors such as Tesla. Meeting the UAW demands, they claim, would cut those investments while forcing the companies to move more production to lower-wage areas here and abroad.
What they neglect to say is that Wall Street’s shadow also hovers over these negotiations. As Stellantis made crystal-clear when it authorized stock buybacks this year, the industry is more than willing to divert badly needed investment funds into the pockets of top executives and powerful Wall Street firms.
A stock buyback, of course, does not strengthen the company. It does not create investment in new plants and equipment. It does not upgrade the skills of the workforce. And it does not improve health and safety or increase research and development to mitigate climate change. In fact, it decidedly detracts from all of these critical functions by eating up the money to fund them. Billions spent on buybacks means billions less not only for workers’ wages but also for developing high-quality, affordable electric vehicles to forge the transition to a green, sustainable economy.
For the first time in a generation the labor movement is held in high esteem by the American public. It is widely understood that working people need the protections only collective bargaining can provide. This puts unions like the UAW at the forefront of the struggle to protect jobs and the environment. Perhaps these difficult negotiations can help us all realize just how much stock buybacks threaten both economic fairness and the health of our climate.
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UAW Strike Gives Us New Hope for the Working Class
Unionized workers are showing the rest of us that the rich don’t always have to get richer — at everyone else’s expense.
Sep 18, 2023
This past Thursday night, just hours before the expiration of the United Auto Workers contract with Detroit’s Big Three, UAW president Shawn Fain had plenty on his mind.
Most of that plenty would be obvious and predictable. The impending expiration of his union’s auto industry contract, with no new pact in sight. The state of the union’s readiness for what could be the UAW’s most pivotal strike since 1937. But Fain had something else on his mind as well: the continuing and unforgivable maldistribution of America’s income and wealth.
“Just as in the 1930s,” Fain reminded his fellow auto workers, “we’re living in a time of stunning inequality throughout our society.”
Back then, in those 1930s, UAW members began a generation-long struggle that put a significant dent in that “stunning inequality.” By the early 1960s, auto worker struggles and sacrifices had helped give birth — in the United States — to a mass middle class. A majority of a major nation’s households, after paying for life’s most basic necessities, actually had money left over.
In all of world history, that had never before happened.
We have numbers that can help tell this dramatic story. In 1928, just before the Great Depression hit, households in America’s richest 0.1 percent held a quarter of the nation’s wealth, households in the bottom 90 percent only just over 15 percent. By the mid-1970s, that bottom 90 percent wealth share had more than doubled, to a third of the total.
And the richest 0.1 percent? The super wealthy’s share of the nation’s wealth had plummeted — over those same years — from a quarter of America’s treasure to just over 7 percent.
But then a grand turnaround began. Since 1976, as the economists Thomas Blanchet, Emmanuel Saez, and Gabriel Zucman have detailed, the pretax incomes of America’s top 0.1 percent have jumped ten times faster than the incomes of working adults in the nation’s middle 40 percent.
Over those same years, the real incomes of working-age adults in the top 0.01 percent have soared 856 percent. The poorest half of the nation’s working adults, in that same 47-year span, have hardly seen any increase at all, with their incomes rising just a minuscule 21 percent.
Autoworker take-homes have been doing even worse. Their real wages have actually been sinking over recent years. Between 2008 and July 2023, analysts at the Economic Policy Institute reported earlier this week, real average hourly earnings for U.S. auto manufacturing workers fell 19.3 percent.
Top auto industry execs, meanwhile, have been watching their earnings skyrocket. CEO compensation at the auto industry’s Big Three — Ford, General Motors, and Stellantis, the corporate outfit that’s swallowed up Chrysler — has jumped 40 percent over the past four years, with each of the three CEOs last year taking home at least $21 million. GM’s current chief exec has pocketed over $200 million since 2014.
These same three corporate auto giants, the Economic Policy Institute adds, have “paid out nearly $66 billion in shareholder dividend payments and stock buybacks” over the past decade, not counting the $14 billion in dividends and buybacks shelled out so far this year.
The Big Three’s overall $250 billion in profits since 2013, the EPI goes on to point out, “amounts to nearly $1.7 million for each of the roughly 150,000 workers covered by UAW collective bargaining agreements.”
UAW president Shawn Fain seems to understand — just like his UAW predecessors back in the middle of the 20th century — that any real economic justice for auto workers is always going to demand imaginative struggle on multiple fronts. Striking UAW workers in 1937 didn’t just walk the picket line. They staged sit-down strikes that captured the imagination of working people the nation over.
And that early UAW didn’t just bring imagination to collective bargaining. UAW activists advanced bold egalitarian proposals on other key fronts as well, most strikingly on taxes.
In April 1942, President Franklin Roosevelt proposed a 100 percent federal income tax rate on income over $25,000, the equivalent of about $470,000 in today’s dollars. Who convinced FDR to push for that income cap? A New York Times report gave that credit to the UAW.
FDR didn’t end up getting Congress to give him a green light on that 100 percent top tax rate. But by 1944 our nation’s richest would face a 94 percent tax rate on income over $400,000, and that top rate would hover around 90 percent for the next two decades, years that would see the distribution of U.S. income and wealth become significantly more equal.
In other words, the rich don’t always have to get richer — at everyone else’s expense. The distribution of U.S. income and wealth can change, over relatively brief stretches of time and to a consequential extent.
The last time that consequential change took place in the United States, the UAW played a consequential role. That role may now be re-emerging.
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Fetterman Rips Automakers for Handing CEOs Huge Pay Packages While Skimping on Workers
"If the Big Three can find money in the couch cushions to bump executive pay by 40% over the past few years, they sure as hell can find the money to give hard-earned raises to the people who actually build the cars and trucks."
Sep 12, 2023
With a potential strike just two days away, Democratic U.S. Sen. John Fetterman ripped the Big Three car manufacturers on Monday for being unreasonable in high-stakes contract negotiations with the United Auto Workers, arguing the companies' executive compensation packages make clear that they have plenty of resources to pay workers fairly.
"If the Big Three can find money in the couch cushions to bump executive pay by 40% over the past few years, they sure as hell can find the money to give hard-earned raises to the people who actually build the cars and trucks Pennsylvanians drive," Fetterman said in a statement.
General Motors CEO Mary Barra, the highest-paid Big Three CEO, took home nearly $29 million in total compensation last year.
Ford chief executive Jim Farley received total compensation of almost $21 million in 2022, while Stellantis CEO Carlos Tavares received nearly $25 million.
"It is time for the Big Three to come to the table in good faith and work with UAW to strike a fair deal," Fetterman said Monday. "UAW is ready, but these companies are being completely unserious."
The UAW's contracts with General Motors, Ford, and Stellantis are set to expire on Thursday, just before midnight. An overwhelming majority of participating UAW members voted late last month to authorize a strike if management doesn't agree to a fair contract by September 14, and recent polling shows the roughly 146,000 autoworkers would have a majority of the U.S. public on their side if they do strike.
"CEO pay went up 40%. No one said a word. No one had any complaints about that. But now, God forbid that workers actually ask for their fair share."
In an appearance on CNN late Monday, UAW president Shawn Fain said that while the two sides have "made some progress," there's still "a long way to go" and "a lot of issues" to resolve.
Ford has been prepping for a possible strike by readying non-union salaried employees to staff key parts distribution centers.
"Stellantis has been making its own preparations to weather a strike by stockpiling parts at a facility in Belvidere, Illinois, near its recently shuttered Belvidere Assembly Plant," Labor Notes reported Monday. "The company has been staffing the warehouse with newly hired non-union workers—which Stellantis is trying to keep secret because there are 1,300 laid-off UAW members from the assembly plant who still live in the area."
The UAW rejected initial contract proposals from GM, Ford, and Stellantis as "insulting" and "deeply unfair." GM and Ford offered wage increases of 10% and 9% respectively over four years, and Stellantis proposed a 14.5% wage hike with no cost-of-living adjustment.
UAW initially called for a 46% wage increase for autoworkers along with other demands, from an end to tiered compensation structures that harm newer workers to a 32-hour workweek with 40 hours of pay.
The union has since lowered its wage-hike demand to 36% over four years, according to Bloomberg. "It is now asking for a series of increases over nearly five years that would start with an 18% boost and then alternate between 5% and 4% annually over the subsequent years of the contract," the outlet reported, citing unnamed people familiar with the UAW's offer.
Autoworkers' average hourly wages in the U.S. have fallen by 30% over the past two decades, and the UAW has pointed to major sacrifices autoworkers made during the industry's crisis in the late 2000s as a reason for its ambitious contract demands. The union agreed to give up retiree healthcare for new hires and cost-of-living adjustments for all members as automakers pushed for a federal bailout in 2008.
"It's amazing to me how analysts, when workers ask for their fair share, it's always the end of the world," Fain told CNN's Jake Tapper on Monday. "CEO pay went up 40%. No one said a word. No one had any complaints about that. But now, God forbid that workers actually ask for their fair share of equity in the fruits of the labor and the product they produce."
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