SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
uaw strike
UAW Strike Put Us on Better Road to Energy Transition
We now know that job growth and electric vehicles can go hand in hand.
Nov 23, 2023
When the United Auto Workers (UAW) started its strike against Ford, GM, and Stellantis earlier this year, a grim storyline took shape in the press: This strike pitted President Biden’s push for a transition to electric vehicles (EVs) against his support for workers.
Writing about the strike and the transition to zero-emitting vehicles, the New York Times put it this way: “The political challenge posed by the industry’s transition to electric cars may be only beginning.” Politico was one of any number of publications issuing a simple warning: “UAW Strike Could Disrupt EV Rollout.” Two so-called facts were seemingly inarguable: Electric vehicles require far fewer workers to build, and none of the new battery plants could be unionized.
But now that the strike is over—more quickly than many assumed and on much better terms for workers than analysts had said was possible—a different set of lessons are clear, and they are the exact opposite of what many in the media and hot take marketplace had predicted:
- The Big Three automakers can invest in both their workers and the factories to make new EVs.
- Workers at many of the new battery plants can enjoy the same union protection as other autoworkers or have an easier pathway to join the union.
- Building EVs can create more jobs over the next few decades as the industry builds up its capacity and know-how.
Before examining each of these three points, it’s important to correct one misunderstanding.
While many commentators tried to pit union workers against electric vehicles, neither the UAW nor environmental groups ever did so. Just the opposite. Back in March of 2021, the UAW issued a white paper that called for specific ways the new EV industry could benefit workers: “The growth of EVs must be an opportunity to reinvest in American manufacturing, with union workers making the vehicles of the future.”
Meanwhile, NRDC was one of more than 100 green groups that sent a letter to the CEOs of the Big Three and specifically endorsed the UAW’s bargaining position: “Only through meeting these demands will the United States ensure a just transition to a renewable energy future.”
With the UAW contract in hand, autoworkers can get long-overdue pay hikes while automakers continue to make the investments they need to make (and frankly, should have made years ago) in building electric vehicles.
As the UAW strike began in mid-September, the Big Three executives and outside commentators pitted the workers’ demands for fair wages against the need for new investments in battery plants and EV factories. Ford CEO Jim Farley went so far as to warn that the workers’ demands would force Ford to scrap its investments in electric vehicles, saying the UAW’s contract demands would force the company to “choose between going out of business and rewarding our workers,” according to CleanTechnica.
But the reality was much different. The auto companies have billions of dollars in profits to draw from for these new investments, and worker salaries are just a small slice of their costs.
The Big Three made $21 billion in profits so far this year and $250 billion over the past decade. All of the CEOs have been raking in millions of dollars in their salaries and incentives. Worker salaries, on the other hand, make up just 5 percent of the cost of final assembly of a new vehicle, a study cited by the New York Times concluded.
And now, with the UAW contract in hand, autoworkers can get long-overdue pay hikes while automakers continue to make the investments they need to make (and frankly, should have made years ago) in building electric vehicles.
A big part of these investments is in building new battery plants. The auto companies have set up joint ventures to build many of them, and the UAW made it a top priority during bargaining to ensure these new plants are captured under each automaker’s master agreement or that the workers at these plants have other pathways to unionization. At first, the automakers balked, and outside analysts said this would be a bridge too far.
The Associated Press reported: “Ford’s Farley accused the union of holding an agreement hostage over union representation of battery plant workers. On a conference call with industry analysts, he said high wages at battery plants would raise the price of Ford’s electric vehicles above those from Tesla and other competitors.”
But then the ground started to shift. In a dramatic, Friday evening announcement in the midst of the strike, UAW President Shawn Fain announced that GM had agreed to unionize its battery plants. “We have had a major breakthrough that has not only dramatically changed negotiations but is going to change the future of our union and the future of our industry,” Fain said.
Stellantis soon followed, and even Ford agreed to create strong pathways for workers at future battery plants to fast-track union representation. There will be hard work ahead to ensure that all of these plants get union representation, but the agreement goes a long way toward making it happen.
Last, while this wasn’t part of the strike itself, one thing we learned along the way is that job growth and electric vehicles can go hand in hand. For years, a shadowy estimate has circulated around this transition: EVs, it was said, require 30 percent fewer workers to make; the reason being that an EV has fewer moving parts and fewer parts means fewer workers.
Except that it’s just not accurate. A stunning story from Emily Pontecorvo at Heatmap concludes: “Whether or not the U.S. is able to build up domestic battery production, early evidence of the EV transition in the United States shows that EVs may require more labor, even in the final assembly stages.” If you include the battery production figures, this new industry could create thousands more good manufacturing jobs in this country. (Pontecorvo’s full article is worth taking the time to read. There is a lot to it.)
So, the results are in, and the conclusion is clear: With a union agreement in place that includes new measures to help unionize battery plants, the predicate is set to ensure that workers benefit while the United States transitions to electric vehicles. Yes, as we have seen recently, the road ahead isn’t flat and straight. There will be twists and turns, ups and downs. But the general direction is crystal clear. We are on the road to a better tomorrow.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Big Three Autoworkers Approve Contracts After UAW Strike
"It's a good contract, you just can't get around that," said one UAW local president. "You look at the investment we got in 2019 compared to now, it's not rocket science. It's just better."
Nov 17, 2023
As voting wrapped up on Friday, United Auto Workers members at Ford, General Motors, and Stellantis were all on track to approve contracts finalized during a six-week UAW strike demanding improved pay, benefits, and working conditions from the "Big Three."
The union's online trackers had the ratification vote results as 68.2% to 31.8% at Ford, 54.7% to 45.3% at GM, and 69.6% to 30.4% at Stellantis as of press time. The UAW and companies have not yet commented on the results.
The UAW launched its "Stand Up Strike" in mid-September, and increased walkouts at various U.S. locations throughout the talks. Rutgers University labor studies professor Rebecca Givan told The New York Times that the strategy "really upended a lot of conventional wisdom" in the labor movement and helped reverse some concessions the union had previously accepted, showing that "if workers build enough power, they can win things back."
The pending agreements, which were reached over a few days at the end of last month, don't deliver on all worker demands but celebrated provisions include 25% wage increases and cost-of-living adjustments through April 30, 2028.
As Bloomberg reported:
Workers at Ford's Dearborn, Michigan, truck plant voted 78% in favor of ratifying the agreement Friday, putting Ford over the top, according to UAW Local 600 President Nick Kottalis.
"It's a good contract, you just can't get around that," Kottalis said. "You look at the investment we got in 2019 compared to now, it's not rocket science. It's just better."
The contracts' expiration date sets up a possible mass action around International Workers' Day on May 1, 2028. The UAW said last month that "we invite unions around the country to align your contract expirations with our own so that together we can begin to flex our collective muscles."
Also framing the Big Three battle as part of a bigger effort, UAW president Shawn Fain declared last month that "if we are going to truly take on the billionaire class and rebuild the economy so that it starts to work for the benefit of the many and not the few, then it's important that we not only strike, but that we strike together."
Fain on Tuesday testified at U.S. Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee Chair Bernie Sanders' (I-Vt.) hearing about how unions raise up working families and take on corporate greed. The UAW leader stressed the "essential role" of federal lawmakers, calling on them to not only support "our fights and other fights like ours," but also "finish the job for economic and social justice for the entire working class."
Already, the historic Big Three deals are leading to "UAW bumps" at other automakers including Honda, Hyundai, Subaru, and Toyota. The union is also aiming to help organize workers at Telsa, the electric vehicle company of billionaire Elon Musk.
Democratic U.S. President Joe Biden, who is seeking reelection next year, became the first sitting president to join striking workers on a picket line in late September, when he rallied with UAW members outside a GM plant in Belleville, Michigan.
The Biden campaign's Ammar Moussa said in a statement Friday that "Joe Biden isn't just saying that he'll always have workers' backs—he's proving it. After President Biden made history by standing with striking autoworkers, unions have notched historic wins and even nonunionized auto companies are taking note, increasing workers' wages.
"This is what happens when you have a president who cares about working people," added Moussa. "Workers win."
Keep ReadingShow Less
UAW Fails to Win Back Pension Plans for Newer Workers
Amid other impressive gains, this one got away. But organized labor must keep up the fight for defined pension benefits.
Nov 16, 2023
The UAW strike against Big Auto succeeded in winning impressive wage gains, but it failed to obtain a little-reported demand: that the auto companies reinstate defined benefit pension plans for new employees that had been suspended as a concession during the 2008 Great Recession.
Instead, as a consolation prize the auto companies offered and the unions took larger company payments to employee 401(k) plans.
This was a significant loss for newer workers who were not grandfathered into the preexisting pension plans. They will receive employer contributions that will rise to ten percent of salary. While that is significantly higher than what most 401(k) plan participants receive from their employers, it will fall far short of what would be needed to provide retirement income equivalent to that of a pension plan. That would require contributions of 25 to 30 percent of salary. Put differently, they will receive one-third to one-half of what workers with equivalent careers received from pension plans.
Pension plans also produce more income because they minimize drainage of fees and profit-taking to the financial services industry which gains much more from managing 401(k) plans.
Defined benefit pension plans produce much more income for retirees because they incorporate risk sharing among participants while 401(k)s shift all the risks to individuals. If the market tanks, it’s the employer’s problem with pension plans, the worker’s problem with 401(k)s. Pension plans guarantee set amounts of life income according to sizes of employee salaries and lengths of time worked. 401(k) retirement incomes depend on sizes of accumulated individual investments. These in turn depend on amounts invested and the skill or luck of the investors.
Pension plans also produce more income because they minimize drainage of fees and profit-taking to the financial services industry which gains much more from managing 401(k) plans.
Many people have been led to believe by the financial services industry and conservative think tanks that pension plans are old fashioned, impractical, and unsustainable. This is simply not true. The country has over 50,000 healthy pension plans covering over 60 million active and retired workers. Most public employees have pension plans. And, the largest source of retirement income for most retirees comes from a pension plan: Social Security.
Private employers don’t like pension plans because they don’t want the responsibility and risk involved in sponsoring them. Yet, if an employer is worried about providing adequate retirement income for his workers, it is much cheaper to do so by investing in a pension plan than by providing enough payments to 401(k) accounts. A dollar invested in a pension plan will produce far more retirement income than one contributed to a 401(k).
Private employers don’t like pension plans because they don’t want the responsibility and risk involved in sponsoring them.
It was a victory that the UAW raised the demand to allow newer workers into the pension plans. It challenged the belief that the loss of pension plans was irreversible with 401(k)s being the only alternative. The UAW should not abandon that demand for future contract negotiations.
In the meantime, UAW workers should hold onto their 401(k) accumulations with the hope that in the future they can be rolled into a pension plan for credit for time worked. That is all possible actuarily and there are precedents for it.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Pharmacists Refuse to Fill a Prescription for Disaster
They are walking out across the country for better working conditions and a commitment to increasing staffing levels needed to perform their job safely and effectively for the patients they serve.
Nov 15, 2023
Employees are staging walkouts at some of the biggest pharmacy retail chains in the country. A string of pharmacies closed at CVS in Kansas City. Later pharmacists held walkouts at Walgreens. More recently, an estimated 4,500 pharmacy workers from all three of the biggest chains, CVS, Walgreens and Rite Aid, announced participation.
#Pharmageddon is trending in nationwide protest. Pharmacy Guild, a new worker empowerment project, announced its efforts to unionize. With the recent news of the SAG-AFTRA strike ending, and the United Auto Workers declaring victory in new contracts, there is hope agreements can be made for resolution.
I worked as a community pharmacist early in my career more than 20 years ago. I dreaded times when I was alone in the pharmacy—every shift—haphazardly filling prescriptions while getting tied up on the phone adjudicating insurance claims, all the while running from one end of the pharmacy to another inputting, verifying, and dispensing prescriptions rapidly.
Every voice is needed to see positive legislation and improved conditions for pharmacies and to also encourage reform.
I was also answering doctor calls, attending to the drive-through, and hurriedly ringing up and counseling patients as fast as I could, without any help for half of my workday. Admittedly, I did not have the added stress of administering vaccinations while performing those duties at that time.
Pharmacy walkout momentum has been on the rise since 2021. Chronic understaffing coupled with higher prescription volume and growing additional duties exacerbated by the Covid-19 pandemic, with vaccinations and rapid test appointments, have led to unsafe working conditions for both employees and patients.
Additionally, abusive business practices by pharmacy benefit managers have not only resulted in thousands of pharmacy closures nationwide, but inflation in the amount paid for prescription drugs by seniors due to a loophole in Medicare regulations. According to Centers for Medicaid & Medicare Services, retroactive direct and indirect remuneration fees have increased by 107,400% between 2010-2020.
To be sure, drugstore chains have been struggling over the years with rising competition from mail-order pharmacies and lower reimbursement rates for prescription drugs, leading to the elimination of multiple locations and bankruptcy filings.
However, the pharmacy closures are now leaving gaps in communities for medicines and essentials. An assessment of pharmacy closures revealed one in eight pharmacies closed from 2009-2015, with pharmacies located in low-income, urban areas at greater risk of closing. The closures can create pharmacy deserts, further worsening the problem of disparities and access.
Pharmacists are highly skilled and trained, obtaining six to eight years of formal education with an additional one to two more years for possible post-graduate training. They enter the workforce eager to use their expert drug knowledge and provide patient-centered care.
For many, the excitement quickly dissipates in a highly volatile, pressurized environment. Inadequate staffing and burnout are truly a prescription for disaster.
The American Pharmacists Association supports workplace safety and well-being. The American Association of Colleges of Pharmacy is also in solidarity to improve working conditions.
Unlike other union strikes by autoworkers and SAG-AFTRA members, pharmacists participating in the walkouts are not asking to increase their salary. They are asking for better working conditions and a commitment to increasing staffing levels needed to perform their job safely and effectively for the patients they serve.
They are asking to not have to put patients’ lives at risk every day. They are asking not to have to place their mental health and well-being at risk every day. They are asking for improved work-life balance and sustainable working conditions to keep patients safe.
They are asking retail employers to do the right thing and set realistic goals for performance with adequate resources and staffing in place. They are asking pharmacy benefit managers to do the right thing and stop the assessment of exorbitant direct and indirect remuneration fees on retail prescriptions that are pushing pharmacies out of business.
It is not too much to ask.
As of January 1, 2024, the Centers for Medicaid & Medicare Services issued a final rule eliminating Part D plans’ and pharmacy benefit managers’ use of retroactive direct and indirect remuneration fees.
However, the first half of 2024 will still come with cash flow challenges for pharmacies, high fees, and low point-of-sale reimbursement during the transition, in addition to retroactive fees from 2023. More actions are needed to stop pharmacy benefit managers’ harmful business practices.
Every voice is needed to see positive legislation and improved conditions for pharmacies and to also encourage reform. From policy makers to elected officials, advocates, healthcare professionals, funders, pharmacists, retailers, customers, and citizens, everyone needs to acknowledge this urgency and make changes.
Community pharmacists need help now.
Keep ReadingShow Less
The UAW’s Game Changer: The Right to Strike Over Mass Layoffs
This historic victory could have significant benefits for all working people.
Nov 14, 2023
The United Auto Workers has scored major victories in its new contracts with the Big Three automakers: GM, Ford, and Stellantis. Not only did the union win massive wage increases and other critical demands, but it also won the virtually unheard of right to strike over plant closures. This historic victory could have significant benefits for all working people.
Since the dawn of capitalism, plant closings and mass layoffs have disrupted working-class lives. The problem rapidly accelerated when Republican and Democratic administrations, starting with Reagan in 1980, freed Wall Street from regulations that discouraged job-killing leveraged corporate takeovers and stock buybacks. While researching my upcoming book, Wall Street’s War on Workers, we found that more than 30 million workers have been subjected to mass layoffs since 1996.
The auto industry was one of the first to institute mass layoffs as mismanagement and stiff competition from abroad in the 1970s cut into the Big Three’s market share. Until this recent UAW contract, unions mostly had been unable to stop mass layoffs. Instead, they only had the contractual right to conduct “effects bargaining,” negotiating to secure severance payments for the workers who would be let go. Even if they had wanted to strike, in most cases it would have been prohibited by their contracts.
The UAW has changed that game. If GM or Ford or Stellantis decide to shut down a facility going forward, they will now be forced to think twice. Is the risk of a national strike that could cost them billions, worth the short-term savings that come with layoffs? Or might it make more sense to find another use for the facility and keep everyone working? The new UAW contracts with the Big Three bring this entirely new financial dynamic into the mass layoff game. Already, Stellantis has agreed to reopen its plant in Belvidere, Illinois, and rehire all 1,200 laid-off workers there.
As Stellantis just demonstrated by reopening its Belvidere facility, large corporations are far more flexible than their public rhetoric suggests.
But doesn’t forcing the companies to keep those workers employed weaken them and make them less competitive? That’s what corporations always claim… at least until persuaded and pressured to do otherwise. However, corporate leaders know that mass layoffs often have little to do with production and sales. In many cases, mass layoffs are used to squeeze more cash out of the company to finance stock buybacks – a legalized form of stock manipulation that enriches top corporate officials and Wall Street stock-sellers (see Mass Layoff Capitalism). For example, in the last 12 years, GM has poured more than $21 billion into stock buybacks. No one knows for certain how many jobs were lost to help finance those buybacks, but the number is certainly significant. In 2015 alone, the company laid off 14,000 employees.
Our research suggests that in many, if not most, cases, stock buybacks and/or leveraged buyouts precede mass layoffs. Companies like Toys “R” Us and Bed, Bath and Beyond have been ruined by that process.
But what if an auto company really can’t sell one of its products? How then could it possibly keep a plant open?
As Stellantis just demonstrated by reopening its Belvidere facility, large corporations are far more flexible than their public rhetoric suggests. They are adept at finding ways to cut costs by outsourcing work to non-union labor, here and abroad. If pressured, they have the capacity to redirect that production to facilities that are being shut down here and re-employ union labor.
An excellent example of this flexibility can be found at Siemens Energy. The company decided in 2020 to quit the oil drilling and fracking businesses and announced layoffs of approximately 1,700 U.S. workers and another 3,000 thousand in Germany. In the U.S., all the layoffs took place and the unions involved conducted effects bargaining. But in Germany, where workers hold half the seats on the Siemens board of directors, the union won an agreement that there would be no compulsory layoffs. Instead, the company was allowed to try to entice workers to leave voluntarily with significant pay and benefit packages. The company also agreed to put new production into the six facilities that were originally scheduled to be shut down.
The UAW is forging a new path to build real union power to stop corporate mass layoffs through the right to strike.
In the U.S., workers do not have that kind of leverage on boards of directors. In Germany, it is mandated by laws urged upon them by the U.S. after WWII. The UAW is forging a new path to build real union power to stop corporate mass layoffs through the right to strike.
Shawn Fain, the visionary and effective UAW president, wants these union successes to spread far and wide. He is urging every union to have their contracts end on the same date—May 1, 2028—the internationally recognized Labor Day, which honors the 1892 Homestead strike for the eight-hour work day. With concerted pressure, perhaps the labor movement would develop broader, basic common demands that support the working class. Stopping needless mass layoffs should be near the top of the list.
Can you imagine if every union had the right to strike over mass layoffs and then succeeded in protecting job security? That might lead to an explosion of workers wanting to join unions. We might even see a repeat of a legendary story from the diary of a union organizer during the 1940s: “Today I organized 12 new local unions,” he wrote. Of course, he didn’t go out and organize each one on his own. They were running into the organizer’s office requesting union charters.
Today, for the first time in a long, long time, there’s a decent chance that workers will be running to the UAW.
Keep ReadingShow Less
How to the Labor Movement Can Make the UAW’s 2028 General Strike Dream Come True
This could be the beginning of the most exciting resurgence of American organized labor power in a century. Or, it could just be a tweet.
Nov 12, 2023
The labor movement is a capricious friend—it hands out heartbreak as much as it hands out joy. But every once in a while, it is able to wave a triumphant flag and give us all a glimmer of what its potential could truly be.
The recently concluded UAW strike offered just such a moment. It wasn’t just the contract agreements themselves, which were a material success, but also the union’s public call for movement-wide coordination to build the possibility of mass action around the May 1, 2028, expiration of the next auto contracts.
“We invite unions around the country to align your contract expirations with our own so that together we can begin to flex our collective muscles,” the UAW declared on October 29.
This is a powerful, national union with more than 400,000 active members, fresh off winning a consequential industrial strike, that is shining the Labor Movement Bat Signal high in the sky and beseeching its peers: Join us!
This could be the beginning of the most exciting resurgence of American organized labor power in a century. Or, it could just be a tweet. What happens in the coming months will determine which of those things is the case.
The general feeling of a labor power resurgence since the pandemic has been fueled by a procession of high profile wins: The Starbucks and Amazon union drives, the massive organizing on college campuses, the friendly Biden administration and its uniquely pro-union NLRB, the historically high favorability of unions in public opinion polls, the periodic mini-strike waves at a variety of fed-up workplaces. This year, we have seen a trio of actions—the Teamsters backing down UPS with a credible strike threat, and the successful WGA and UAW strikes—that show what can be won with the power of strikes at a larger scale.
All of this is encouraging. All of this is evidence of a real shift in public sentiment. All of this, however, does not add up to a robust and lasting change in the balance of power between capital and labor. Right now, what we have are a bunch of discrete occurrences, a bunch of data points that amount to proof of potential.
There are two things that will determine whether or not this promising moment leads to a true, historic revival of the labor movement. The first is easily measurable: union density. Barely 1 in 10 American workers is a union member today. Despite all of the wins just mentioned, that number has not risen in the wake of the pandemic. The primary thing that unions need to do today is to organize more union members. Without this, organized labor is a walled and shrinking garden, rather than a legitimately expansive force for society-wide change.
The second thing is related to the first, but it offers a broader menu for action: We must see some tangible coordination of action across the U.S. labor movement. It is great when one union wins a contract, or organizes an important new company, but those isolated events will not be enough to take on the combined power of trillion-dollar multinational corporations and their political allies. Not even when they involve tens or hundreds of thousands of workers. Big unions, the ones with the most resources, along with whatever non-union groups want to help them, must be able to sit down and plan and carry out big national campaigns together if we want to have any chance at winning the class war. Amazon will never be a unionized company without an enormous, multi-union campaign. Nor will the powerful and wealthy tech industry be organized without an enormous multi-union campaign. We will never achieve the eternal goal of “organizing the South” without an enormous multi-union campaign. Nor will we ever pull off strategic general strikes without an enormous multi-union campaign.
The process of scaling up from some unions making incremental progress to a national labor movement strategically building and exercising labor power wherever and whenever it needs to, all in order to drown the monster of inequality once and for all, will require a whole lot of coordination. That sort of coordination—the sort that happens in service of movement goals, rather than those of individual (and sometimes feuding) unions—really doesn’t happen today.
Ideally, an organization like the AFL-CIO would have begun coordinating such an effort years ago. But they haven’t, and there is little evidence that they will. So unions will have to build these coalitions themselves. And that’s what made the UAW’s public call for other unions to line up their contract expiration dates with theirs so exciting.
This is not some meaningless fringe group. This is a powerful, national union with more than 400,000 active members, fresh off winning a consequential industrial strike, that is shining the Labor Movement Bat Signal high in the sky and beseeching its peers: Join us! If we get ourselves aligned, in four and a half years, we can really put the capitalists in a headlock.
There is much to love about this strategy. It is both powerful and achievable. Lining up contract dates does not require the blood, sweat, and uncertainty of huge new organizing campaigns. It is a way to make existing unions stronger by drawing their influence together into a single point. (Look at the Culinary Union in Las Vegas, currently threatening to strike the entire Las Vegas strip, for an example of what can be won with this tactic in practice.)
There is not a lot of time to waste. But on a more positive note, this is a uniquely plausible opportunity for a historic boost in organized labor power.
Doing this not just in one union or one industry but across many unions in many industries can set the stage for a mass walkout. It can make political power brokers pay attention in ways that they otherwise wouldn’t. It can captivate the public, and draw them into the fight even if they are not union members. It is a real world example of scaling up. It is not just one group of unionized workers making a demand for themselves; it offers the promise of workers in general making demands for the entire working class, backed up by the threat of a general strike. It’s not a dream. It can be done. The UAW is exactly the sort of credible organization that can be the launching point.
What it will take is other major unions taking this call seriously. Most union contracts are three years long, give or take. That means that unions must begin planning for this now. Contracts that are negotiated in 2024 and 2025 need to set their expiration dates for May 1, 2028. Realistically, the UAW and its allies need to convince many of their fellow big unions that this is a real goal within the next six months. There should be furious inter-union lobbying already taking place. The more radical unions, who have an actual vision, should publicly sign onto this plan in the near future, and then they should fan out and try to draw in the less radical unions, by arguing that this action is low-risk common sense. It’s a good argument!
The bigger this gets, the stronger it is, and the more it helps every union. And the more it helps every union, the more leverage it gives this broader coalition of unions to make larger demands that will benefit everyone in the working class, unionized or not. Union leaders need to be made to see the virtues of this argument soon. The case then needs to be made to individual units, and to individual workers, who will have to decide that they want their own contracts to be a part of this strategy.
There is not a lot of time to waste. But on a more positive note, this is a uniquely plausible opportunity for a historic boost in organized labor power. The path to achieving this goal is very straightforward, and there is no part of it that is not within the capabilities of existing unions, their organizing staff, and current members. It does not require finding a huge amount of new resources. It just requires today’s unions to have a little vision, and to be willing to work together.
Sometimes, ironically, those qualities are in short supply in the labor movement. But there is no reason we can’t stop being our own worst enemy, right now. Big things are on the table. Let’s reach out and take them.
Keep ReadingShow Less
The UAW Is Leading the World Toward a May Day to Remember
If May 1, 2028, arrives without signed contracts for America’s unionized auto workers, UAW president Shawn Fain has now made plain, these workers don’t plan on walking out alone.
Nov 05, 2023
The folks at the U.S. Coast Guard know “mayday” as well as anyone. Every year they handle thousands of “mayday” distress calls. Their counterparts worldwide handle thousands more. Overall, the number of “mayday” calls since the 1920s—when “mayday” became the international go-to for declaring emergency situations—now runs well into the millions.
But we’ve never had a “mayday” more socially consequential than the “mayday” that U.S. auto workers have just thrust upon our global calendar. This potential “mayday” just happens to impact only our world’s richest—and has suddenly become a much more real possibility than a crash of any one of their outrageously deluxe private jets.
What have U.S. auto workers done? They’ve successfully bargained a set of watershed contracts that establish May 1, 2028, as the day the workers of our world may actually unite, for the first time ever, against our world’s super wealthy.
The greatest significance of the new UAW auto industry contracts may be the impact these bargaining triumphs will have on the future. These agreements could become the single most important step to a more equal world that any of us have ever seen.
The new contracts the United Auto Workers union is now signing with Detroit’s Big Three—Ford, GM, and Stellantis—all set April 30, 2028 as their expiration date. That would make May 1 the day the workers the three new contracts cover walk out on strike if no new deal materializes.
This May 1 date, of course, holds enormous global significance. Working people the world over have been celebrating the first of May as “International Labor Day” for generations, in a tradition that began back in 1886 when workers in the United States struggling for an eight-hour day staged a May 1 national protest.
If May 1, 2028, arrives without signed contracts for America’s unionized auto workers, UAW president Shawn Fain has now made plain, these workers don’t plan on walking out alone.
“We invite unions around the country to align your contract expirations with our own so that together we can begin to flex our collective muscles,” says Fain. “If we’re going to truly take on the billionaire class and rebuild the economy so that it starts to work for the benefit of the many and not the few, then it’s important that we not only strike but that we strike together.”
And by aligning the UAW’s next big contract deadline with International Labor Day, the union is clearly inviting coordination beyond the national level. The May Day that workers worldwide have so long honored, as Fain notes, has always been “more than just a day of commemoration, it’s a call to action.” And the labor movement worldwide, as the latest headlines remind us, is showing real signs of acting more in strategic concert.
Within the global auto industry, for instance, no corporation more embodies the inequality our corporate world order has spread so aggressively than the non-union Tesla. Under CEO Elon Musk, the world’s richest single individual, Tesla pays wages that run substantially below the hourly rates at Detroit’s Big Three, and that gap will only widen after the new UAW contracts go into full effect.
This shortchanging of workers has sped the growth of Musk’s fabulous fortune and helped boost Tesla’s share of the global electrical vehicle market to about 60%. The new UAW contracts, predicts German Bender of the Swedish think-tank Arena, could well “boost union interest among Tesla workers.”
That interest already seems to be growing. On the final Friday of the UAW walkout in the United States, workers at Tesla-owned servicing shops in Sweden went out on strike—after five years of fruitless attempts to get Tesla’s Swedish subsidiary to reach a bargaining agreement. That strike has now spread to all auto shops in Sweden that do work on Tesla cars.
This Swedish walkout, the global union confederation IndustriALL has announced, represents the first formal strike against Tesla anywhere in the world. And the challenge to Tesla may soon be spreading beyond Sweden. Germany’s largest union, Bloomberg reports, is hoping to organize a 12,000-worker Tesla plant near Berlin.
Tesla’s over 120,000 workers worldwide will certainly see plenty to like in the new UAW contracts in the United States. At Ford, workers who started as temps making $16.67 an hour will be automatically moving to permanent status and an hourly wage rate of at least $24.91. That rate will hit $40.82 an hour by the contract’s end, and any inflation between now and then will kick that rate still higher.
Workers in major American industries haven’t seen gains that stunning since the middle of the 20th century, a time when the chief execs of America’s largest corporations averaged only just over 20 times the compensation of their workers. That gap today, the Economic Policy Institutecalculates, is now running nearly 350 times.
But the greatest significance of the new UAW auto industry contracts may be the impact these bargaining triumphs will have on the future. These agreements could become the single most important step to a more equal world that any of us have ever seen.
The giants of American auto manufacturing, as Fain puts it, “underestimated” their own workers’ capacity to unite and fight together.
“We have shown the companies, the American public, and the whole world that the working class is not done fighting,” he adds. “In fact, we’re just getting started.”
Keep ReadingShow Less
'UAW Bump': Toyota Announces Raises After Union Reaches Tentative Deal With Big Three
"They did it now because the company knows we're coming for them," UAW president Shawn Fain said in response to the news.
Nov 03, 2023
Days after the United Auto Workers announced tentative deals with the Big Three carmakers, Toyota confirmed this week that it would offer raises to its nonunion U.S. factory workers.
The Japanese automaker said Wednesday that hourly manufacturers at the top of the pay scale would see a 9% raise beginning January 1, Reuters reported. UAW president Shawn Fain, who is attempting to use the union's victory to bolster the wider labor movement, said that the timing of Toyota's announcement was no coincidence.
"Toyota isn't giving out raises out of the goodness of their heart," he said in a video statement shared by More Perfect Union on Friday. "Toyota is the largest and most profitable auto company in the world. They could have just as easily raised wages a month ago or a year ago. They did it now because the company knows we're coming for them."
In the deals struck with Ford, Stellantis, and General Motors, the UAW secured a 25% pay raise over the life of the contracts. The tentative agreements brought an end to a historic six-week strike, as members return to work while they vote on whether or not to ratify the deals.
The UAW has negotiated for the three contracts to expire on April 30, 2028, a slightly longer lifespan than usual, according to Labor Notes. In a speech Sunday, Fain said part of the reason for the longer contracts was to give the labor movement time to build toward a potential strike on May Day 2028. Fain also said the UAW planned to spend the next four-and-a-half years organizing workers at nonunion plants owned by companies including Tesla, Volkswagen, Mercedes, BMW, Honda, Nissan, and Toyota.
"When we return to the bargaining table in 2028, it won't just be with the Big Three. It will be the Big Five or Big Six," Fain said.
"UAW. That stands for, 'You are welcome.'"
On Monday, a Toyota employee at a plant in Alabama told Labor Notes that management had called workers into an emergency meeting offering to raise top pay to $32 an hour and to scale up workers to that level in four years instead of eight. Another employee at a Kentucky plant said the top rate for production workers there had been raised by $2.94 to $34.80 and skilled trades workers saw a $3.70 boost to $43.20.
Toyota confirmed it was offering raises to news outlets Wednesday. It also said it was halving the time needed to reach top pay across the board and expanding paid time off.
"We value our employees and their contributions, and we show it by offering robust compensation packages that we continually review to ensure that we remain competitive within the automotive industry," Chris Reynolds, Toyota Motor North America's executive vice president, said in a statement reported by Reuters.
Toyota's actions are in keeping with findings that a strong union movement benefits nonunion workers as well. During the 1950s, when union membership peaked at one-third of U.S. workers, income inequality was at its lowest since the Great Depression spike, according to figures shared by the Department of the Treasury. By 2022, only 10% of U.S. workers were in a union, and the top 1% took home almost 20% of total income. If private sector union membership increases by just 1%, nonunion workers see a 0.3% wage increase.
"Even though you're not yet members of our union, that pay raise Toyota's giving you is the UAW bump," Fain addressed Toyota workers in his statement. "UAW. That stands for, 'You are welcome.'"
"You are welcome to join our Stand Up movement," he continued. "If this is what Toyota gives you when the Big Three stand up and fight, imagine what you could accomplish if you join the UAW and stand up and fight for yourselves."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Does UAW Strike Win Against Big Three Mean Pendulum Swinging Towards Labor Power?
If the victory ripples across the auto industry and encourages wage increases in other industries, it will also be a victory for the American middle class. But the Federal Reserve is not yet done attacking the working class.
Oct 31, 2023
The United Auto Workers has scored a major victory.
It’s still awaiting a vote by union members, but it’s a big deal – a 25% wage increase over the 4 ½ years of the contract, cost-of-living increases that will further ratchet up hourly pay, the right to strike over plant closures, and a quicker time to reach top pay.
If the victory ripples across the auto industry and encourages wage increases in other industries, it will also be a victory for the American middle class.
For thirty years – from 1946 t0 the late 1970s – the American middle class expanded. That was largely because unions won increases in wages and benefits that roughly tracked gains in overall productivity.
Non-union companies gave their workers similar raises because they knew they’d be targets of union organizing if they didn’t.
It was the America’s postwar social contract.
But since the late 1970s, the wages of production workers have been nearly stagnant, adjusted for inflation. Most gains have gone to the top.
What happened to the postwar social contract?
For one thing, activist investors (called “corporate raiders” in the 1970s and 80s, and “private equity managers” today) got the right to mount hostile takeovers of companies, and then demand fatter profits.
Since payrolls comprise about two-thirds of corporate costs, the raiders forced corporations to keep a lid on wages and benefits.
To do this, corporations had to bust unions -- outsourcing jobs abroad, moving to anti-union (aka “right-to-work”) states, and firing workers who tried to organize.
Ronald Reagan legitimized all this when in 1981 he fired more than 11,000 striking air traffic controllers represented by the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization, or PATCO.
The result was a dramatic decline in the bargaining power of ordinary workers. And with it, a shrinkage of the American middle class.
In the 1950s, over a third of all private-sector workers were unionized. Today, unionized workers comprise just 6 percent of private-sector workers (10 percent of all workers belong to a union but many work in the public sector).
From 1946 through the early 1970s, unions staged hundreds of major strikes each year. After 1981, the number of major strikes dropped to a few dozen per year.
Is the pendulum now swinging back?
So far in 2023, there have been 22 major strikes, 17 of them at corporations.
Contracts negotiated by the UAW, Hollywood writers, UPS workers, Kaiser Permanente healthcare workers, and even university employees, among others, provide significant pay increases and more job security (writers even got some protections against AI).
Most Americans are solidly behind the workers. Polls show that the public supported autoworkers over the companies by large margins.
Confidence in big business is at its lowest point in decades while approval of labor unions is near its highest.
What accounts for this burst of labor activism, remarkable run of labor victories, and public support of unions?
Partly, I think, it’s the harsh inequalities exposed by the pandemic.
The pandemic dramatically revealed how much easier it is for rich Americans to survive than everyone else, and how dependent all of us are on average workers simply doing their jobs.
Couple this with the rise in populist politics -- starting with Bernie Sanders’s surprisingly strong showing in 2016 and Donald Trump pose as the “voice” of workers -– in a system looking increasingly rigged against average people.
In addition, union victories have animated a virtuous cycle -- encouraging more workers to join unions and more unions to flex their muscles and demand wage hikes.
And then there’s the tight post-pandemic labor market, in which consumers are spending like gangbusters, the economy is surging, and employers worry about getting and keeping the workers they need.
So, will the pendulum continue to swing toward unions?
I’d love to think so. But I frankly worry about Fed Chair Jerome Powell and his colleagues.
They continue to believe – wrongly – that inflation is being pushed by wage increases rather than by corporate profits.
If they succeed in slowing the economy to the point where workers lose whatever bargaining leverage they now have, it’s far from clear that populist politics or more vivid inequalities or a string of labor victories will be enough to put organized labor on the path to where it was four decades ago.
Keep ReadingShow Less
UAW President Says Workers Must 'Flex Our Collective Muscles' to Win Class War
"One of our biggest goals coming out of this historic contract victory is to organize like we've never organized before," said United Auto Workers president Shawn Fain.
Oct 30, 2023
With three historic tentative agreements in hand after six weeks on strike, the United Auto Workers is looking to galvanize the rest of the U.S. labor movement by calling on other unions to align their contract expiration dates with the UAW's—a move that would give workers maximal leverage at the bargaining table and the ability to strike together, if necessary.
If ratified by UAW members, the union's four-and-a-half-year contracts with General Motors, Ford, and Stellantis would expire on April 30, 2028. Should the contracts lapse without an agreement before that deadline, the UAW would be positioned to strike on International Workers' Day, commonly known as May Day.
In a speech on Sunday night in Detroit, UAW president Shawn Fain made clear that the April 2028 expiration date was chosen strategically, with an eye toward invigorating a labor movement that has been under coordinated assault by corporations and their political allies for decades.
"May Day was born out of the intense struggle by workers in the United States to win an eight-hour day. That's a struggle that is just as relevant today as it was in 1889," Fain said. "Even though May Day has its roots here in the United States, it is widely celebrated by workers all over the world. It's more than just a day of commemoration, it's a call to action."
Aligning contract expiration dates, Fain argued, would allow unions to "begin to flex our collective muscles."
"If we are going to truly take on the billionaire class and rebuild the economy so that it starts to work for the benefit of the many and not the few, then it's important that we not only strike, but that we strike together," said Fain, the first UAW president to be directly elected by rank-and-file members.
After months of contract negotiations and six weeks of picketing, the UAW secured tentative deals with General Motors, Ford, and Stellantis that surpass the gains of any Big Three contract in decades after years of declining real wages and surging corporate profits.
Under the tentative Ford agreement—which is similar to the deals with the other two automakers—the top wage for UAW members would jump by over 30% to more than $40 an hour and the starting wage would rise to roughly $28 an hour, a 68% increase, over the life of the contract. The UAW valued the gains in the deal at more than four times those of the 2019 contract with Ford that recently expired.
The UAW also tentatively won the right to strike over plant closures at Ford and Stellantis and union protections for electric battery plant workers at General Motors.
The victories came at the tail end of a major year for organized labor. Across the U.S., more than 450,000 workers—from nurses to hotel employees to actors—have walked off the job this year in pursuit of better wages, benefits, and working conditions. Other workers in critical sectors, including airline pilots, appear poised to strike in the near future.
Though 2023 was one of the biggest years for strikes in recent history, it still pales in comparison to the 1970s, when more than a million workers went on strike each year. Today, union membership is at an all-time low of 10.1% even as public support for unions sits at its highest point since 1965.
Fain said he hopes the UAW's victories in contract talks with the powerful Big Three will mark "a turning point in the class war that's been raging in this country for the past 40 years," adding that the union is setting its sights on non-organized car companies such as Tesla, Toyota, and Honda.
"One of our biggest goals coming out of this historic contract victory is to organize like we've never organized before," Fain said. "When we return to the bargaining table in 2028, it won't just be with the Big Three. It will be the Big Five or Big Six."
Keep ReadingShow Less
See More Stories
Most Popular
To inform. To inspire. To ignite change for the common good.
News & Opinion
Trending
Common Dreams, Inc. Founded 1997. Registered 501(c3) Non-Profit
Privacy Policy