The United Auto Workers union, or UAW, has instructed employees at three factories to go on strike after failing to agree on new contracts with every of Detroit’s main automakers. The contracts expired at 11:59 p.m. on Sept. 14, 2023. By midnight, the union posted a strike declaration on its web site.
The strike will power General Motors, Ford and Stellantis – the worldwide firm that builds Chrysler, Jeep, Ram and Dodge automobiles in North America – to halt a few of their operations. “Tonight for the first time in our history we will strike all three of the Big Three at once,” UAW President Shawn Fain introduced about two hours earlier than the negotiation deadline handed with no contract. The union is searching for increased pay, higher advantages and assurances that giant numbers of its members will work within the automakers’ rising variety of electric-vehicle factories.
The Conversation U.S. requested Joshua Murray, a sociologist who research the automotive business and its employees, to debate the UAW’s technique and clarify why this strike is important.
1. How vital is it that this strike is affecting all three Detroit automakers?
Until now, the UAW had all the time gone on strike in opposition to one of many firms at a time. And in recent times, all employees employed by that automaker had walked off the job. That’s what occurred within the earlier UAW strike. In 2019, 48,000 General Motors autoworkers refused to work for 40 days. The UAW used this similar tactic in strikes in opposition to GM in 2007 and 1970.
While holding a strike in opposition to a couple of key crops breaks with latest UAW practices, it is a technique deeply rooted within the union’s historical past. UAW President Shawn Fain has invoked the 1936-37 motion referred to as the Great Flint Sit-Down Strike, when employees focused what they known as General Motors’ “mother plants.”
Workers took over the crops by sitting down at their work stations on the finish of the day and refusing to depart. By the time the strike was over, GM had agreed to signal a contract for the primary time with the UAW. The union gained tons of of hundreds of recent members, and autoworker pay grew sharply within the months that adopted.
The Flint strike demonstrated that strategically concentrating on a couple of factories can maximize the strain placed on firms, whereas minimizing each the variety of employees affected and size of time affected employees should stay idle.
The UAW’s use of an identical strategy now will cut back the chance of the union exhausting its US$825 million strike fund, from which it should pay $500 per week to each UAW member who walks off the job.
Fain is looking the brand new strategy a “stand-up strike.”
“This strategy will keep the companies guessing,” he stated in livestreamed remarks shortly earlier than the strike formally started. “It will give our national negotiators maximum leverage and flexibility in bargaining.”
Although the strike is beginning at just some crops, the union might halt all manufacturing afterward. “If we need to go all out, we will,” Fain stated. “Everything is on the table.”
About 13,000 UAW employees at three websites – a GM meeting plant in Wentzville, Missouri; a Stellantis meeting plant in Toledo, Ohio, and a Ford plant in Wayne, Michigan – are the primary to take part on this strike.
2. How would you outline success or failure for the UAW’s new technique?
To perceive why the union selected this technique over a full-out work stoppage, it is vital to know the character of strikes and what makes them profitable.
In the ebook “Wrecked: How the American Automobile Industry Destroyed Its Capacity to Compete,” sociologist Michael Schwartz and I analyzed the historical past of labor relations and manufacturing methods within the U.S. and Japanese auto industries to higher perceive the decline of Detroit’s Big Three automakers. In the method, we discovered what decided the extent of success of earlier auto strikes.
A strike is basically a sport of hen between employees and administration. Workers threaten the corporate’s viability by withholding their labor, going with out paychecks to halt manufacturing. Companies defend themselves from strikes by stockpiling stock to allow them to maintain gross sales going. Workers defend themselves through their strike funds.
Generally, strikes succeed after they damage an organization’s backside line a lot that executives resolve it makes monetary sense to present in to the employees’ calls for.
Strikes fail when employees cannot create sufficient disruption to strain the corporate to present in earlier than strike funds run out. They additionally fail when employees give in earlier than securing a contract according to their calls for, probably ending up worse off than if they’d by no means walked off the job.
Fain, who was elected UAW president in March 2023, and the remainder of his new management group appear to acknowledge the significance of unusual administration and choosing strategic targets in a method that lots of the union’s earlier leaders didn’t. I consider that the UAW is prone to in the end have extra success with this strike than it has had in a long time.
3. Is this strike prone to be traditionally vital?
No doubt about it. No Ford employees had gone on strike within the U.S. since 1978. Chrysler employees, who are actually employed by Stellantis, final went on strike in 2007. And U.S. autoworkers are concentrating on GM, Ford and Stellantis concurrently for the primary time within the union’s 88-year historical past.
But it is not but clear how traditionally vital it is going to be.
If the UAW’s “stand-up” strike technique succeeds, I believe it is doubtless that different labor organizers will embrace it too – probably bettering the leverage different employees have of their contract negotiations and strikes.
Author: Joshua Murray – Assistant Professor of Sociology, Vanderbilt University