UAW Shifts Tactics – No New Strike Actions Today

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Shawn Fain in a Facebook Live broadcast this morning once again caught the Detroit Three automakers napping when he said “We’re entering a new phase of this fight, and it demands a new approach. We’re not announcing expansion of our strike, but we are prepared at any time to call on more locals to stand up and walk out… So tomorrow, I’m calling all of our UAW members and our allies to head to a picket line,” in a show of support for all workers.

Fain then praised union democracy. “The picket line is a sacred place. There’s a lot of long, dark nights and there’s some bright, joyful days. We reunite with old friends and we make new ones. We learn what it means to stick together through hard times…  His ultimate point – as AutoInformed interprets it – is the automakers were gaming the UAW’s approach to 2023 bargaining and waiting until Fridays when strike actions were previously expanded to make another offer. When Ford did that last week, the UAW struck Kentucky Truck Plant, one that generates $25 billion in revenue a year. That’s $48,000 a minute. Now the UAW is changing the rules of the game.

“Critically important, the ultimate authority in our union is the membership…we decide together whether we won enough or whether we need to keep fighting for more. That’s the union difference. The boss doesn’t decide. The UAW president and the International Bargaining Committee don’t decide, the membership decides,” Fain said.

Fain’s Latest Points – excerpted, edited

• There are some that are trying to say that I’m raising members expectations too high. They think it’s dangerous to tell the working class they deserve more.
• In fact, corporate profits have hit a 70 year high. Meanwhile, working class has kept going backwards. We’ve seen our standard of living decline due to stagnant wages.
• Income inequality in the United States has now risen to heights not seen since the Great Depression. So I’m not the cause of raised expectations. The cause is overflowing bank accounts, company executives making hundreds of times what the average worker makes.
• The cause of inequality standing up for yourself is not dangerous. It’s our obligation to the working class and to future generations.
• What’s truly dangerous is to continue to allow inequality to spiral out of control. What’s dangerous is also the rich getting richer, while the working class falls further behind.
• What’s dangerous is to let companies and politicians kick workers while we’re down and rig our economy.
• Unless we start to see real gains in our contracts that match the gains we seen on Wall Street, then I predict there are going to be a lot more strikes on the horizon. Here in Detroit workers are preparing to strike casinos. That’s nearly 4000 workers in the Detroit Casino Council, almost 1000 of them are UAW members. 1100 members of General Dynamics in Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania just voted to authorize a strike by 97% and their contract expires next Sunday.
• If we’re going to raise standards rather than lower them. If we’re going to go from defense to offense. I ask that you show up for each other on the picket line. Bring strikers some food, some music, some solidarity.
• For two weeks, Ford’s been telling us there’s no more money to be had. Hang on, we’re close, but there’s still some room to continue to sweeten the deal. On Wednesday, they owed us an offer and they gave us a call. They wanted to meet over Zoom and they wanted to pass the same economic offer that they passed 2 weeks ago with no more money. So we said if you’re going to offer us nothing, you’re going to do it to our face with our full national negotiating team in the room. We went to Ford headquarters to see what they had to say for themselves. It was not a long meeting. They tried to give us the same deal that we rejected 2 weeks ago and not a dollar more. So at that point, I said that’s all you have for us? Our members lives and my handshake are worth more than that. You just cost yourself Kentucky truck plant. … we didn’t wait a minute. We then called President Todd, Local 862 and he and his local leadership walked 8700 members off the job. And of course, they had the unwavering support of regional director Tim Smith. This is Ford’s biggest plant.
• Ford, of course, put out a statement about how unfair this action is. In that same statement, they admitted that Kentucky truck generates 425 billion in revenue a year. That’s $48,000 a minute. Our labor at Kentucky truck generates more revenue each minute than 1000 of our members make in a year. The revenue generated by our members of Kentucky truck is so high that if the plant where its own standalone business. It would rank in the Fortune 500.…
• We did it the way we did for a simple reason. The company started to wait until Friday to make substantial progress in bargaining. We’ve been teaching them how to bargain with the threat of a strike.
• We can get them moving, we can teach them the real meaning of competition. Not a race to the bottom, but a race to avoid further strikes. Ford thought they could sit back and not make further progress in bargaining because they thought they had the best deal on the table. Ford thought they could wait until Friday morning and then just make a better offer. They stopped being interested in reaching a fair deal. Now it only became interested in gaming our system of announcing strike expansions on Friday. They thought they figured out the so-called rules of the game. So we changed the rules.
• Now there’s only one rule – pony up. We’re at the point in this process we are we are looking for one thing only a deal, a tentative agreement. I wish I had more updates or good news for all of you at GM or Stellantis, but the fact is we’re still bargaining hard with both of those companies. They’re now on notice that we are in a new phase in this fight.
• That’s why I was late this morning…We were with some of the committee members and we gave them assignments. So we’ll see where things go when I tell all UAW members to be ready to stand up. I mean it, we’re not waiting until Friday anymore. We’re not sticking to one pattern or one system of giving these companies extra hour or an extra day. They know what needs to happen and they know how to get it done.
• Don’t you dare slow walk us or lowball us. We will take out whatever plants we are forced to…
• We remain very, very strong position. Already the wage offers we’ve received are more than the combined raises of the past 15 years. Call us back to the table in a serious way. Our progression at Ford is back to where it was in the mid 1990s. The reason we need record contracts when these companies are making record profits is because we are here to address decades of falling standards and unfair treatment of the American auto worker…
• Yesterday, a Ford executive told the press that on the economics, the company has reached its limit. He also said the company has stretched ourselves to get to this point. I found a pathetic irony in that. You know who’s reached their limit? The tens of  thousands of Ford workers without retirement security. You know who strikes for themselves, the Ford worker who can’t get a single raise for a decade. You might remember the video we made about Sarah Chambers, a 17-year UAW member of Ford Local 182, it took her 16 years to make it to top pay. When are we going to talk about Sarah’s limit? … How much further do they want America’s auto workers to stretch. We’re not gonna keep begging for scraps. Meanwhile, Jim Farley took in $21 million last year. We need him to do 2 things, right? Now, look in the mirror and looking forward, the bank account. Go get the checkbook. The problem here is clear, the  money is there. It’s time to get it done and do right by our members who’ve generated a record profit.
• Ford’s already threatening that if we demand more, they will close plants. We strike for four weeks and everyone loses their minds. Where were all these concerns when 65 plants were closed? Over the last 20 years, why is it when they killed thousands of jobs it’s business as usual?
• Ford made $77 billion profits in the past decade. All we ask is they reinvest in the people who do the work. Ford and the others talk a big game about how they provide American-made vehicles … Made in America doesn’t mean anything, if it comes with falling wages, declining living standards and an uncertain future.
• That’s what our fight’s about. We’re here to save the American dream. Somebody has to stand up and say enough is enough. And it’s not just me saying it. A recent poll came out from the AP. It said that only 9% of Americans are siding with the Big Three in this fight.
• Think about that. Our strikes been going on for a month. The companies and the corporate media tried to scare everyone about the devastation it would cause. They tried to convince everyone this dangerous for the working class to fight for more.
• Instead, they’re learning a hard fact. The working class in this country is fed up with being bullied by rich corporations and the wealthy. The working class in this country is sticking together. The longer our strike goes on, the more the public stands with us. The longer our strike goes on, the more the public turns against corporate greed.
• I’ve said for months our union is done playing defense. We’re done aiming low and settling lower. It’s time we started aiming high and seeing how close we can get total economic and social justice.
• I’ve also been saying for months that what we win isn’t up to me. It isn’t up to your executive board. It isn’t up to your local president or the President of the United States. What we win is up to us, all of us. It’s up to all of you, the membership.
• I don’t know where this journey is going to take us. We’re gunning for a deal and soon – a deal that honors our sacrifice and contribution to the Big Three. … a deal that makes up for decades of givebacks and sellouts and insults.
• But the long term goal here is much greater than that: to be able to say, man, the first big win  was the one where we really learned how to fight. That was the year we took our Union back by standing up for ourselves. So today I’m not announcing any further actions. Instead, I’m announcing a new phase in the StandUp strike. Moving forward. we will be calling out plants when we need to, where we need to, with little notice …Together, we’re making history, and together we’re going to stand up and win what we deserve. Thank you.