Auto executives, aside from being tone deaf or worse during the negotiations – on this past Monday Stellantis for example announced more share buybacks, which is a large point of contention at the UAW since they enrich the rich – are dealing with a tectonic shift in attitudes. This AutoInformed notes is part of a growing hostility toward the widely unequal distribution of income in the US. Consider for example, the just started Google antitrust trial. Big corporations can and do hold down wages, tilt government policies their way, spread misinformation, promote insurrection, and monetize a person’s private information with impunity. For decades wages for most Americans have grown much more slowly – if at all – than corporate profits for the incomes of the extremely wealthy. Globalization works for a couple of percent of the people in the US.

There are large forces at work here, ones that might inhabit the universe of all working people everywhere. So the work of socially progressive Walter Reuther and other UAW founders continues – on the picket line. CEOs are not the center of their universe. The companies are facing a “well-organized labor force and pissed off labor force” in Fain’s words.