After six weeks of major strikes and numerous rounds of negotiations, Shawn Fain (54) achieved a breakthrough on Monday: the last car manufacturer in the so-called “Big Three” also gave in to the head of the largest US auto union, United Auto Workers (UAW), in Detroit. With his aggressive course did he ford, Chrysler mother Stellantis and General Motors (GM) wrested enormous concessions.
The result is of historical significance in many respects – even the US President says so Joe Biden (80). After many years of defeats at the negotiating table, Fain has turned things around and is loud for the UAW members Wall Street Journal
negotiated the best collective agreement since the 1960s. And there are already indications that Ford, Stellantis and GM may not remain the only car manufacturers that have to pay their employees significantly more.
A historic result
On the one hand, Fain has raised the middle class in the automotive industry to a new level. With the new contract, the top salary increases from $32 an hour to $40 over four years, according to the New York Times
reported. This means: With a 40-hour week, the high earners among workers earn $84,000 a year. With a few overtime hours you can even earn $100,000 or more.
But Fain has achieved even greater success for the workers at the bottom of the career ladder. With the new tariff, employees with an hourly wage will receive $40 in four and a half years instead of the current $20, i.e. twice as much.
The UAW boss and the leaders of Ford, Stellantis and GM also agreed on an adjustment of wages to the increased cost of living, i.e. inflation, as well as higher contributions to pension insurance. Added up, this means a wage increase of a whopping 25 percent per year. That’s more than all the raises combined that UAW members have received in the past 20 years. An incredible result for the approximately 45,000 union members who took part in the UAW strike.
Fast escalation and maximum publicity
The father of this success is Fain, who has only been in office for six months and has occasionally appeared in T-shirts with slogans such as “Eat the Rich.” He won with a hard and for the USA A unique approach to date: In the past, the union had only ever gone on strike at one company, negotiated the best possible contract and then tried to enforce this at the other companies as well. This time, however, the UAW went on strike and negotiated with all three automakers at the same time and specifically targeted certain factories. This is how Fain managed to play the corporations off against each other. “The militant UAW is back,” Fain said at the start of the strikes.
In order to increase the pressure during the negotiations, he expanded the strikes to particularly important locations without much advance notice. Automakers had no chance to prepare for the strikes, let alone have any idea where and how the strike would hit the company hardest. A very effective strategy for Fain. Almost in no time, he shut down Ford’s largest plant and cash cow in Kentucky when the car manufacturer failed to present him with a new offer during a round of negotiations. “You just lost Kentucky Truck,” he is said to have said angrily to the Ford brass.
As a further means of pressure, he massively involved the public and literally switched from the negotiating table to the live stream. He shared approximately weekly updates with UAW members on social networks, shocking the car bosses who were otherwise used to secretive negotiating partners.
Union members are finally getting their purchasing power back after years of making concessions and accepting lower salaries for new workers as automakers recovered from various crises. The agreements, said US President Biden, “reward autoworkers who gave up a lot to keep the industry running during the global financial crisis more than a decade ago.”
It is already clear that the agreement will not only have consequences for the UAW members themselves.
Campaigns planned for foreign car manufacturers
On the one hand, the success could entice more workers from the US auto industry to rejoin the union. Many workers in the industry left the UAW after the turn of the millennium, and the financial crisis only gave the union a small boost. Overall, just 10 percent of employees in the USA were recently organized in a union. With the historic victory, Fain could put an end to the decline in membership for the time being. “The UAW has regained its power,” say experts
.
The union boss has already set his sights on his next target: the southern states of the USA. German manufacturers also operate there BMW, Mercedes-Benz and Volkswagen large manufacturing plants, as well as Toyota, Honda, Nissan and several others. Hardly any car manufacturer plant there is unionized.
The UAW had already tried this in 2014 at Volkswagen in Chattanooga, Tennessee. But the employees voted against union representation. She also tried working at Mercedes-Benz in Alabama in recent years – in vain. This could now change. Finally, wages under the UAW’s new collective bargaining agreements significantly exceed wages at non-union plants. In the latter, employees start with salaries in the upper $10s and end at around $25 an hour. The new UAW contract, on the other hand, reaches the $40 mark.
Now Fain wants to start campaigns at BMW, Tesla, Toyota and other automotive companies. “One of our biggest goals after this historic treaty victory is to organize like we have never done before,” Fain said in a speech on Sunday
. “When we return to the negotiating table in 2028, we won’t just be with the Big Three. It will be the Big Five or Big Six.”
If Fain makes good on his announcements and targets the Germans in the USA, they can prepare for his tough tactics – including rhetorical attacks on the salaries of company bosses.