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    G.M.’s Contract Deal With U.A.W. Faces Surprisingly Stiff Opposition

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    Many longstanding General Motors workers have been voting against the tentative accord, which they feel insufficiently improves retirement benefits.A United Automobile Workers union vote on a tentative contract agreement with General Motors that provides record wage increases has run into unexpectedly strong resistance from veteran workers.Voting at most union locals has been completed and the final result, due as early as Thursday evening, will very likely be decided by a narrow margin. A majority of workers at several large plants in Michigan, Indiana and Tennessee rejected the contract, though union members at a large sport utility plant in Arlington, Texas, voted in favor of it.G.M., Ford Motor and Stellantis agreed to similar contracts with the union after U.A.W. members went on strike at select plants and warehouses. Workers walked off the job at the first three plants on Sept. 15 and stayed on strike for more than 40 days. It was the first time the union has struck all three automakers at the same time, though it did not shut down all of the factories of any company.The agreement appears to be headed for ratification at Ford and Stellantis, the maker of Chrysler, Jeep and Ram vehicles, by comfortable margins, according to running tallies the U.A.W. published online.At G.M., many veteran workers have opposed the contract because they want the company to contribute more money to retirement plans and the cost of health care for retirees.“I’ve heard from some traditional workers who said there wasn’t enough in there for them,” said David Green, director of the U.A.W. Region 2B, which includes Ohio, Indiana and a small part of Michigan. “The post-retirement health care is an issue for some people. For some people, it’s the pension contributions.”Mr. Green himself thinks the contract represents a big victory for union members. “This is the best contract I’ve seen since I started in 1989,” he said. “So I was happy with it.”General Motors declined to comment on the contract vote.The tentative contract raises the top wage by 25 percent, from $32 to more than $40 over four and a half years. The increase is more than the combined wage increases the union has won over the past 22 years, according to U.A.W. officials.Newer hires who are lower on the pay scale will see larger increases that take them to the new top wage. And workers who were recently hired will see their hourly pay double.The agreement also provides for cost-of-living adjustments that will nudge wages higher if inflation persists as well as enhanced company contributions to pensions and retirement plans, more paid time off and the ability to strike if any plant is closed during the term of the contract.The contract negotiations with G.M., Ford and Stellantis were led by the United Automobile Workers president, Shawn Fain, center, who was elected this year.Brittany Greeson for The New York TimesTo be ratified, the agreement must secure a simple majority. More than 46,000 U.A.W. workers work at G.M., although not all of them are likely to turn in ballots. More than 14,000 company employees took part in the targeted strikes.As of Wednesday afternoon, an online vote tally that the union maintains showed that just over 54 percent of the votes were in favor of the contract, but that tally did not include numbers from some big plants.If the tentative agreement is voted down, it would represent a big setback for the U.A.W. president, Shawn Fain, who was elected this year and promised to take a more aggressive approach in the contract talks in hopes of winning significant pay increases and reversing some of the concessions the union accepted in past contracts.He appeared to deliver that in what was widely regarded as a record deal. President Biden, who joined striking workers on the picket line in September at a G.M. site in Belleville, Mich., hailed Mr. Fain’s efforts. The president joined Mr. Fain last week at a plant in Belvidere, Ill., that Stellantis agreed to keep open after halting production this year.“I don’t think it diminishes Shawn Fain’s luster that much because of a close ratification vote,” said Arthur Wheaton, director of labor studies at Cornell University School of Industrial and Labor Relations. “It just means expectations were high, and had he not delivered as much as he did, it wouldn’t have passed.”After the contracts with the three Detroit automakers are ratified, Mr. Fain hopes to try to organize workers at nonunion plants in the South owned by Toyota, Honda and other foreign automakers, and the nonunion plants that Tesla operates in California and Texas.Since the terms of the U.A.W. agreements were announced, some of those companies have increased wages of factory workers. Toyota has told workers that it will raise hourly rates by 9 percent in January. Honda and Hyundai will lift wages 11 percent and 14 percent next year. Hyundai plans to increase wages 25 percent by 2028.“Everybody at those companies should say, ‘Thank you, U.A.W.,’” Mr. Wheaton said. “Those increases wouldn’t have happened without the new U.A.W. contract.” More

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    ‘Our Family Can Have a Future’: Ford Workers on a New Union Contract

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    Before autoworkers went on strike in September, Dave and Bailey Hodge were struggling to juggle the demands of working at a Ford Motor plant in Michigan and raising their young family.Both were working 12-hour shifts, seven days a week, to earn enough to cover monthly bills, car payments and the mortgage on a home they had recently bought. They were also saving for the things they hoped life would eventually bring — vacations, college for their two children and retirement.They were holding their own financially, but their shifts left them little time away from the assembly line, where both worked from 6 p.m. to 6 a.m.“You just sleep all the time you’re not at work,” Ms. Hodge, 25, said. Some days, she’d see her 8-year-old son off to school in the morning. She’d fall asleep with her 14-month-old daughter lying between her and Dave.“I’d wake up in the afternoon, get dinner for the kids and go back to the plant,” she said. “Life revolved around work.”“Dave paid the bills with the strike money, and if I needed anything, I used the money I got from tips,” Ms. Hodge said.During the strike, Ms. Hodge worked at a local beauty spa.But the couple said they expected all that to change now. Last month, Ford and the United Automobile Workers, the union that Mr. and Ms. Hodge are members of, struck a tentative agreement containing some of the biggest gains that autoworkers had won in a new contract in decades.If the agreement is ratified, Mr. Hodge, who has been at the plant longer than Ms. Hodge, will make almost $39 an hour, up from $32. Ms. Hodge’s hourly wage will increase to more than $35 from $20. By the end of the four-and-a-half-year contract, both will be making more than $40 an hour. The agreement also provides for more time off.Mr. Hodge, 36, said he had teared up when he heard the details. “I was super happy,” he said. “It makes me feel like our family can have a future now.”About 145,000 workers at Ford, General Motors and Stellantis, the parent company of Chrysler, Jeep and Ram, are voting on separate but similar contracts the U.A.W. negotiated with the companies. Many labor and auto experts said a large majority of workers would most likely have the same reaction to the agreements that Mr. Hodge had and would vote in favor of the deals.The Hodges were required to walk the picket line at the plant one day a week. The United Automobile Workers provided $500 a week for each striking worker.Mr. Hodge’s first day back after the strike. “I was super happy,” he said of the new contract. “It makes me feel like our family can have a future now.”Just over 80 percent of the union members at the plant the Hodges work at, in Wayne, Mich., have already voted in favor of the deal. Voting at Ford plants is expected to end on Nov. 17.The tentative agreement also means the Hodges are going back to work after being on strike for 41 days. Their plant, which is a 30-minute drive from downtown Detroit, was one of the first three auto factories to go on strike in September. It makes the Ford Bronco sport utility vehicle and the Ranger pickup truck.On the evening of Sept. 14, Ms. Hodge was on a break when a union representative came by telling workers to leave. She and Mr. Hodge knew a strike was possible and had set aside enough money to cover their expenses for two to three months, but they were still surprised they were called on to strike first.The Hodges were required to walk the picket line at the plant one day a week, leaving them lots of time for the family activities they had been missing. The U.A.W. provided $500 a week for each striking worker. The $1,000 a week the Hodges collected helped, but Ms. Hodge also went to work at a beauty spa.The Hodges’ son arriving home from school.“At first, you were happy to have some time off and have dinner as a family, put the kids to bed, but then it keeps going on, and you’re like, ‘Whoa, this doesn’t seem to be ending,’” Ms. Hodge said.“Dave paid the bills with the strike money, and if I needed anything, I used the money I got from tips,” Ms. Hodge said.But as the strike wore on, the Hodges found they had to keep close track of their grocery shopping and stopped eating out.“At first, you were happy to have some time off and have dinner as a family, put the kids to bed, but then it keeps going on, and you’re like, ‘Whoa, this doesn’t seem to be ending,’” Ms. Hodge said. “As it goes along, it gets scary.”On Oct. 25, Ms. Hodge began getting texts from friends at the plant that the U.A.W. and Ford had reached a tentative agreement. That evening, she and Mr. Hodge watched an announcement by the union’s president, Shawn Fain, on Facebook.By the end of the four-and-a-half-year contract, both will be making more than $40 an hour.As the strike wore on, the Hodges found that they had to keep close track of their grocery shopping and stopped eating out.For Mr. Hodge, the news of the union’s gains — including a 25 percent general wage increase, cost-of-living adjustments and increased retirement contributions — was hard to fathom given the slower progress workers had made in recent years.He had started at Ford in 2007 as a temporary worker and over five years climbed to the top temporary worker wage of $27 an hour. In 2012, when he became a permanent employee, he had to start at the entry-level wage of $15 an hour.“It took me a good 11 years to get to where I am now,” he said. “So this feels like I’m getting back what I would’ve had.”The Hodges plan to continue working 12-hour, seven-day schedules for a short while to rebuild their savings account, and to take care of expenses they had put off, like fixing the dented bumper and cracked windshield in Ms. Hodge’s Ford Explorer.But eventually, they want to cut back to working Monday through Friday, and perhaps one weekend a month.“It will be great just doing some overtime, not overtime all the time,” Ms. Hodge said. “And we’ll start doing things with the kids. Maybe take them to a hotel that has a swimming pool. That would be nice.”A 25 percent general wage increase was hard to fathom given the slower progress workers had made in recent years.“It will be great just doing some overtime, not overtime all the time,” Ms. Hodge said. More

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    U.A.W. Strikes Near an End After G.M. Reaches Tentative Deal

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    Tentative accords at Ford Motor, General Motors and Stellantis are the most generous in decades, raising costs as the industry shifts to electric vehicles.A six-week wave of strikes that hobbled the three largest U.S. automakers has resulted in tentative contract agreements that would give workers their biggest pay raises in decades while avoiding a protracted work stoppage that could have damaged the economy.On Monday, General Motors and the United Automobile Workers reached a deal that mirrored agreements the union had reached in recent days with Ford Motor and Stellantis, the parent company of Ram, Jeep and Chrysler. The terms will be costly for the automakers as they undertake a switch to electric vehicles, while setting the stage for labor strife and demands for higher pay at nonunion automakers like Tesla and Toyota.The tentative agreements, which still require ratification by union members, also appeared to be a win for President Biden, who had risked political capital by picketing with striking workers at a G.M. facility in Michigan last month.“They have reached a historic agreement,” Mr. Biden said Monday after speaking with Shawn Fain, the U.A.W. president. The deals, the president said, “reward autoworkers who gave up much to keep the industry working and going during the global financial crisis more than a decade ago.”The strike stretched longer than White House officials would have liked, but was resolved before causing significant shortages of new cars and trucks that might have frustrated voters already angry about inflation.“The near-term impact of this strike will be relatively minor,” said Karl Brauer, executive analyst at iSeeCars.com, an online auto sales site. We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.We are confirming your access to this article, this will take just a moment. However, if you are using Reader mode please log in, subscribe, or exit Reader mode since we are unable to verify access in that state.Confirming article access.If you are a subscriber, please  More

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    U.A.W. Reaches Tentative Deal With Stellantis, Following Ford

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    The United Automobile Workers union announced the deal with Stellantis, the parent of Chrysler, Jeep and Ram. It also expanded its strike against G.M.The United Automobile Workers union announced on Saturday that it had reached a tentative agreement on a new labor contract with Stellantis, the parent company of Chrysler, Jeep and Ram.The agreement came three days after the union and Ford Motor announced a tentative agreement on a new contract. The two deals contain many of the same or similar terms, including a 25 percent general wage increase for U.A.W. members as well as the possibility for cost-of-living wage adjustments if inflation flares.“We have won a record-breaking contract,” the U.A.W. president, Shawn Fain, said in a video posted on Facebook. “We truly believe we got every penny possible out of the company.”Shortly after announcing the tentative agreement with Stellantis, the union expanded its strike against General Motors, calling on workers to walk off the job at the company’s plant in Spring Hill, Tenn. The plant makes sport utility vehicles for G.M.’s Cadillac and GMC divisions.Under the tentative new contract with Stellantis, Mr. Fain said, the company has agreed to reopen a plant in Belvidere, Ill., to produce a midsize pickup truck and to rehire enough workers to staff two shifts of production.The union also won commitments to keep an engine plant in Trenton Mich., open, and to keep and expand a machining plant in Toledo, Ohio. According to the union, these moves will create up to 5,000 new U.A.W. jobs.The union also won the right to strike if the company closes any plant and if it fails to follow through on its promised investment plans, Mr. Fain said.“If the company goes back on their words on any plant, we can strike the hell out of them,” he said.Mr. Fain said Stellantis workers would now return to their jobs.In a statement, Stellantis said, “We look forward to welcoming our 43,000 employees back to work and resuming operations to serve our customers.”The tentative agreement with Stellantis will require approval by a union council that oversees negotiations with the company, and then ratification by U.A.W. members. The council will meet on Thursday, Mr. Fain said.The deal with Stellantis means that only General Motors has not yet reached an agreement with the U.A.W.Erik Gordon, a business professor at the University of Michigan who follows the auto industry, said the new contracts impose higher labor costs on the Detroit manufacturers as they are ramping up production of electric vehicles and are competing with rivals who operate nonunion plants.“The Detroit Three enter a new, dangerous era,” he said. “They have to figure out how to transition to EVs and do it with a cost structure that puts them at a disadvantage with global competitors.”The union’s contracts with the three automakers expired on Sept. 15. Since then, the union has called on more than 45,000 autoworkers at the three companies to walk off the job at factories and at 38 spare-parts warehouses across the country.The most recent escalation of the strike at Stellantis came on Monday when the U.A.W. told workers to go on strike at a Ram plant in Sterling Heights, Mich., that makes the popular 1500 pickup truck. The strike has halted the production of Jeep Wranglers and Jeep Gladiators at a plant in Toledo, Ohio, and 20 Stellantis parts warehouses.For decades, the union has negotiated similar contracts with all three automakers, a method known as pattern bargaining. Like the contract it hammered out with Ford, the tentative Stellantis deal would lift the top U.A.W. wage from $32 an hour to more than $40 over four and a half years. That would allow employees working 40 hours a week to earn about $84,000 a year.Stellantis, G.M. and Ford began negotiating with the U.A.W. in July. The companies have sought to limit increases in labor costs because they already have higher labor costs than automakers like Tesla, Toyota and Honda that operate nonunion plants in the United States.The three large U.S. automakers are also trying to control costs while investing tens of billions of dollars to develop new electric vehicles, build battery plants and retool factories.Stellantis, which is based in Amsterdam, was created in 2021 by the merger of Fiat Chrysler and Peugeot, the French automaker. The company’s North American business, based near Detroit, is its most profitable.Stellantis surprised analysts recently by posting much stronger profits than G.M., which is the largest U.S. automaker by sales. Stellantis earned 11 billion euros ($11.6 billion) in the first half of the year while G.M. made nearly $5 billion.Noam Scheiber More

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    Why U.A.W. President Shawn Fain Has Taken a Hard Line

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    Shawn Fain owes his rise within the United Automobile Workers to a group determined to make the union far more confrontational toward automakers.When Shawn Fain sought the presidency of the United Automobile Workers union last year, he ran on a platform that promised: “No corruption. No concessions. No tiers.”That pledge encapsulated many members’ frustrations with years of union scandal and concessions to the three big Detroit automakers, including the creation of a lower tier of wages for newer employees. The platform helped propel Mr. Fain to the top job — where he has led a mounting wave of walkouts in recent weeks to demand more favorable contract terms.But the platform largely predated Mr. Fain’s candidacy. It was devised by a group called Unite All Workers for Democracy, which was officially formed in 2020 as a caucus — essentially, a political party within the union.The group set out to topple the ruling party, known as the Administration Caucus, which had run the union for more than 70 years. In 2022, Unite All Workers hashed out its party line, recruited candidates and ramped up a campaign operation to elect them.When the dust settled, the slate had won half the seats on the union’s 14-member executive board, with Mr. Fain, previously a union staff member, as president. Unite All Workers’ role helps explain why the union has taken such a hard line with the automakers.“We had a platform we ran on, and we’re trying to push that platform forward,” said Scott Houldieson, a founder of the group and a longtime Ford Motor worker in Chicago. “Shawn has been really upfront about what we’re trying to accomplish.”The first fruits of that approach may have emerged Wednesday, when negotiators for the union and Ford agreed on terms for a new four-year contract, including a wage increase of roughly 25 percent over the four years, according to the union.“We hit the companies to maximum effect,” Mr. Fain said in a Facebook livestream. The deal is subject to ratification by the company’s union workers.Since at least the 1980s, U.A.W. members have formed groups to challenge the union’s top officials, or at least prod them to be more confrontational with automakers. The efforts took on added urgency in 2007, when the union accepted tiers as a way to stabilize the automakers’ financial footing. (General Motors and Chrysler later filed for bankruptcy anyway; Ford avoided it.)Scott Houldieson, a founder of United Auto Workers for Democracy, said, “We had a platform we ran on, and we’re trying to push that platform forward.”Jamie Kelter Davis for The New York TimesBut the Administration Caucus always held a trump card: The union leadership wasn’t elected directly by members. Rather, future leaders were effectively chosen by existing leaders, then approved by delegates to a convention every four years.That changed after a corruption scandal in which two recent U.A.W. presidents were charged with embezzlement in 2020. As part of a consent decree with the federal government, members voted in a referendum on whether to directly elect union leaders. Unite All Workers, which was pressing for the change, waged an all-out campaign to persuade union members to support “one member one vote.”When the initiative passed by nearly a two-to-one ratio, Unite All Workers, whose members paid an annual fee, was poised to become a kingmaker of sorts in the union’s 2022 elections. The group had a budget of over $100,000, two full-time staff members and hundreds of volunteer organizers.“It was obvious that we could use the same infrastructure” of staff and volunteers to compete in the election, said Mike Cannon, a retired U.A.W. member who serves on the Unite All Workers steering committee. “The only question at that point was, were we going to have any candidates?”Unite All Workers announced that anyone who wanted to join its campaign slate would have to fill out a detailed questionnaire and attend at least one meeting with its members.The group wanted to ensure that the candidates it backed were committed to running the union with extensive input from rank-and-file members, and to driving a much harder bargain with employers. It wanted an end to wage tiers, which it said divided and demoralized workers, and a focus on organizing new members, especially among electric vehicle and battery workers.Among those responding to the call was Mr. Fain, then a staff member in the union division responsible for Stellantis, the parent of Chrysler, Jeep and Ram. During his interview process, Mr. Fain explained how, as a local official in Indiana in 2007, he had helped lead opposition to the two-tier wage structure the union had agreed to, and how he had argued for more favorable contract terms after joining the headquarters staff.Some members of the group were skeptical that an employee of the old guard could be a reformer. But other U.A.W. dissidents vouched for him. “I knew the claims were legit,” said Martha Grevatt, a longtime Chrysler employee on the steering committee of Unite All Workers.Martha Grevatt said she had found Mr. Fain’s pledges to shake up the union “legit” even though he had been a staff member under the previous leadership.Daniel Lozada for The New York TimesThe group backed Mr. Fain and six other candidates for the union’s 14-member executive board, and all seven won.As president, Mr. Fain has appointed critics of the former leadership as his top aides, including one who served on the Unite All Workers steering committee. Board members, including Mr. Fain, have attended some of the group’s monthly membership meetings and taken part in one of its WhatsApp chats.Many of the group’s priorities became demands in the union’s contract negotiations, and Mr. Fain has indicated that he hopes to use momentum from the strike to organize nonunion companies like Tesla and Honda, a key objective of Unite All Workers.But for all the connections between the group and the union leadership, they are not one and the same.Some board members who ran on the Unite All Workers slate have at times taken positions in tension with the group’s priorities. In recent weeks, Margaret Mock, the union’s second-ranking official, has expressed concern to fellow board members about the walkout’s cost to the union’s budget. At a special board meeting last week, she offered a proposal intended to scale back spending on organizing during the strike, according to two people familiar with the meeting. The board set aside the proposal; Ms. Mock did not respond to a request for comment.For its part, Unite All Workers considers itself accountable to rank-and-file members, not an extension of the leaders it helped elect. On a tentative deal with any of the three large automakers, Unite All Workers plans to appoint a task force to provide an assessment of the proposal to the union’s members. The group’s members will then decide whether to support it.“I would say it’s not automatic that the caucus endorses” an agreement, said Andrew Bergman, who serves on the Unite All Workers steering committee.Still, as a practical matter, the group is highly unlikely to oppose an agreement, since Mr. Fain has forcefully pressed for its core priorities.“For years, we’ve been playing defense at every step, and we’ve been losing,” Mr. Fain said in a video streamed online on Friday, explaining why the strike would continue. “When we vote on a tentative agreement, it will be because your leadership and your council thinks we’ve gotten absolutely every dollar we can.” This week, the union expanded the strike to the largest U.S. factories at Stellantis and General Motors.The approach has raised concerns among employers and business groups. John Drake, a vice president at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, said that the Detroit automakers could struggle to remain competitive after the strike, and that Mr. Fain appeared to be overreaching in extracting concessions.“It feels like there’s not really a strategy here,” Mr. Drake said. “It’s like pain is the goal.”Mr. Fain has indicated that he hopes to use momentum from the strike to organize nonunion companies like Tesla and Honda, a key objective of the insurgent group that endorsed his candidacy.Jamie Kelter Davis for The New York TimesThe best analogy for Unite All Workers may be to a group called Brand New Congress, created by supporters of Senator Bernie Sanders, the progressive Vermont independent, to help elect congressional candidates beginning in 2018.Not long after the 2016 presidential election, Brand New Congress urged an obscure New York bartender and activist named Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to challenge a longtime incumbent in a Democratic congressional primary. A sister group provided her with training and campaign infrastructure. After she won, two people involved with the groups joined her staff.Ms. Ocasio-Cortez has since become far more prominent than those early backers, and in principle she could take positions at odds with their progressive stands. But in practice, it’s unlikely. The worldview is embedded in her political identity.Mr. Fain’s story is similar: a once-obscure progressive who was catapulted to a position of power by a group of insurgents and was determined to enact their shared principles once he got there. Except that, in backing him and his colleagues, Unite All Workers helped win not just a few legislative seats, but the reins of an entire union.After Vail Kohnert-Yount, a Unite All Workers steering committee member, seconded Mr. Fain’s nomination for president at the union’s convention last year, he spoke to her about relying on government assistance as a new parent decades ago.“I remember thinking this guy has not forgotten where he came from — he’s very much stayed that person,” Ms. Kohnert-Yount said. “We did our best to endorse a candidate we believed in.” More

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    U.A.W. and Ford Negotiators Reach Accord on Contract Terms

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    The deal, subject to approval by union members, could ease the way for deals with General Motors and Stellantis and end a growing wave of walkouts.Negotiators for the United Automobile Workers and Ford Motor have agreed on terms of a new four-year labor contract, people briefed on the talks said Wednesday, nearly six weeks after the union began a growing wave of walkouts against the three Detroit automakers.The deal includes a roughly 25 percent pay increase over four years, those people said. Any agreement would be subject to the approval of the U.A.W. council that oversees relations with Ford, and then ratification by the company’s union workers.The union continues to negotiate with General Motors and Stellantis, whose brands include Chrysler, Jeep and Ram.Two weeks ago — when it said it had reached the limit of what it could afford without hurting its business — Ford offered to increase wages 23 percent, adjust pay in response to inflation and cut the time for new hires to rise to the top wage, to four years from eight. The other companies have made similar offers.But the U.A.W. and its president, Shawn Fain, have pressed for greater concessions, ratcheting up the walkouts and aiming them at factories producing some of the automakers’ most profitable models.Altogether, about 45,000 workers at Ford, G.M. and Stellantis are on strike across the country, including 8,700 workers at Ford’s Kentucky truck plant in Louisville, the company’s largest, and almost 10,000 others at Ford factories in Illinois and Michigan.The tentative deal with Ford could increase pressure on the other companies to reach an agreement with the union. In the past, once the union reached a deal with one automaker, tentative agreements with the others quickly followed. But that history may not be as relevant now because the U.A.W. had never struck all three companies simultaneously until this year.The companies are investing billions in a transition to battery-powered vehicles, which they say makes it harder for them to pay substantially higher wages. Last week, Ford’s executive chairman, William C. Ford Jr., said the union’s demands risked damaging the ability of Detroit automakers to compete against nonunion companies like Tesla and foreign rivals.“Toyota, Honda, Tesla and the others are loving the strike, because they know the longer it goes on, the better it is for them,” he said. “They will win, and all of us will lose.”The U.A.W. makes a different case: that success in its contract battle with the Big Three will give it momentum to organize autoworkers at other companies as well.The U.A.W. began its walkouts when the companies’ union contracts expired in mid-September. It won immediate support from President Biden, who called on the automakers to “ensure record corporate profits mean record contracts” and briefly joined workers on a picket line at a G.M. plant near Detroit late last month.The union initially demanded a 40 percent wage increase over four years — an amount that union officials have said matches the raises the top executives at the three companies have received over the last four years. Those raises are also meant to compensate for more modest increases the autoworkers received in recent years and concessions the union made to the companies beginning in 2007.In addition, the union has called for an end to a system that pays new hires just over half of the top wage of $32 an hour. It has been seeking cost-of-living adjustments that would nudge wages higher to compensate for inflation. And it wants a reinstatement of pensions for all workers, improved retiree benefits and shorter work hours.G.M. and Stellantis faced the most recent escalation of the U.A.W. walkouts when the union called out 6,800 workers at a large Ram pickup truck plant in Michigan on Monday and 5,000 workers at a G.M. plant in Arlington, Texas, that makes large sport utility vehicles including the Chevrolet Tahoe, the GMC Yukon and the Cadillac Escalade.On Tuesday, G.M. reported a third-quarter profit of $3.1 billion, a 7 percent decline from the same period last year, owing in part to the ongoing strike. Ford is scheduled to announce its third-quarter earnings on Thursday. More

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    U.A.W.’s Expanding Strikes Could Signal an Endgame or a Long Struggle

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    The United Automobile Workers on Tuesday expanded its strike to General Motors’ largest U.S. plant a day after striking at a Ram truck plant.The United Automobile Workers union shut down production at General Motors’ largest U.S. factory on Tuesday, significantly stepping up pressure on the large U.S. automakers as signs multiplied that the six-week strike is taking a toll on profits.The union told 5,000 workers at G.M.’s plant in Arlington, Texas, to stop working on the same day that the automaker announced a drop in its third-quarter profit and said U.A.W. work stoppages, which have also hit Ford Motor and Stellantis, had cost it $800 million so far.The strike in Arlington continued the union’s strategy of targeting some of the carmaker’s most profitable vehicles. The Texas factory makes large sport utility vehicles including the Chevrolet Tahoe, GMC Yukon and Cadillac Escalade.Before the Tuesday expansion, there had been signs that the union and G.M. were close to an agreement. Some analysts said the union’s decision to raise the stakes was part of an endgame strategy to squeeze the last dollar from the company.The U.A.W. president, Shawn Fain, “has been saying he still had some levers to pull to push the companies, and now he’s pulling them,” said Arthur Wheaton, director of labor studies at Cornell’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations. “So I think this is the union’s final push to the companies, saying, ‘Let’s get this deal done.’”But it is also possible the companies and the union are still far from striking deals and the U.A.W. is demonstrating that it still has plenty of cards to play.“My gut feeling is that they’re not close and this is trying to impose more cost and say, ‘Look, you guys have to get closer to what we want or we’ll keeping doing this,’” said Patricia Anderson, a professor of economics at Dartmouth College.On Monday, the union struck a Ram pickup truck plant, the largest U.S. factory operated by Stellantis, which also owns Jeep and Chrysler. The U.A.W. has also struck Ford Motor’s largest plant, in Louisville, Ky., which produces large pickup trucks and the Lincoln Navigator S.U.V.“Another record quarter, another record year; as we’ve said for months: record profits equal record contracts,” Mr. Fain said in a statement. “It’s time G.M. workers, and the whole working class, get their fair share.”G.M. executives had said earlier on Tuesday that they hoped to reach a tentative agreement with the union soon. The Texas walkout dimmed those hopes.The longer the strike lasts, the greater the risk it will become a drag on the U.S. economy, or make it harder for consumers to find the vehicles they want.The automakers have been keen to point out the ripple effects that the strikes are having on other workers. Stellantis, the maker of Chrysler and Jeep, said on Tuesday that it laid off 525 workers at two Michigan factories, in Sterling and Warren, that make parts for Ram pickup trucks that are not needed while the assembly line is shut down by the strike.All told, Stellantis has temporarily laid off more than 2,000 workers because of the strikes. Ford has laid off more than 3,000 workers because of the strike, according to the company. G.M. has laid off about 2,500, including about 140 at a factory in Ohio who made parts for the factory in Arlington and were let go on Tuesday. Another 3,000 workers at G.M. suppliers are temporarily out of work because of the strike, according to the company.“We are disappointed by the escalation of this unnecessary and irresponsible strike,” G.M. said in a statement. “It is harming our team members who are sacrificing their livelihoods and having negative ripple effects on our dealers, suppliers and the communities that rely on us.”Where Autoworkers Are Walking Out More

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    G.M. Profit Down 7% in Strike-Affected Quarter

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    The carmaker reported $3.1 billion in profit from July through September, which included two weeks of walkouts by the United Automobile Workers.General Motors said on Tuesday that it made $3.1 billion in profit from July through September, a year-over-year decline of more than 7 percent that was due partly to the six-week strike by the United Automobile Workers, which has idled two of the company’s vehicle plants and 18 of its parts distribution centers.G.M. said the strike had lowered its earnings before interest and taxes by about $200 million in the final weeks of the third quarter, and by about $600 million since the fourth quarter started on Oct. 1. The automaker also estimated that the strike could cost it $200 million a week going forward.“We continue to be optimistic we will be able to reach an agreement as soon as possible,” G.M.’s chief financial officer, Paul Jacobson, said in a conference call with reporters, but he declined to say if the company believed it was near a deal on a new contract with the U.A.W.On Friday, G.M. gave the union a contract offer that included a 23 percent increase in wages over four years. That would lift the standard U.A.W. wage from $32 an hour to more than $40. At that wage, an employee working 40 hours a week would earn about $84,000 a year, not including extra pay for overtime or profit-sharing bonuses, which have topped $10,000 in the past two years.Mr. Jacobson said negotiations with the union were continuing. The union’s strike, which has targeted specific sites owned by Detroit’s Big Three automakers, has idled a G.M. pickup truck plant in Missouri and another in Michigan that makes large sport utility vehicles.In the third quarter, G.M. earned almost all of its profit in North America, which is largely driven by factories in the United States staffed by U.A.W. members. Its bottom line was hurt by a 42 percent drop in profits from its joint ventures in China, a small profit decline in its financial arm and a loss from its Cruise division, which is working to develop self-driving cars.Despite the strike, G.M. reported that its revenue rose about 5 percent in the third quarter, to $44.1 billion. It sold 981,000 vehicles globally in the quarter, about 15,000 more than a year earlier.The company’s quarterly results were better than analysts expected, and G.M.’s stock rose in premarket trading on Tuesday.Mr. Jacobson said that G.M. hoped to introduce redesigned S.U.V. models that would be more profitable than those they were replacing, and that the company would save money by slowing its planned rollout of electric vehicles. G.M. recently said it was pushing back the start of production of electric pickups at a plant in Orion, Mich., from 2024 to late 2025, in response to slower-than-expected growth in sales of E.V.s.While G.M. is now planning a slower ramp-up of E.V. production in 2025, it still aims to be able to produce one million electric vehicles a year in North America by the end of 2025, Mr. Jacobson said.“Our commitment to an all-E.V. future is as strong as ever,” he said. More