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What a Prolonged Rail Shutdown in Canada Would Mean for Trade

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Rail labor disruptions in Canada tend to be brief, but a prolonged stoppage could have hurt farmers, automakers and other businesses.Late Thursday, the Canadian government ordered arbitration between the railroads and the rail workers’ union, a move that will end the shutdown. Read the latest coverage here.Canada’s two main railroads shut down for several hours on Thursday after contract talks with a labor union failed to reach a deal, forcing businesses in North America to grapple with another big supply chain challenge after several years of disruptions.The sprawling networks of Canadian National and Canadian Pacific Kansas City are crucial to Canada’s economy and an important conduit for exports to the United States, Mexico and other countries. Had it lasted, the stoppage would have forced companies to find other modes of transport, but for some types of cargo, like grains, there are no practical alternatives to railroads.Canadian National’s network extends into the United States, and Canadian Pacific Kansas City has operations in the United States and Mexico. The companies’ networks outside Canada are still operating because their American and Mexican workers are covered by different labor agreements.What would a shutdown mean?Canada has recent experience with rail labor disruptions. Strikes in 2015 and 2019 ended in days. The country’s federal government has the power to press the rail workers union, the Teamsters Canada Rail Conference, and management to accept an arbitrated settlement.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Another Wayward Container Ship Shows World Trade’s Fragility

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    The destruction of a Baltimore bridge is hampering a busy port, adding to the strains confronting the global supply chain.Even before an enormous container ship rammed a bridge in Baltimore in the early hours of Tuesday, sending the span hurtling into the Patapsco River, and halting cargo traffic at a major American port, there was ample reason to worry about the troubles dogging the global supply chain.Between swirling geopolitical winds, the variables of climate change and continued disruptions resulting from the pandemic, the risks of depending on ships to carry goods around the planet were already conspicuous. The pitfalls of relying on factories across oceans to supply everyday items like clothing and critical wares like medical devices were at once vivid and unrelenting.Off Yemen, Houthi rebels have been firing missiles at container ships in what they say is a show of solidarity with Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. That has forced ocean carriers to largely bypass the Suez Canal, the vital waterway linking Asia to Europe, and instead circumnavigate Africa — adding days and weeks to journeys, while forcing vessels to burn additional fuel.In Central America, a dearth of rainfall, linked to climate change, has limited passage through the Panama Canal. That has impeded a crucial link between the Atlantic and the Pacific, delaying shipments to the East Coast of the United States from Asia.These episodes have played out amid memories of another recent blow to commerce: the closing of the Suez Canal three years ago, when the container ship Ever Given hit the side of the waterway and got stuck. While the vessel sat, and social media filled with memes of modern life stopped, traffic halted for six days, freezing trade estimated at $10 billion a day.Now the world has gained another visual encapsulation of globalization’s fragility through the abrupt and stunning elimination of a major bridge in an industrial city distinguished by its busy docks.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Maui Economy, 6 Months After Wildfire, Is Still Reeling

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    Twisted and charred aluminum mixed with shards of glass still lines the floor of the industrial warehouse where Victoria Martocci once operated her scuba diving business. After a wildfire tore through West Maui, all that remained of her 36-foot boat, the Extended Horizons II, were a pair of engines.That was six months ago, but Ms. Martocci and her husband, Erik Stein, who are weighing whether to rebuild the business, which he started in 1983, said the same questions filled their thoughts. “What will this island look like?” Ms. Martocci asked. “Will things ever be close to being the same?”In early August, what began as a brush fire burst into the town of Lahaina, a popular tourist destination, all but leveling it, destroying large swaths of West Maui and killing at least 100 people in the nation’s deadliest wildfire in more than a century.The local economy remains in crisis.Rebuilding the town, according to some estimates, will cost more than $5 billion and take several years. And tense divisions still remain over whether Lahaina, whose economy long relied almost entirely on tourism, should consider a new way forward.Debates about the ethics of traveling to decimated tourist destinations played out on social media after an earthquake in Morocco and wildfires in Greece last year. But the situation is particularly dire for Maui.State and federal officials scrambled last summer to find shelter for thousands of residents who had lost their homes, relocating people to local hotels and short-term rentals where many still live, often sharing a wall with vacationing families whose realities feel far from their own. Other displaced residents live in tents on the beach, and some restaurant owners pivoted to working out of food trucks.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    From Unicorns to Zombies: Tech Start-Ups Run Out of Time and Money

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    After staving off collapse by cutting costs, many young tech companies are out of options, fueling a cash bonfire.WeWork raised more than $11 billion in funding as a private company. Olive AI, a health care start-up, gathered $852 million. Convoy, a freight start-up, raised $900 million. And Veev, a home construction start-up, amassed $647 million.In the last six weeks, they all filed for bankruptcy or shut down. They are the most recent failures in a tech start-up collapse that investors say is only beginning.After staving off mass failure by cutting costs over the past two years, many once-promising tech companies are now on the verge of running out of time and money. They face a harsh reality: Investors are no longer interested in promises. Rather, venture capital firms are deciding which young companies are worth saving and urging others to shut down or sell.It has fueled an astonishing cash bonfire. In August, Hopin, a start-up that raised more than $1.6 billion and was once valued at $7.6 billion, sold its main business for just $15 million. Last month, Zeus Living, a real estate start-up that raised $150 million, said it was shutting down. Plastiq, a financial technology start-up that raised $226 million, went bankrupt in May. In September, Bird, a scooter company that raised $776 million, was delisted from the New York Stock Exchange because of its low stock price. Its $7 million market capitalization is less than the value of the $22 million Miami mansion that its founder, Travis VanderZanden, bought in 2021.“As an industry we should all be braced to hear about a lot more failures,” said Jenny Lefcourt, an investor at Freestyle Capital. “The more money people got before the party ended, the longer the hangover.”Getting a full picture of the losses is difficult since private tech companies are not required to disclose when they go out of business or sell. The industry’s gloom has also been masked by a boom in companies focused on artificial intelligence, which has attracted hype and funding over the last year.But approximately 3,200 private venture-backed U.S. companies have gone out of business this year, according to data compiled for The New York Times by PitchBook, which tracks start-ups. Those companies had raised $27.2 billion in venture funding. PitchBook said the data was not comprehensive and probably undercounts the total because many companies go out of business quietly. It also excluded many of the largest failures that went public, such as WeWork, or that found buyers, like Hopin.Carta, a company that provides financial services for many Silicon Valley start-ups, said 87 of the start-ups on its platform that raised at least $10 million had shut down this year as of October, twice the number for all of 2022.This year has been “the most difficult year for start-ups in at least a decade,” Peter Walker, Carta’s head of insights, wrote on LinkedIn.Venture investors say that failure is normal and that for every company that goes out of business, there is an outsize success like Facebook or Google. But as many companies that have languished for years now show signs of collapse, investors expect the losses to be more drastic because of how much cash was invested over the last decade.From 2012 to 2022, investment in private U.S. start-ups ballooned eightfold to $344 billion. The flood of money was driven by low interest rates and successes in social media and mobile apps, propelling venture capital from a cottage financial industry that operated largely on one road in a Silicon Valley town to a formidable global asset class akin to hedge funds or private equity.During that period, venture capital investing became trendy — even 7-Eleven and “Sesame Street” launched venture funds — and the number of private “unicorn” companies worth $1 billion or more exploded from a few dozen to more than 1,000.But the advertising profits gushing from the likes of Facebook and Google proved elusive for the next wave of start-ups, which have tried untested business models like gig work, the metaverse, micromobility and cryptocurrencies.Now some companies are choosing to shut down before they run out of cash, returning what remains to investors. Others are stuck in “zombie” mode — surviving but unable to grow. They can muddle along like that for years, investors said, but will most likely struggle to raise more money.Convoy, the freight start-up that investors valued at $3.8 billion, spent the last 18 months cutting costs, laying off staff and otherwise adapting to the difficult market. It wasn’t enough.As the company’s money ran low this year, it lined up three potential buyers, all of whom backed out. Coming so close, said Dan Lewis, Convoy’s co-founder and chief executive, “was one of the hardest parts.” The company ceased operations in October. In a memo to employees, Mr. Lewis called the situation “the perfect storm.”Such port-mortem assessments, where founders announce their company is closing and reflect on lessons learned, have become common.One entrepreneur, Ishita Arora, wrote this week that she had to “confront reality” that Dayslice, her scheduling software start-up, was not attracting enough customers to satisfy investors. She returned some of the cash she had raised. Gabor Cselle, a founder of Pebble, a social media start-up, wrote last month that despite feeling that he had let the community down, trying and failing was worth it. Pebble is returning to investors a small portion of the money it had raised, Mr. Cselle said. “It felt like the right thing to do.”Amanda Peyton was surprised by the reaction to her blog post in October about the “dread and loneliness” of shutting down her payments start-up, Braid. More than 100,000 people read it, and she was flooded with messages of encouragement and gratitude from fellow entrepreneurs.Ms. Peyton said she had once felt that the opportunity and potential for growth in software was infinite. “It’s become clear that that’s not true,” she said. “The market has a ceiling.”Venture capital investors have taken to gently urging some founders to consider walking away from doomed companies, rather than waste years grinding away.“It might be better to accept reality and throw in the towel,” Elad Gil, a venture capital investor, wrote in a blog post this year. He did not respond to a request for comment.Ms. Lefcourt of Freestyle Ventures said that so far, two of her firm’s start-ups had done exactly that, returning 50 cents on the dollar to investors. “We’re trying to point out to founders, ‘Hey, you don’t want to be caught in no man’s land,’” she said.One area that is thriving? Companies in the business of failure.SimpleClosure, a start-up that helps other start-ups wind down their operations, has barely been able to keep up with demand since it opened in September, said Dori Yona, the founder. Its offerings include helping prepare legal paperwork and settling obligations to investors, vendors, customers and employees.It was sad to see so many start-ups shutting down, Mr. Yona said, but it felt special to help founders find closure — both literally and figuratively — in a difficult time. And, he added, it is all part of Silicon Valley’s circle of life.“A lot of them are already working on their next companies,” he said.Kirsten Noyes More

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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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    For Bill Ford, ‘Every Negotiation Is a Roller Coaster’

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    As a 25-year-old junior executive at the car company that bears his last name, William Clay Ford Jr. had a bracing introduction to labor negotiations when a union official demanded that he stand up and vouch that he was made of the same stuff as his great-grandfather Henry Ford.Mr. Ford, now the company’s executive chair, harked back to the moment in an interview this week about how he and his company are navigating one of their most difficult labor negotiations in decades.The United Automobile Workers union has shut down three Ford plants, including its largest, and other plants and distribution centers at General Motors and Stellantis, which owns Chrysler. The union’s new president, Shawn Fain, has said he is prepared to call workers out at more plants if his demands for big raises, better benefits and job security are not met. He has referred to the companies as “the enemy,” and has said the union is fighting “corporate greed” and standing up to the “billionaire class.”In a speech this week, Mr. Ford said the strikes were helping nonunion automakers like Tesla, Toyota and Honda. Mr. Fain responded that workers at those companies were future U.A.W. members.In an interview after his speech, Mr. Ford said he had been counseling his executives not to let Mr. Fain’s words get to them and focus on getting a deal done. Mr. Ford also recalled his first difficult conversation with a union official.In 1982, Mr. Ford said, his father invited him to sit in the room for talks with the U.A.W. As a newcomer, he was not allotted a seat at a table where about 50 union negotiators sat on one side and an equal number of Ford executives on the other.Sitting against the wall, he was approached by an older union representative. “You, stand up,” the man said. “What are you made of? I knew your great-grandfather and your grandfather. I knew what they were made of. What the hell are you made of?”Mr. Ford said he had replied sheepishly that he had never known his great-grandfather and grandfather but that he shared their values. Similar confrontations followed daily — “I lived in terror of going to work,” Mr. Ford said.Then about a week later, the union officials invited him to a local bar. “Come with us,” Mr. Ford said they had told him. “You passed the test.”This interview was condensed and edited for clarity.Have you been involved in any talks that are comparable to the current negotiations?No, but every negotiation is different, and every leader is different. What I keep saying to our executives is: ‘Don’t take this personally. A lot of it is theater. The most important thing is get the deal done. The rhetoric doesn’t matter.’ Every negotiation is a roller coaster. Some are not pleasant, and some sting. Don’t overreact. And when it’s all over, we are still one team again, and have to go forward.Are you going to be on the same team at the end of these talks?I believe we will. I know many on their negotiating team personally, and some of them, I play hockey with them and consider them very close friends.You’ve said the real competition is not U.A.W. vs. Ford but the U.A.W. and Ford against Toyota, Honda, Tesla and the Chinese automakers. Do you think the union’s leadership agrees with that?I hope so, because if they don’t, it will be catastrophic. They can have disagreements with us and bargain hard, but we are not the enemy. I will never consider our employees the enemy. I think the employees know who the real competition is, and they will come together with us when this is over. We made a conscious decision to add jobs here in America when our competitors were moving production to Mexico.Would the offer you have on the table now put Ford at a significant disadvantage to other automakers?It certainly won’t be an advantage. We could live with the deal we have proposed, but just barely. If you go beyond that, we are going to have to start making hard decisions in terms of investments and future products.Shawn Fain has said the workers have fallen behind while the automakers and executives like Jim Farley, Ford’s chief executive, and Mary Barra, G.M.’s chief executive, have prospered. How do you respond?Everyone’s going to have their own viewpoint on executive compensation, and I totally get that. But I also know what the market is for top talent. You have entertainers and athletes who are making more than Jim Farley and Mary Barra. But that’s what the market is, and the company with the best talent wins, period.There were some years in the lean years when I took no pay, and I would do it again if I had to.You have three plants shut down by the strike. How is that affecting your operations?It’s messy, and it’s going to become messier. The most immediate effects will be on the suppliers. The supply base is very fragile. It barely survived Covid, and is not all the way back, so a prolonged strike will start collapsing the supply base, and then making anything in this country will be difficult.Manufacturing is a matter of national security, and we saw that during Covid. And I hope with all my heart we never get into another war, but if we did, this industry would be critical to defending our nation, as it was in World War I and World War II. Other industries can make small numbers of things. The auto companies can turn that into tens of thousands of things.“I never thought I would see the day when our products were so heavily politicized, but they are.” — William Clay Ford Jr.What’s your outlook on the U.S. economy?I think it’s fragile. Inflation is taking its toll. The consumer is still spending, but we’re watching it very carefully. On the other hand, there’s still strong employment, and we are seeing our sales hold up. There are conflicting signals, for sure.Let’s talk about electric vehicles. About 18 months ago, you launched the F-150 Lightning pickup. It seemed like electric vehicle sales were going to take off. But now Ford is slowing production of that truck. What happened?E.V. sales are still up 50 percent this year, so sales are growing very fast. But we’ve also seen a politicization of E.V.s. Blue states say E.V.s are great and we need to adopt them as soon as possible for climate reasons. Some of the red states say this is just like the vaccine, and it’s being shoved down our throat by the government, and we don’t want it. I never thought I would see the day when our products were so heavily politicized, but they are.The other is prices. Electric vehicles are expensive. We know prices will come down, and as that happens, we will have a bigger ramp-up of E.V.s. Keep this in mind: The most valuable company that our industry has ever seen is Tesla, and it’s growing. That’s a very instructive point when people say E.V.s are not desired.Are you concerned about some of Donald Trump’s comments? He just came into Michigan and said that the transition to electric vehicles is going to result in almost all auto production moving to China.I don’t want to personalize this, because, frankly, we have to pick a path forward and our lead times are longer than political lead times. So we can’t overreact to one bit of rhetoric or another. We have to deal with the most likely scenario, and how we can create the most value for our company, so we are pushing ahead with E.V.s because we do believe they have great application for a lot of people. And once people drive E.V.s, they will see that it’s a great experience.Electric vehicles are expensive. Did Tesla’s price cuts have a big effect on your business?That’s what we have seen with every new technology that has been adapted. You come down the cost curve pretty quickly as batteries get better.With our first-generation E.V.s, the Lightning and the Mustang Mach-E, they were done with a lot of internal combustion engineering in them. The next generation, which will start coming quite quickly, was developed with a clean sheet of paper. When you do that you can really start taking cost out, and then you can start pricing them accordingly.Tesla has been leading the price cuts, because they can with their scale. That’s something we are actually counting on in the future. And we will have products that compete and make money in that world. More

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    U.A.W. Will Not Expand Strikes at G.M., Ford and Stellantis as Talks Progress

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    The United Automobile Workers reported improved wage offers from the automakers and a concession from General Motors on workers at battery factories.The United Automobile Workers union said on Friday that it had made progress in its negotiations with Ford Motor, General Motors and Stellantis, the parent of Chrysler, and would not expand the strikes against the companies that began three weeks ago.In an online video, the president of the union, Shawn Fain, said all three companies had significantly improved their offers to the union, including providing bigger raises and offering cost-of-living increases. In what he described as a major breakthrough, Mr. Fain said G.M. was now willing to include workers at its battery factories in the company’s national contract with the U.A.W.G.M. had previously said that it could not include those workers because they are employed by joint ventures between G.M. and battery suppliers.“Here’s the bottom line: We are winning,” said Mr. Fain, wearing a T-shirt that read, “Eat the Rich.” “We are making progress, and we are headed in the right direction.”Mr. Fain said G.M. made the concession on battery plant workers after the union had threatened to strike the company’s factory in Arlington, Texas, where it makes some of its most profitable full-size sport-utility vehicles, including the Cadillac Escalade and the Chevrolet Tahoe. The plant employs 5,300 workers.G.M. has started production at one battery plant in Ohio, and has others under construction in Tennessee and Michigan. Workers at the Ohio plant voted overwhelmingly to be represented by the U.A.W. and have been negotiating a separate contract with the joint venture, Ultium Cells, that G.M. owns with L.G. Energy Solution.Ford is building two joint-venture battery plants in Kentucky and one in Tennessee, and a fourth in Michigan that is wholly owned by Ford. Stellantis has just started building a battery plant in Indiana and is looking for a site for a second.G.M. declined to comment about battery plant workers. “Negotiations remain ongoing, and we will continue to work towards finding solutions to address outstanding issues,” the company said in a statement. “Our goal remains to reach an agreement that rewards our employees and allows G.M. to be successful into the future”Shares of the three companies jumped after Mr. Fain spoke. G.M.’s stock closed up about 2 percent, Stellantis about 3 percent and Ford about 1 percent.The strike began Sept. 15 when workers walked out of three plants in Michigan, Ohio and Missouri, each owned by one of the three companies.The stoppage was later expanded to 38 spare-parts distribution centers owned by G.M. and Stellantis, and then to a Ford plant in Chicago and another G.M. factory in Lansing, Mich. About 25,000 of the 150,000 U.A.W. members employed by the three Michigan automakers were on strike as of Friday morning.“I think this strategy of targeted strikes is working,” said Peter Berg, a professor of employment relations at Michigan State University. “It has the effect of slowly ratcheting up the cost to the companies, and they don’t know necessarily where he’s going to strike next.”Here Are the Locations Where U.A.W. Strikes Are HappeningSee where U.A.W. members are on strike at plants and distribution centers owned by Ford, General Motors and Stellantis.The contract battle has become a national political issue. President Biden visited a picket line near Detroit last month. A day later, former President Donald J. Trump spoke at a nonunion factory north of Detroit and criticized Mr. Biden and leaders of the U.A.W. Other lawmakers and candidates have voiced support for the U.A.W. or criticized the strikes.When negotiations began in July, Mr. Fain initially demanded a 40 percent increase in wages, noting that workers’ pay has not kept up with inflation over the last 15 years and that the chief executives of the three companies have seen pay increases of roughly that magnitude.The automakers, which have made near-record profits over the last 10 years, have all offered increases of slightly more than 20 percent over four years. Company executives have said anything more would threaten their ability to compete with nonunion companies like Tesla and invest in new electric vehicle models and battery factories.The union also wants to end a wage system in which newly hired workers earn just over half the top U.A.W. wage, $32 an hour now, and need to work for eight years to reach the maximum. It is also seeking cost-of-living adjustments if inflation flares, pensions for a greater number of workers, company-paid retirement health care, shorter working hours and the right to strike in response to plant closings.In separate statements, Ford and Stellantis have said they agreed to provide cost-of-living increases, shorten the time it takes for employees to reach the top wage, and several other measures the union has sought.Ford also said it was “open to the possibility of working with the U.A.W. on future battery plants in the U.S.” Its battery plants are still under construction and have not hired any production workers yet.The union is concerned that some of its members will lose their jobs, especially people who work at engine and transmission plants, as the automakers produce more electric cars and trucks. Those vehicles do not need those parts, relying instead on electric motors and batteries.Stellantis’ chief operating officer for North America, Mark Stewart, said the company and the union were “making progress, but there are gaps that still need to be closed.”The union is also pushing the companies to convert temporary workers who now make a top wage of $20 an hour into full-time staff.Striking at only select locations at all three companies is a change from the past, when the U.A.W. typically called for a strike at all locations of one company that the union had chosen as its target. Striking at only a few locations hurts the companies — the idled plants make some of their most profitable models — but limits the economic damage to the broader economies in the affected states.It also could help preserve the union’s $825 million strike fund, from which striking workers are paid while they’re off the job. The union is paying striking workers $500 a week.G.M. said this week that the first two weeks of the strike had cost it $200 million. The three automakers and some of their suppliers have said that they have had to lay off hundreds of workers because the strikes have disrupted the supply and demand for certain parts.Santul Nerkar More

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    Drivers and Dealers Could Soon Feel Impact of U.A.W. Strikes

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    Lengthy and expanding walkouts by the United Automobile Workers union against Ford, General Motors and Stellantis could strain a fragile supply chain.More than a week into its targeted strike at the three established U.S. car companies, the United Automobile Workers union has poked holes in a supply chain that has still not fully recovered from the pandemic.The companies and the union remain far apart in negotiations, and the U.A.W. could expand its strikes to more locations as soon as Friday. Depending on how long the strikes last, it could exact a heavy toll on autoworkers and the three companies — General Motors, Ford Motor and Stellantis, the parent of Chrysler and Jeep. But the work stoppages could also be painful to drivers, car dealers and auto-parts suppliers.A long and expanding strike will reduce the number of new cars on dealer lots, make it harder for people to repair their vehicles and reduce demand for parts needed to make new vehicles.So far, the economic damage has been limited because the U.A.W. has struck only a small number of plants and warehouses, but the pain could worsen if work stoppages grow to include many more locations and last weeks or months.“The economic spillovers from the U.A.W. strike remain contained as we near the two-week mark,” said Gabriel Ehrlich, an economic forecaster at the University of Michigan. “We are seeing some layoffs among automotive suppliers, ranging from seat makers to steelworkers. We would expect these impacts to accumulate as the strike persists and additional targets are announced.”When the union started walkouts at assembly plants, it appeared to target plants that make popular models, like the Ford Bronco, the Jeep Wrangler and the Chevrolet Colorado. It widened the strike on Sept. 22 to include parts distribution centers at G.M. and Stellantis.As those popular models become more scarce, dealers are likely to push up prices.“They took out the ones that are going to hurt the most,” said Jeff Rightmer, a professor at Wayne State University who specializes in supply chain management. “At this point, they’re not going to be able to get that production back.”New-car sales are expected to rise this month, despite the strike and high interest rates, according to Cox Automotive. And for now, overall inventories for the three companies remain stable, except for the most popular models, according to data from CoPilot, a firm that tracks dealer inventories.As of Sept. 24, G.M. had enough vehicles on dealer lots to meet demand for 40 to 70 days across its four brands. Ford had enough cars and trucks for 74 days. And Stellantis had more than 100 days across three of its four divisions; Jeep had less than 100 days.Jeep Wranglers at the Stellantis Toledo Assembly Complex in Toledo, Ohio, at the beginning of the strike.Evan Cobb for The New York TimesAmong the 10 models affected by the first set of U.A.W. strikes, supply for four models has dwindled to less than one month’s sales.“Once that dries up, they’re not building anything, so it’s important that the strike is as short as possible,” said Wes Lutz, a car dealer in Jackson, Mich., who sells Chrysler, Dodge, Jeep and Ram models.He has been getting cars from other plants, including large pickup trucks imported from Mexico. But he is worried that an expanding strike could reduce the supply of more models.An even bigger concern, Mr. Lutz said, is that the strikes at G.M. and Stellantis parts warehouses could soon make it hard to repair vehicles, leaving some drivers stranded. He said that he was working with other dealers to trade spare parts among themselves to keep their service departments going.Servicing and repairing vehicles is generally the most profitable part of car dealerships. Service departments bring in so much money that they can cover most or all of the costs of running dealerships, said Pat Ryan, chief executive of CoPilot.That’s why a parts shortage could deal a bigger blow to dealers than not having enough vehicles to sell. If parts are hard to come by for weeks or months, some dealers may suspend repairs and lay off mechanics.Another group of businesses exposed to the strikes are the companies that make parts and components like batteries and mufflers for new vehicles. Nearly 700 auto suppliers could be hurt by the strike, according to Resilinc, a supply chain monitoring company.CIE Newcor, an auto components maker, notified workers on Sept. 21 that it expected to lay off 300 employees at four Michigan plants starting Oct. 2. The extent of the layoffs will be “determined by the length of the potential U.A.W. — Detroit 3 strike,” the company said in a regulatory filing.Much of the auto industry practices “just in time” production, meaning materials are delivered and parts are built and sent to car factories as they are needed.If smaller suppliers go more than a few weeks without selling products to customers, some may have to seek bankruptcy protection, said Ann Marie Uetz, a Detroit-based partner at the law firm Foley & Lardner who represents auto suppliers. “There is definite strain in the supply chain, and you’re going to see some of them suffer as a result of the strike if it lingers for a month or more.” More

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    U.S. Government Shutdown Could Delay Key Economic Data

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    A lapse in funding would delay data on unemployment and inflation as policymakers try to avoid a recession.A federal government shutdown would cut off access to key data on unemployment, inflation and spending just as policymakers are trying to guide the economy to a “soft landing” and avoid a recession.Federal statistical agencies, including the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the Census Bureau and the Bureau of Economic Analysis, will suspend operations unless Congress reaches a deal before Sunday to fund the government. Even a short shutdown would probably delay high-profile data releases — including the monthly jobs report, scheduled for Oct. 6, and the Consumer Price Index, scheduled for Oct. 12.This isn’t the first time government shutdowns have threatened economic data. The 16-day lapse in funding in 2013 delayed dozens of releases, including the September employment report. A longer but less extensive shutdown in 2018 and 2019 spared the Bureau of Labor Statistics but held up reports from the Commerce Department, including data on gross domestic product.But this shutdown, if it occurs, comes at a particularly sensitive time for the economy. Policymakers at the Federal Reserve have been trying to tame inflation without causing a recession — a balancing act that requires central bankers to fine tune their strategy based on how the economy responds.“Monetary policy, even in normal times, is a complicated undertaking — we are not in a normal time now,” said David Wilcox, a longtime Fed staff member who is now an economist at the Peterson Institute for International Economics and Bloomberg Economics. “It’s not a good strategy to take a task that is so difficult and make it harder by restricting the information flow to monetary policymakers at this delicate moment.”A short shutdown, similar to the one a decade ago, would delay data releases but probably wouldn’t do much longer-term damage. Data for the September jobs report, for example, has already been collected; it would take government statisticians only a few days to finish the report and release it after the government reopened. In that situation, most major statistics would probably be updated by the time the Fed next meets on Oct. 31 and Nov. 1.But the longer a shutdown goes on, the more lasting the potential damage. Labor force statistics, for example, are based on a survey conducted in the middle of each month — if the government doesn’t reopen in time to conduct the October survey on schedule, the resulting data could be less accurate, as respondents struggle to recall what they were doing weeks earlier. Other data, such as information on consumer prices, could be all but impossible to recover after the fact.“If we miss two months of collecting data, we’re never getting that back,” said Betsey Stevenson, a University of Michigan economist who was a member of President Barack Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers during the 2013 shutdown. “This thing gets more and more and more problematic as the duration goes on.”A longer shutdown would also increase the risk that policymakers misread the economy and make a mistake — perhaps by failing to detect a reacceleration in inflation, or by missing signs that the economy is slipping into a recession.“The thought of the Fed trying to make such an important, critical decision without big pieces of information is just downright terrifying,” said Ben Harris, who was a top official at the Treasury Department until early this year and is now at the Brookings Institution. “It’s like a pilot trying to land a plane without knowing what the runway looks like.”Policymakers wouldn’t be flying completely blind. The Fed, which operates independently and would not be affected by the shutdown, would continue to publish its own data on industrial production, consumer credit and other subjects. And private-sector data providers have expanded significantly in both breadth and quality in recent years, offering alternative sources of information on job openings, employment, wages and consumer spending.“The Fed has always done what it can to gather information from other sources, but now there are more of those sources it can turn to,” said Erica Groshen, a Cornell University economist who served as commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics during the 2013 shutdown. “That will make the very data-dependent parts of the policy world and the business community a little less bereft of timely data.”Still, Ms. Groshen said, private data cannot match the breadth, transparency and reliability of official statistics. She recalled that in 2013, Fed officials contacted her department to see if the central bank could provide funding to get the jobs report out on time — a proposal that administration officials ultimately concluded would be illegal.Policymakers aren’t the only ones who will be affected by the lack of data. Trucking companies base fuel surcharges on diesel prices published by the Energy Information Administration. Inventory and sales data from the Census Bureau can influence businesses’ decisions on when to place orders. And the Social Security Administration can’t settle on the annual cost-of-living increase in benefits without October consumer price data. More