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    Bill Ford Says U.A.W. Strike Is Helping Tesla and Toyota

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    Mr. Ford, the executive chairman of Ford Motor, said nonunion automakers would make gains against Michigan automakers because of strikes by the United Automobile Workers union.The monthlong strike by the United Automobile Workers and the union’s demands for substantial pay and benefits increases risk damaging the U.S. auto industry, hurting its ability to compete against nonunion foreign rivals, the executive chairman of Ford Motor said on Monday.The fight should not be seen as the U.A.W. against Ford, or its crosstown rivals, General Motors and Stellantis, said William C. Ford Jr., the great-grandson of the company’s founder Henry Ford, noting that at times U.A.W. officials have referred to the automakers as the union’s “enemy.”“It should be Ford and the U.A.W. against Toyota, Honda, Tesla and all the Chinese companies that want to enter our home market,” Mr. Ford said at the company’s Rouge plant in Dearborn, Mich.“Toyota, Honda, Tesla and the others are loving the strike, because they know the longer it goes on, the better it is for them,” the executive chairman said. “They will win, and all of us will lose.”Mr. Ford’s remarks alluded to a period several decades ago when the U.A.W. won increasingly rich contracts that were later seen by many industry experts as having hobbled the three Michigan automakers in the face of competition from Japanese and European carmakers. Ford came to the brink of collapse, and G.M. and Chrysler — now part of Stellantis — had to seek bankruptcy protection after the 2008 financial crisis.“Ford’s ability to invest in the future isn’t just a talking point,” Mr. Ford said. “It is the absolute lifeblood of our company. And if we lose it, we will lose to the competition. Many jobs will be lost.”In a statement, the U.A.W. president, Shawn Fain, said Mr. Ford should “stop playing games” and meet the union’s demands, or “we’ll close the Rouge for him.” Mr. Fain added that the U.A.W. was not fighting the company but “corporate greed.”“If Ford wants to be the all-American auto company, they can pay all-American wages and benefits,” Mr. Fain said. “Workers at Tesla, Toyota, Honda and others are not the enemy — they’re the U.A.W. members of the future.”Ford, G.M. and Stellantis have been negotiating new labor contracts with the U.A.W. since July. Over the past month, the union has called on workers at a few plants to go on strike. The action has idled three Ford plants, two G.M. factories and one Stellantis plant. Workers at 38 G.M. and Stellantis spare-parts warehouses are also on strike.The strategy is intended to increase pressure on the companies to meet the union’s demands for significantly higher wages, shorter working hours and expanded pensions, and to end a system that pays new hires just over half of the top U.A.W. wage of $32 an hour.The companies have offered wage increases of more than 20 percent over the next four years and certain other measures in line with the union’s demands, but the U.A.W. is pressing for greater concessions.Last week, the union called for a strike by 8,700 workers at Ford’s Kentucky truck plant in Louisville, the company’s largest.Ford executives said last week that the company had made a record offer to the union and that sweetening the deal would hurt the automaker’s ability to invest in electric vehicles and other new models and technologies.Mr. Ford, who has had a role in every round of negotiations with the U.A.W. since 1982, said the talks had reached “a crossroads” and warned that labor contracts that burdened the automakers with heavy costs could affect the U.S. economy.“The price of failure should be clear to everyone,” he said. “Let’s come together and reach an agreement, so we can take the fight to the real competition.” More

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    U.A.W. Says Auto Strikes Will Become More Unpredictable

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    The United Automobile Workers union refrained from expanding the strikes at Ford, General Motors and Stellantis but said it could do so at any time.Four weeks after starting limited strikes against three large automakers, the United Automobile Workers is shifting to a more aggressive strategy, suggesting that work stoppages could spread to more plants and possibly go on for some time.In an online video, the union’s president, Shawn Fain, said on Friday that he would no longer wait to announce expansions of the strikes on Friday, as he had been doing. Further actions could come at any time.“We’re not messing around,” Mr. Fain said. “The companies are now on notice. If they’re not willing to move, we are going to give them a push.”The union began its strikes on Sept. 15 when workers walked out of three plants, owned by General Motors, Ford Motor and Stellantis, which makes Chrysler, Jeep and Ram vehicles. It has since expanded the strike in stages, in a bid to increase the pressure on the companies.Stellantis said on Friday that it was temporarily laying off an additional 700 workers at two plants in Indiana that supply transmissions and castings for a Toledo, Ohio, Jeep factory that has been idled by the U.A.W. strikes. Stellantis has laid off more than 1,300 workers in total in response to the union’s strikes.Ford has laid off more than 1,900 workers as a result of the strike, and G.M. about 2,300. Ford said about 90 of its parts suppliers had laid off about 13,000 workers.Stellantis also said its negotiations had made progress in talks with the U.A.W. this week. The company said it hoped “to reach an agreement as soon as possible to get everyone back to work.”The U.A.W. and the automakers have been negotiating new labor contracts since July.On Wednesday, the U.A.W. unexpectedly told workers to walk out of Ford’s Kentucky Truck Plant in Louisville. It is the company’s largest and the producer of its highly profitable Super Duty version of its F-Series pickup trucks.Ford has said the Kentucky plant typically produces a new truck every 37 seconds, and generates $25 billion in revenue, about 16 percent of the company’s annual total.All told, the strike has halted operations at three Ford plants in Michigan, Chicago and Kentucky; two G.M. plants in Michigan and Missouri; and a Stellantis plant in Ohio. U.A.W. members are also on strike at 38 G.M. and Stellantis spare-parts warehouses across the country.About 34,000 of the 150,000 U.A.W. members employed by the three companies are now on strike.The U.A.W. has demanded substantial wage increases and improvements in other areas of its contract, like retirement plans. The union also wants an end to a system that pays new hires a little over half the top U.A.W. wage of $32 an hour.The union is also concerned about the possible loss of jobs as automakers ramp up production of electric vehicles. The companies have offered wage increases of more than 20 percent over four years and to reduce the time it takes a new worker to rise to the top wage to four years from eight.On Thursday, Ford officials said the company had reached its limit on what it could offer the union without hurting the company’s business and its ability to continue heavy investments in electric vehicles. “Any more will stretch our ability to invest in the business,” Kumar Galhotra, president of the Ford division that makes combustion engine vehicles, said on a conference call on Thursday.Apart from the car companies, U.A.W.-represented workers went on strike this week at Mack Trucks. Its members voted this week to authorize a strike against General Dynamics, an aerospace and defense contractor. The U.A.W. also represents about 1,000 workers who have been on strike at Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan for a month. More

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    Ford Says It Won’t Raise Its Contract Offer to U.A.W.

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    The company said it had reached the limit of what it could offer to the United Automobile Workers union, which has expanded its strike to Ford’s largest plant.Ford Motor said on Thursday that it could not improve its contract offer to the United Automobile Workers union without hurting its business and its ability to invest in electric vehicles.The automaker also said the union’s decision to expand its strike to Ford’s largest factory, the Kentucky Truck Plant, would probably hurt workers at other factories and lead to layoffs across the auto industry.“We are very clear,” Kumar Galhotra, president of the Ford division that makes combustion engine vehicles, said in a conference call with reporters. “We are at the limit. Any more will stretch our ability to invest in the business.”The U.A.W. is negotiating new labor contracts with Ford, General Motors and Stellantis, the parent of Chrysler and Jeep. The union’s members have struck selected plants and parts warehouses owned by the three companies. On Wednesday, its talks with Ford broke down, and the union responded by calling on the 8,700 U.A.W. workers at Kentucky Truck to walk off the job.“If the companies are not going to come to the table and take care of the membership’s needs, then we will react,” the U.A.W. president, Shawn Fain, said in an online video after the strike in Kentucky was announced.Production at the plant, in Louisville, stopped Wednesday evening. The factory makes the Super Duty versions of Ford’s F-Series pickup trucks as well as the Ford Expedition and Lincoln Navigator full-size sport utility vehicles.On its own, the Kentucky Truck plant generates about 16 percent of Ford’s revenue. On a typical day, a new vehicle rolls off its assembly line every 37 seconds.The plant is so large that a prolonged idling will probably cause stoppages and layoffs at up to 13 other Ford plants that make engines, transmission and axles. Factories owned by the 600 suppliers that provide parts for Ford could also have to lay off workers, Mr. Galhotra said.“This goes way beyond just hitting Ford’s profits,” he said.The U.A.W. is seeking a substantial increase in wages as well as a cost-of-living provision, an expanded retirement plan, improved retiree health care benefits and job security as automakers make the transition to producing electric vehicles. It also wants to end a system in which new hires start at a little more than half the top U.A.W. wage of $32 an hour.Ford has offered to increase wages 23 percent over four years, adjust wages in response to inflation and cut the time for new hires to rise to the top wage, to four years from eight.The U.A.W. went into a negotiating session on Wednesday expecting Ford to sweeten its offer, according to the union. Mr. Galhotra said Ford was prepared to discuss adjustments to its existing offer but not to make a completely new proposal.The differences became clear quickly, and Mr. Fain instructed Ford workers at the Kentucky plant to strike, union and company officials said. Mr. Fain and other union negotiators left the meeting minutes after it started.“Unfortunately, we had to escalate our action,” Mr. Fain said in his video. “We came here today to get another offer from Ford, and they gave us the same exact offer as two weeks ago.” More

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    G.M. Reaches Deal With Canadian Union

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    General Motors and the Unifor union reached an agreement hours after more than 4,000 workers went on strike on Tuesday.General Motors and a Canadian union, Unifor, reached a tentative deal on a new contract on Tuesday, ending a short-lived strike by more than 4,000 workers that began earlier in the day.The deal includes the same raises and other terms that Unifor had agreed to last month with Ford Motor, including a 20 percent wage increase for production workers over three years and a 25 percent raise for skilled trades workers.The contract must be ratified by Unifor members before it can take effect. Workers at Ford’s Canadian operation have ratified their contract.Work was expected to restart at the three G.M. plants and distribution centers that were struck on Tuesday afternoon.This agreement “recognizes the many contributions of our represented team members with significant increases in wages, benefits and job security while building on G.M.’s historic investments in Canadian manufacturing,” the company said in a statement.The tentative deal was reached after nearly 4,300 Unifor workers walked off the job at midnight on Tuesday at three locations in Ontario: a vehicle assembly plant and stamping site in Oshawa that makes the company’s popular Chevrolet Silverado pickup truck; a plant in St. Catharines that supplies engines and transmissions to G.M. factories around the world; and a parts distribution center in Woodstock.Unifor had been pushing G.M. to accept the same terms as those in the Ford contract, a practice known as pattern bargaining that the automakers and their unions have long used.“When faced with the shutdown of these key facilities, General Motors had no choice but to get serious at the table and agree to the pattern,” Unifor’s national president, Lana Payne, said in a statement. “The solidarity of our members has led to a comprehensive tentative agreement that follows the pattern set at Ford Motor Company to the letter.”Ford’s agreement with Unifor, in addition to wage increases, provides productivity bonuses, higher entry-level wages, improved pensions, cost-of-living allowances and other improvements. G.M. also agreed to convert all temporary workers into permanent employees over the life of the agreement.Workers at G.M.’s CAMI Assembly Plant in Ingersoll, Ontario, are covered by a separate contract and did not go on strike on Tuesday. Unifor represents 315,000 workers in a variety of industries.In the United States, the United Automobile Workers union is on strike at a G.M. pickup truck plant in Missouri, a sport-utility plant in Michigan and parts warehouses around the country. The U.A.W. has also struck two Ford plants. At Stellantis, the maker of Chrysler, Jeep and Ram vehicles, union members have struck one factory and 20 parts warehouses.Altogether, about 25,000 of the 150,000 U.A.W. members employed by the three automakers are on strike. Like Unifor, the U.A.W. is seeking a substantial increase in wages, pensions for a greater number of workers, and a shorter time to move up to the top wage level.Talks began in July, and the strike began on Sept. 15, when the current labor contracts with the companies expired. More

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    U.A.W. Workers at Mack Truck Go on Strike

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    The strike at the truck manufacturer by 4,000 members of the United Automobile Workers comes in the middle of the union’s strikes at three large U.S. car companies.Nearly 4,000 members of the United Automobile Workers union went on strike against Mack Trucks on Monday after rejecting a tentative contract that union’s leaders had worked out with the company.The union informed the truck maker on Sunday that members had opposed the contract by a 73 percent vote, and that a strike would begin at Mack’s factories in Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Florida.“The members have spoken, and as the highest authority in our union, they have the final word,” the U.A.W. president, Shawn Fain, wrote in a letter to Mack’s parent company, Volvo Trucks.The two sides have been negotiating for three months over a range of issues including wage increases, cost-of-living allowances, job security, pensions, prescription drug coverage and overtime. The proposed contract included raises of 19 percent over five years and a bonus of $3,500 for ratifying the agreement.Mack’s president, Stephen Roy, said in a statement that the company was “surprised and disappointed,” noting that the U.A.W. negotiators had called the tentative agreement a “record contract for the heavy truck industry.”Commercial truck sales have been recovering slowly from the disruptions caused by the coronavirus pandemic. Volvo has forecast about a 10 percent increase in industrywide truck sales this year in North America. Mack has about a 6 percent share of the North American market.The Mack strike comes as the U.A.W. is conducting a strike at plants and distribution centers owned by the three automakers, General Motors, Ford Motor, and Stellantis, the maker of Chrysler, Jeep, and Ram vehicles.The auto strike began nearly a month ago at three plants and the U.A.W. has expanded it in a bid to increase the pressure on the manufacturers. About 25,000 of the 150,000 U.A.W. workers employed by the three automakers are on strike. The stoppage affects two plants owned by G.M., two owned by Ford, and one owned by Stellantis, as well as the 38 spare-parts warehouses owned by G.M. and Stellantis.The automakers have offered wage increases of more than 20 percent over four years. They have also agreed to shorten the time — to four years from eight — that it takes a new worker to rise up from the entry-level wage of about $17 an hour to the highest-level wage of $32 an hour.The union is pushing for greater wage increases, noting that raises over the last 15 years have not kept pace with inflation. It is also demanding the companies provide pensions for more workers, pay the cost of retiree health care, and convert temporary employees into permanent staff. More

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    Amid Strikes, One Question: Are Employers Miscalculating?

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    UPS, the Hollywood studios and the Detroit automakers appear to have been taken aback by the tactics and tougher style adopted by new union leaders.The list of gains that the Hollywood writers secured to end a nearly five-month strike with studios once seemed ludicrously ambitious: not just wage increases, but also minimum staffing levels for shows, new royalties on successful series and restrictions on outsourcing writing duties to artificial intelligence.Yet far from an anomaly, the writers’ deal was the latest high-profile labor standoff that seemed to produce substantial gains for workers, and to suggest that they have more leverage than in the past.United Parcel Service employees won large pay increases for part-timers by pushing the company to the brink of a strike, while the lowest-paid academic student employees at the University of California won salary increases of more than 50 percent after a monthlong strike affected thousands of students.Given the unions’ apparent bargaining power and the economic costs to a prolonged work stoppage, the question arises: Why wouldn’t management make its eventual concessions more quickly?The answer, many union and management experts say, is that employers are increasingly miscalculating — acting from a template that applied in previous decades, when employees had little leverage, and underestimating the frustration and resolve in the postpandemic work force.“Psychologically, it’s a big shift: They’ve been in control. They have been able to tell their representatives to go and get concessions on X and Y, to make sure the wage increase is modest,” said Thomas Kochan, an emeritus management professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, referring to corporate executives.“Now, they have to change their expectations internally,” Dr. Kochan added. “They have a lot of work to do.”In example after example, executives appear to have been taken aback by unions’ new, more assertive leaders and their success at rallying members and the public, as well as the ineffectiveness of the employers’ traditional bargaining approach.Sean O’Brien, the Teamsters president, right, attacked UPS over what the union referred to as “part-time poverty” jobs.Jenna Schoenefeld for The New York TimesIn Hollywood, the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, which represents entertainment companies in negotiations with writers, directors and actors, has frequently tried to forge a deal with one of the three guilds, then push the other two to accept similar terms.That appeared to be the group’s strategy this year as well: After the writers went on strike in May, the alliance reached a deal with directors the next month. But any hope that the writers would be isolated collapsed when SAG-AFTRA, the union representing more than 150,000 actors, went on strike in July.“The playbook was clearly outdated,” said Peter Newman, a longtime independent producer who heads a dual-degree master’s program in business and fine arts at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts.Still, Mr. Newman said, the strikes saved the studios hundreds of millions of dollars on shows in the short term as Wall Street was pressuring them to cut costs.The producers’ alliance declined to comment for this article.In Detroit, the three major U.S. automakers had grown accustomed to closed-door negotiations with the United Automobile Workers union, in which the parties did not disclose the potential terms until they reached an overall agreement.But in the run-up to this year’s mid-September strike deadline, the union’s new president, Shawn Fain, appeared to wrong-foot executives at Ford Motor, General Motors and Stellantis — which makes the Chrysler and Jeep brands — by disclosing and deriding the companies’ offers. In one case, he literally threw a Stellantis proposal in the garbage.Automakers have expressed impatience with the leadership style of Shawn Fain, center, the United Automobile Workers union leader.Cydni Elledge for The New York TimesThe companies’ responses — a Stellantis executive sent employees a letter saying that “theatrics and personal insults will not help,” while Ford and G.M. have also expressed impatience — may have further galvanized members and built public support. Polls have found that the public supports the autoworkers over the companies by large margins, and that the margins increased after the U.A.W. began a limited strike.“It doesn’t seem like they were prepared for the direction he was headed with his public comments,” David Pryzbylski, a labor lawyer who represents employers at Barnes & Thornburg, said of the reaction to Mr. Fain. “The way they have responded may have escalated it further versus letting it die out.”Stellantis declined to comment. Auto industry executives argue that they have made historically generous offers, and that they haven’t been put off by Mr. Fain’s outspokenness so much as what they say are the showmanship and the unrealistic expectations he has created.Mr. Pryzbylski emphasized that it was too early to tell whether the landscape had tilted to labor’s advantage for the longer term, or just temporarily. The outcome of the U.A.W. strike remains unclear, and the workers’ resolve could diminish if the strike drags on for weeks. Talks between the sides are ongoing.Other management-side lawyers said that while a handful of executives might have miscalculated of late, there was no broader trend in this direction. They say that employers remain capable of assessing and acting in their self-interest, and that unions are equally capable of miscalculating.“People are sophisticated on both sides,” said Marshall Babson, a longtime management-side lawyer and former member of the National Labor Relations Board. “From my experience, good negotiators don’t get distracted by pyrotechnics.”But in many cases, what has changed is not so much the bluster from union leaders as their willingness to follow through — a potentially disruptive shift after years of often empty threats.When Sean O’Brien, the Teamsters president, ran to succeed his longtime predecessor, James P. Hoffa, in 2021, he promised to raise wages for part-time workers at UPS, many of whom had long felt shortchanged.And yet, according to two people close to the negotiations, the company seemed caught off guard when talks broke down over the issue on July 5 — Mr. O’Brien’s initial deadline.Mr. O’Brien and the union spent the next few weeks publicly attacking UPS over what the union referred to as “part-time poverty” jobs before the company agreed to hourly wage increases for part-timers of more than $7.50 over the life of the new five-year contract.The chief executive of UPS, Carol Tomé, said the company had expected contract talks this year “to be late and loud, and they were.”Jenna Schoenefeld for The New York TimesShortly after a tentative deal was reached in late July, the UPS chief executive, Carol Tomé, said the company had expected the negotiations “to be late and loud, and they were.” The company declined to comment for this article.Part of the challenge for employers is public opinion: Confidence in big business is at its lowest point in decades, according to Gallup, while approval of labor unions is close to its highest. Mr. Fain and Mr. O’Brien appear to have devised their public campaigns to press this advantage.Unions also appear to have benefited from new methods of keeping members focused on shared goals — as when writers erupted on social media over the news that the talk show hosted by Drew Barrymore would return before the strike ended. (Ms. Barrymore soon reversed course.)And rank-and-file members appear to have become more committed to their leaders’ negotiating strategy as unions have become more democratic and involved members more in the push for a contract, said Jane McAlevey, a longtime labor organizer and scholar.But perhaps most important, employers seem to be underestimating the determination of workers, who believe they have little to lose from striking amid rising prices and fundamental shifts in their industry that have sometimes made their jobs more precarious.A few weeks after the writers walked off the job this spring, Mae Smith, a strike captain and former writer on the Showtime series “Billions,” predicted in an interview that the economic pain of a protracted strike against the studios would not discourage the writers because “unfortunately they’ve been training us to live off very few months of work for a long time.”The prediction largely held, in something of a departure from the 2007 writers’ strike. Back then, when streaming felt like a distant threat, there were some splits within the Writers Guild over how aggressive to be, said Chris Keyser, a past president of the union.This time, the writers appeared particularly unified by the looming role of artificial intelligence, an issue on which the studios largely refused to engage for months.“A number of C.E.O.s, when we talked to them later about A.I., said that was a mistake,” recalled Mr. Keyser, a co-chair of the writers’ negotiating committee this year.(The writers did compromise on some key issues in the end — there is no ban on studios’ use of scripts they own to train A.I. tools, though the guild reserved the right to challenge instances of this.)Dr. Kochan of M.I.T. said the concession from studios on artificial intelligence was especially significant because it highlighted another shift: employers’ diminished ability to limit negotiations to conventional issues like wages and benefits while often reserving the right to control other aspects of the job, like technology adoption.“For decades, management has been able to say: ‘These are our decisions, our prerogatives. It’s none of your business,’” he said.With the breakthrough on artificial intelligence, he added, “this is a new day — that’s why the writers’ strike was so important.” 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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    U.A.W. Expands Strikes at Ford and G.M.

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    The United Automobile Workers union said 7,000 more of its members would walk off the job two weeks after it began strikes at the Big Three automakers.The U.A.W.’s president, Shawn Fain, called on an additional 7,000 workers at Ford and General Motors to go on strike until progress is made at the negotiating table for higher pay and benefits.Bill Pugliano/Getty ImagesThe United Automobile Workers union increased the pressure on Ford Motor and General Motors by extending its strike to two more car assembly plants on Friday, saying the companies had not moved far enough to meet its demands for higher pay and benefits.The move is the second escalation of strikes that started on Sept. 15 at three plants, one each owned by G.M., Ford and Stellantis, the parent of Chrysler, Jeep and Ram. The union said it would not expand the strike against Stellantis this week because of progress in negotiations there.The U.A.W.’s president, Shawn Fain, said workers at a Ford plant in Chicago and a G.M. factory in Lansing, Mich., would walk off the job on Friday. G.M. makes the Buick Enclave and Chevrolet Traverse sport-utility vehicles at the Lansing plant. Ford makes the Explorer, the Police Interceptor Utility and Lincoln Aviator in Chicago.“Ford and G.M. have refused to make meaningful progress at the bargaining table,” Mr. Fain said in a live-streamed video.Ford’s Chicago plant employs about 4,600 U.A.W. members and G.M.’s Lansing plant has 2,300 union workers. Including the workers who walked off the job earlier, more than 25,000 U.A.W. members at the three companies have been called on to stop working. The three automakers together employ nearly 150,000 U.A.W. members.A week ago, workers walked out at 38 spare-parts distribution centers owned by G.M. and Stellantis. The U.A.W. did not expand its strike at Ford because, the union said at the time, it had made significant progress in contract negotiations with that company.The U.A.W. is seeking a substantial wage increase for workers and opened the talks by demanding a 40 percent raise, pointing to the substantial profits all three companies have generated over the last decade and to the size of the pay increases for their chief executives over the last four years.The companies have each offered roughly 20 percent over four years. Ford and the union have reached agreements on some other demands, including cost-of-living adjustments if inflation surges again, and the right to strike if the company closes plants.“Fain is out-negotiating the car companies, and he is having fun making them dance while he calls them names,” said Erik Gordon, a business professor at the University of Michigan who follows the auto industry. “One week he gets Ford to give more in the hope of not being targeted for another closure. The next week he tells Ford they haven’t given enough and closes one of their plants.”Picketing outside Ford’s Chicago Assembly Plant on Friday after the U.A.W. expanded its walkouts to new sites.Taylor Glascock for The New York TimesBut if the companies agree to most of the union’s demands, they could struggle to compete in the fast-growing market for electric vehicles, which is dominated by Tesla, a nonunion automaker, Professor Gordon said. “The union will enjoy big gains for a few years until the companies’ inability to compete causes job losses,” he said.The parties have met regularly, and on Thursday the union presented its latest counteroffer to Stellantis, the union said. Negotiating teams from the U.A.W. and G.M. met on Wednesday in a session attended by Mr. Fain.The union leader’s online remarks on Friday were delayed for nearly half an hour by what he called “a flurry of interest from the companies in addressing some serious bargaining issue.” He did not provide details.Ford’s chief executive, Jim Farley, said on Friday that the company and the U.A.W. were “very close” to a deal but remained apart on potential contract terms for workers at four electric vehicle battery factories the company is building. “If the U.A.W.’s goal is a record contract, they already have that,” he told reporters on a conference call.In the company’s view, discussions about the battery plants should not hold up the negotiations on a new four-year contract because they won’t be completed for two years or more.The U.A.W. sees things differently. Union leaders are concerned that automakers will use the transition to electric vehicles to lower wages and reduce the number of unionized workers they employ.The union wants to include the workers at battery factories owned partly or fully by automakers in their national contracts with the U.A.W. Mr. Fain has said the workers at battery factories are exposed to more dangerous working conditions yet are paid much less than union members at vehicle assembly plants.The automakers have said that they cannot include battery factory workers in their national contracts because most of the plants are set up as joint ventures with foreign companies like LG Energy Solution and SK On.Among the three automakers, only G.M. has started producing batteries, at a plant it jointly owns with LG Energy Solution in Lordstown, Ohio. Ford is building three battery plants in Kentucky and Tennessee with SK On.Ford said this week that it would halt work on another battery plant, wholly owned by the automaker, that it had planned to build in Marshall, Mich. because it was not certain that it could make products there at a competitive price. “We will decide how big or small Marshall will be,” Mr. Farley said, once Ford has a better idea of how much it will cost to make batteries there.Mr. Farley said the start of production at battery plants would not result in the loss of U.A.W. jobs elsewhere at Ford. The company employs 57,000 U.A.W. members, more than at G.M. and Stellantis.In a statement, Mr. Fain disputed Ford’s characterization of the talks. He said that the U.A.W. was waiting for a response from the company to a “comprehensive proposal” the union made on Monday. Mr. Fain said the two sides were still “far apart” on retirement benefits and workers’ job security in the transition to electric vehicles. “Name the time and the place you want to settle a fair contract for our members, and we’ll be there,” Mr. Fain said.G.M.’s chief executive, Mary T. Barra, criticized the union for “upping the rhetoric and the theatrics” and said that the U.A.W.’s leaders had “no real intent to get to an agreement.”“We need the U.A.W. leadership at the bargaining table with the clear intent of reaching an agreement now,” she said in a statement. “For them to do otherwise is putting our collective future at stake.”The U.A.W. president, Shawn Fain, greets union members at the General Motors plant in Lansing, Mich., where workers walked out on Friday.Bill Pugliano/Getty ImagesStellantis said that it had made progress in the talks but that “gaps remain.” The company said it “has been intensely working with the U.A.W. to find solutions to the issues that are of most concern to our employees while ensuring the company can remain competitive.”Tensions on the picket lines have flared this week. The union said five strikers on the picket line suffered minor injuries when they were hit by a car outside a G.M. plant in Flint, Mich. Other confrontations occurred at picket lines in California, Massachusetts and Michigan, the union said.“We will not be intimidated into backing down,” said Mr. Fain, who has frequently compared the strike to a “war on corporate greed.”In a statement on Thursday, Stellantis criticized Mr. Fain’s characterization of the negotiations, and blamed the union for violence, saying that some strikers had slashed tires on trucks and harassed nonstriking employees at parts warehouses.“The deliberate use of inflammatory and violent rhetoric is dangerous and needs to stop,” Stellantis said. “The companies are not ‘the enemy’ and we are not at ‘war.’ We respect our employees’ right to advocate for their position, including their right to peacefully picket. But the violence must stop.”The strategy of striking at only a limited number of locations, but spreading the walkouts to plants owned by all three automakers, is a break from U.A.W.’s traditional approach of idling most or all operations at one company. In 2019, union workers went on strike at G.M. for 40 days before a tentative agreement was reached.Mr. Fain has said the strategy is intended to keep the companies guessing about what parts of their operations would be hit next, in hopes of improving the union’s negotiating position. The first three plants hit by the strike make some of the automakers’ most profitable vehicles, including the Chevrolet Colorado, Ford Bronco and Jeep Wrangler.A limited strike also dents the companies’ profits while limiting damage to their suppliers, local businesses and the national economy.Expanding the strike also increases the financial cost to the union. It is paying striking workers $500 a week out of its $825 million strike fund.Santul Nerkar More