DETROIT — One of the few certainties about this year’s contract talks between the UAW and the Detroit 3 is that they will be far from routine.
With two months to go before the pacts expire, union leaders are bucking tradition and employing new tactics to win meaningful gains for members in what President Shawn Fain has called this generation’s “defining moment.”
The union’s newly elected leader last week ditched a decades-old handshake tradition with company CEOs in favor of rank-and-file meet-and-greets. And he suggested that he won’t follow the usual formula of picking a lead company but will instead target — and potentially strike — all three at once.
Across the bargaining table will be auto executives determined to avoid major labor cost increases so they can remain flexible and competitive amid a costly pivot to electric vehicles. But top union officials believe they’re in the strongest position in decades to win back the concessions made during the recession that sent two of the Detroit 3 into bankruptcy.
“The membership’s ready,” Fain told Automotive News as he met workers outside Ford Motor Co.’s Michigan Assembly Plant after visiting General Motors and Stellantis plants earlier the same day. “They’re fed up and tired of being marginalized and regressing and not moving forward.”
The union’s demands include pay raises, the restoration of pensions and cost-of-living adjustments, the end of the two-tier wage system and use of temporary workers, and assurances that new EV battery plants will be unionized.
Fain, speaking to members last week on Facebook Live — a platform that has quickly become his preferred method of communication — vowed to aim high and deliver.
“We’ve got to stop this can’t-do mentality,” he said, invoking a Malcolm X quote about fighting for freedom. “The question I need you to think about is, ‘How far are you willing to go to win the contract you deserve?’ ”
