The official deadline for the United Auto Workers union and the Big Three automakers to reach new deals is at midnight, but we’ll know before that whether the UAW is actually going to strike.
UAW President Shawn Fain has already made it clear that workers plan to strike, and he has scheduled an event at 10 p.m. Thursday to announce whether or not a strike is happening.
During that event, we’ll find out what the strike plan is, which plants might or might not shut down, and what the UAW will do going forward.
So if Fain outlines the UAW’s next steps at 10 p.m., the strike will be all but official.
As of Thursday morning, that appears to be the most likely outcome. While negotiations could still continue for several hours before the deadline, the two sides are far apart.
The UAW is fighting for better pay, benefits, and work-life balance for workers. They also want to get rid of tiered wages. During an informational picket at the Ford Dearborn Truck Plant, workers said their two primary concerns are wages and tiers.
“It’s not acceptable to this membership to make somebody wait that works next to a person at full pay,” one worker told Local 4. “Five years -- it’s just unacceptable.”
The automakers insist they’ve made competitive offers to the union. Ford and Stellantis said they haven’t even received counter offers.
“We want to build a future for our employees, and we can’t negotiate if we don’t get any feedback,” Ford CEO Jim Farley said. “We’ve made four offers, and the last one is the most generous offer we’ve ever made, and it’s fully competitive with all the settlements the UAW has made with other industrial companies.
“We need feedback. We want to make a deal. If there is a strike, it won’t be because we haven’t put a great deal in front of them, because we have -- four times.”
