United Auto Workers President Shawn Fain, middle, check outs striking UAW Local 551 employees outside a Ford assembly center on South Burley Avenue on Saturday,Oct 7, 2023, inChicago
John J. Kim|Tribune News Service|Getty Images
The United Auto Workers union is releasing an unmatched project to arrange 13 non-union car manufacturers in the U.S. after protecting record agreements with the Detroit car manufacturers.
The union stated Wednesday the drive will cover almost 150,000 autoworkers throughout BMW, Honda, Hyundai, Lucid, Mazda, Mercedes-Benz, Nissan, Rivian, Subaru, Tesla, Toyota, Volkswagen and Volvo.
As part of the project employees are signing electronic cards in assistance of union efforts to possibly arrange U.S. plants from those car manufacturers.
It is not ensured that the union would press to arrange every plant or car manufacturer that takes part in the project. Overall, employees would require to enact assistance of UAW representation.
UAW President Shawn Fain has stated the union’s next objective after validating record agreements with General Motors, Ford Motor and Stellantis was to broaden its ranks. The agreements validated by the “Big Three” Detroit car manufacturer consist of a minimum of 25% per hour pay raises, the reinstatement of cost-of-living modifications and boosted profit-sharing payments, to name a few advantages.
“To all the autoworkers out there working without the benefits of a union: Now it’s your turn,” Fain stated in a video published online.
Fain formerly swore to move beyond the “Big Three” and broaden to the “Big Five or Big Six” by the time its 4 1/2- year agreements with the Detroit car manufacturers end in April 2028.
Launching significant arranging projects concurrently breaks with custom for the union. Typically, it would invest months, if not years, getting assistance of employees inside factories to ultimately vote on UAW representation.
But Fain has actually consistently reworded the guidelines of engaging with car manufacturers throughout his brief time as UAW president– he worked out handle Ford, GM and Stellantis concurrently, instead of determining a lead business on which to focus efforts– and arranging non-union car manufacturers would considerably help the union’s bargaining efforts and scale.
UAW subscription has actually been almost cut in half from approximately 700,000 members in 2001 to 383,000 at the start of this year. It peaked at 1.5 million in 1979.
Several non-union car manufacturers such as Hyundai, Toyota and Honda revealed strategies to increase employee incomes in the weeks following the UAW handle Ford, GM and Stellantis.
Fain has actually called such boosts the “UAW bump,” which he stated even more stated mean “U Are Welcome.”
Still, the UAW has a bad performance history with attempting to arrange non-Detroit car manufacturers.
The UAW has actually formerly stopped working to arrange foreign-based car manufacturers in the U.S. Most just recently, plants with Volkswagen and Nissan disappointed the assistance required to unionize. The UAW has actually formerly talked about arranging Tesla’s Fremont plant in California, with little to no traction in those efforts.
At the 2023 DealBook Summit in New York later Wednesday, Musk was inquired about the UAW’s objectives. He responded: “If Tesla gets unionized it will be because we deserve it and we failed in some way.”
The UAW stated Wednesday among the “strongest campaigns” so far is Toyota’s assembly complex in Georgetown, Kentucky, where 7,800 employees make the business’s renowned Camry and extremely rewarding RAV4 and Lexus ES.
“Workers across the country, from the West to the Midwest and especially in the South, are reaching out to join our movement and to join the UAW,” Fain stated in the video. “The money is there. The time is right. And the answer is simple. You don’t have to live paycheck to paycheck. You don’t have to worry about how you’re going to pay your rent or feed your family while the company makes billions.”
