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Post by Webster on Sept 16, 2023 16:47:03 GMT -5
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Post by Webster on Sept 16, 2023 16:47:38 GMT -5
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Post by Webster on Sept 18, 2023 13:26:46 GMT -5
(MSNBC) The United Auto Workers are on strike. For the first time in the union’s long and storied history, workers are on strike simultaneously against all of the “Big Three” automakers — Ford, GM and Stellantis (the maker of Chrysler). The labor action could affect nearly 150,000 workers and, if it drags on, bring a meaningful slice of the American economy to a standstill. Dark warnings that this might cause a recession are being thrown around. But, in reality, this strike is a reason to rejoice if you are a working person in America. It is a sign of an ongoing power shift that may be strong enough to heal wounds sustained by the entire working class for decades. The UAW is led by Shawn Fain, a reformer elected earlier this year to pull the union out of its days of stasis and corruption, and return it to its crusading, democratic roots. Fain is plainspoken, middle-aged and unflashy, but he holds forth on the rights of labor with the fervor of a preacher. He entered into negotiations with the automakers declining to shake hands at the bargaining table and holding tight to his vow of “No concessions.” Tactically, this strike has started small, with a shifting roster of representative plants and scaling up as necessary. This strategy has the twin benefits of inflicting paralyzing uncertainty on the industry’s logistics and operations while conserving the union’s strike fund. But though the strike has started relatively small in number, do not imagine that it has small stakes. It is an industrial-scale attempt to find out whether the post-pandemic surge of enthusiasm for organized labor can produce the kind of material gains that change people’s lives forever. Fain and the UAW’s members are calculating that the balance of power between capital and labor, which has tilted deeply toward capital ever since the Reagan era, is swinging hard back the other way. There are reasons to think that this is true. Tight labor markets since Covid began have given workers more bargaining power; polls show that public enthusiasm for unions is at its highest point since 1965; and President Joe Biden’s pro-union bona fides have created a rare period of active support for labor inside the White House and at regulatory agencies. (“Record corporate profits should be shared by record contracts for the UAW,” Biden said Friday.) This is set against a longer-term backdrop of rising economic inequality. Generations of workers are rightly furious that their pay has remained stagnant for decades as executives and investors reaped the gains of their increasing productivity. Autoworkers have been exposed to the full force of these trends. They and their unions made grand concessions after the 2008 financial crisis to save their industry. When the companies’ fortunes improved, they forgot the workers’ sacrifice. An Economic Policy Institute analysis found that in the past decade, the Big Three have made $250 billion in profits, sent $66 billion of that to investors and raised CEO pay by 40%. Meanwhile, the average auto manufacturing worker is earning almost 20% less today than they did in 2008. In this, the auto industry is a perfect microcosm of the American economy writ large. This bifurcation between the top and everyone else — the trend that has eroded the middle class, destroyed the classic “American dream” of supporting a family on a blue collar income, and fed the blanket disgust in our system that helped fuel the rise of Donald Trump — cannot continue forever. Something has to give. So the UAW is going big. Their demands for this contract are not incremental. The union is asking for not just a 36% wage increase over four years — similar to the increase in executive pay — but also a defined benefit pension (something that corporate America is determined to make extinct) and a 32-hour workweek. The latter demands may be somewhat aspirational, but if there was ever a time to be aspirational, it is now.
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Post by Webster on Sept 18, 2023 13:27:23 GMT -5
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Post by Webster on Sept 22, 2023 14:31:45 GMT -5
(The Guardian) UAW to announce new strikes against General Motors and Stellantis - reportThe United Auto Workers is expected to escalate strike actions against US automakers General Motors and Stellantis after failing to reach agreement over a new contract, Reuters is reporting, citing sources familiar with talks. The strike is expected to expand to at least six additional GM and Stellantis facilities in Michigan, the sources said. Last week, UAW president Shawn Fain said the union would launch a series of “stand up” strikes at individual car plants after failing to reach a deal with the car companies. “If we don’t make serious progress by noon on Friday, September 22nd, more locals will be called on to stand up and join the strike,” Fain said this week. -- Autoworkers have waited long enough to make things right at the big three. We’re not waiting around and we’re not messing around, so noon on September 22nd is a new deadline.The union will also invite Joe Biden to come to the picket lines, according to a source.
The United Auto Workers (UAW) represents nearly 150,000 autoworkers at the manufacturers but has chosen to select local unions to strike rather than staging a mass walkout. The strategy preserves the union’s strike fund and aims to leave the companies guessing as to which sites will walk out, building pressure to come to an agreement. The strike is the first time the UAW has walked out at all three automakers at once. The union has emphasized the billions of dollars in profits the big three automakers – General Motors, Stellantis and Ford – have made since the 2008 economic recession and federal bailouts of the auto industry, where workers accepted numerous concessions that were never restored once the corporations returned to profitability.
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Post by Webster on Sept 22, 2023 14:32:39 GMT -5
(The Guardian) UAW leader to invite Joe Biden to join picket line - reportsThe president of the United Auto Workers, Shawn Fain, will invite Joe Biden to join workers on the picket line against Detroit automakers, according to multiple reports. The invitation from Fain, reported by Reuters and the Washington Post, comes as the president is already considering a trip to the picket line under pressure from Michigan Democrats. Biden has called on the automakers to increase their wage proposals to reach a deal with the UAW. He said last week: I believe they should go further to ensure record corporate profits mean record contracts for the UAW.
Shawn Fain, the president of the United Auto Workers (UAW) said the strike movement is not just about the big three US autoworkers, and that union members “are ready to stand up against corporate greed and stand up for our communities”. The public “is on our side” and members “can and will go all out if our national leadership decides that companies aren’t willing to move”, he said. He added that going on strike “isn’t something we take lightly” and "not something we do without a clear strategy to win”.
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Post by Webster on Sept 22, 2023 14:34:20 GMT -5
(The Guardian) UAW president invites Joe Biden to join picket lineUAW president Shawn Fain, in a video address, invited Joe Biden to join the picket line against automakers. He said: We invite and encourage everyone who supports our cause to join us on the picket line from our friends and families all the way up to the President of the United States. We invite you to join us in our fight. UAW president says GM and Stellanti need 'serious pushing' but 'some real progress' with FordFain said he gave UAW members’ demands to the big three automakers two months ago, and that they had “wasted over a month failing to respond”. There has been “some movement” particularly in the last week, he said, adding that “some real progress” had been made with Ford. He said he wanted to recognize that Ford “is showing that they’re serious about reaching a deal”. -- I don’t have to tell you that this is an important victory in our fight to save our jobs, keep families together and keep our communities from being gutted.General Motors and Stellantis are going “to need some serious pushing”, he said.
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Post by Webster on Sept 22, 2023 14:35:35 GMT -5
(The Guardian) UAW president says 'no concessions on the table' as he calls on 38 more plants to join strikeFain called on 38 additional plants across 20 states to join the strike, adding that there are “no concessions on the table”. The head of the United Auto Workers said: Today at noon Eastern time, all of the parts distribution facilities at General Motors are being called to stand up and strike. We will be striking 38 locations across 20 states across all nine regions of the UAW.Members will shut down parts distribution until General Motors and Stellanti “come to their senses and come to the table with a serious offer”, he said. -- It’s time to hit the picket lines across the country. It’s time to show the companies that we are united and we are fired up and we are ready for a record contract. It’s time to stand up against corporate greed. It’s time to stand up for our communities. UAW family – I’ll see you on the picket line.
During a livestream update, United Auto Workers president Shawn Fain announced it will expand its strike against parts distribution centers across the country at GM and Stellantis, extending its simultaneous strikes that began with one assembly plant each of the Detroit Three. By targeting distribution centers, this turns the strike into a nationwide event, Fain said. -- We will be everywhere from California to Massachusetts, from Oregon to Florida.Fain also invited Joe Biden to join the picket line. On Thursday, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre declined to answer if the president plans to visit a picket line. She said “all parties continuing to be at the negotiating table is a positive. It is important that we result in a win-win agreement.”
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Post by Webster on Sept 22, 2023 14:45:23 GMT -5
(The Guardian) A strike pitting a resurgent trade union against the US’s three biggest carmakers has exposed key differences in labour relations among Republicans – even while animating their assault on Joe Biden’s self-styled “Bidenomics” policies. Led by Donald Trump, the former president and 2024 party frontrunner, Republican hopefuls have seized on the stoppage by 13,000 United Auto Workers (UAW) members at General Motors, Ford and Stellantis production facilities in Missouri, Michigan and Ohio to highlight rumbling economic discontent as a catalyst to recapturing the White House. Republicans – who have attacked unions for decades – believe they stand to gain from a dispute that could seriously test Biden’s claim to be the most pro-labour president in US history. Yet underlying their conviction is a divide between those professing sympathy for the strikers’ grievances and others who have invoked Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher to suggest that they deserve to be sacked.
Bullishly heading the Republican charge is Donald Trump, who has made clear his intention to woo UAW members by scheduling a keynote speech in Detroit next week – the symbolic heartland of the US motor industry and near the site of the strike-hit Ford plant in Dearborn. He will address 500 workers and union members from a range of industries – including carworkers – in a bid to reclaim the level of working-class support that enabled him to carry Michigan in his 2016 presidential victory over Hillary Clinton, before losing the state in his 2020 defeat to Joe Biden. Next Tuesday’s event will be timed to coincide with the second Republican primary debate in California, which he is deliberately skipping to shield his presumed status as the party’s anointed nominee-in-waiting. For his part, Biden has clearly sided with the union’s demands and urged management to share more of their companies’ record profits with the workforce.
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Post by Webster on Sept 22, 2023 19:02:07 GMT -5
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Post by Webster on Sept 22, 2023 22:05:12 GMT -5
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Post by Webster on Sept 24, 2023 13:43:39 GMT -5
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Post by Webster on Sept 26, 2023 11:42:30 GMT -5
(The Guardian) At 12pm today, Joe Biden will go where no president has gone before: a union picket line. The Guardian’s Robert Tait reports on why Biden’s visit to striking autoworkers in Michigan is significant: Joe Biden will make a rare presidential appearance on a picket line in Michigan on Tuesday to show solidarity with striking members of the United Auto Workers (UAW) union locked in an escalating dispute with America’s three biggest carmakers.
In a high-stakes effort to steal a march on Donald Trump, Biden will offer his backing to strikers at a plant in the Detroit area as part of an all-out bid to retain the support of union members in Michigan, seen as a key presidential election battleground state.
The US president’s visit comes a day before Trump, his expected Republican opponent in next year’s poll, visits Detroit – the historic centre of the US car industry – to address workers in his own pitch for the strikers’ support.
Trump, who won Michigan with the help of union members’ support in his 2016 election victory over Hillary Clinton before losing it four years later in his defeat to Biden, is not expected to visit a picket line. Biden’s trip is designed to burnish his self-proclaimed credentials as the most union-friendly president in US history and possibly also to earn the explicit backing of the UAW, which has yet to endorse his bid for re-election.
In a post on X, the social media platform that was formerly Twitter, the president said the aim of his visit was “to join the picket line and stand in solidarity with the men and women of UAW as they fight for a fair share of the value they helped create”. He added: “It’s time for a win-win agreement that keeps American auto manufacturing thriving with well-paid UAW jobs.”
It’s no accident the picket line Joe Biden is visiting is in Michigan – the state is crucial for him to win if he’s to return to the White House for a second term. The Guardian’s Steven Greenhouse reports on how the president is hoping today’s visit gives him a boost among a constituency vital not just to his own presidency, but to Democrats’ successes nationwide: In the more than 150 years since workers first formed labor unions in the United States, no American president has ever stood “in solidarity” with workers on a picket line. Joe Biden has vowed to do exactly that with striking autoworkers in Michigan on Tuesday. “This is genuinely new – I don’t think it’s ever happened before, a president on a picket line,” said Nelson Lichtenstein, a longtime labor historian at the University of California, Santa Barbara. “Candidates do it frequently and prominent senators, but not a president.” Biden’s visit to the picket line, labor experts say, will give him a political boost in Michigan and other industrial swing states and might also help nudge the United Auto Workers (UAW) and automakers to a quicker settlement. But some experts say his visit could backfire if the walkout drags on for months or seriously hurts the nation’s economy. Biden’s predecessors were often far more hostile toward strikers. In 1894, Grover Cleveland dispatched federal troops to help shut down a railroad strike; during the Korean war in 1952, Harry Truman seized the nation’s steel mills in response to a steelworkers’ strike; and in 1981, Ronald Reagan fired 11,345 striking air traffic controllers.
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Post by Webster on Sept 26, 2023 12:30:50 GMT -5
(The Guardian) Joe Biden is traveling to Michigan to picket with UAW workers at the invitation of the union’s leader, Shawn Fain, who hasn’t had the easiest relationship with the president. The Guardian’s Michael Sainato has more on the union chief, and the historic strike he is leading: Shawn Fain isn’t messing around. Just six months into his job as president of the United Auto Workers (UAW), he is leading US car workers in their biggest strike in a generation and on Tuesday secured a historic first: getting a sitting US president to join the pickets.
The 54-year-old is the grandson of two UAW retirees and won the union’s presidency in a close-fought election in March. From the get-go he has taken an aggressive, uncompromising stance as the UAW has negotiated new contracts with Detroit’s big three automakers.
Before his election, the UAW was rife with corruption. Senior figures, including the former president Gary Jones, were jailed for embezzlement. The scandal led to the UAW’s first-ever election by direct vote rather than by a convention of delegates. Fain won on a promise of internal reform and external action. “This is our shot for true reform of the UAW, to put the power and control of our union back in the hands of the membership by electing leaders who will be held accountable by the membership,” his campaign page said.
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Post by Webster on Sept 26, 2023 12:33:18 GMT -5
(The Guardian) 'Pro-union' Biden to make historic visit to UAW picket line in MichiganWhite House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Joe Biden will make the first visit by a US president to a union picket line in modern times this afternoon, when he joins striking United Auto Workers members in Michigan. “This is the most pro-union president in modern times,” Jean-Pierre told reporters on Air Force One during the flight to Wayne County, Michigan. “President Joe Biden’s continuing to show his support for union workers, in this case, autoworkers. This is something that he believes and you see that in his economic policy, and it’s in the big pieces of legislation that he’s gotten to pass and also sign, that he puts workers at the center of it.” Jean-Pierre declined to say which picket line Biden would visit. His itinerary takes him to the Detroit area, where the big three American automakers are headquartered, and where UAW members at Ford, General Motors and Stellantis plants and distribution centers have walked off the job amid protracted contract negotiations.
Here’s a photo from the Associated Press of Joe Biden on the ground in Romulus, Michigan, where he’s been greeted by United Auto Workers president Shawn Fain. Fain invited Biden to visit a picket line last week, and the president took him up on the invitation:
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