SHARONVILLE, Ohio — Workers at Sharonville's Ford plant were not called to join the national UAW strike when Union President Shawn Fain held the union's weekly live stream on Friday.
Fain called just two new plants to the picket line on Friday: A Ford plant in Chicago and a GM plant in Lansing, Michigan. Fain said no new Stellantis plants were added to the list, because negotiations with the company had been advancing in a productive manner.
Earlier this month, UAW Local 863 President Tod Turner expressed surprise that the Sharonville plant hadn't been among some of the first to go on strike, because the Ford Sharonville Transmission Plant makes the transmission for one of the most popular vehicles in the world: The Ford F-250.
"We're fighting ... to make sure that we get some of those gains back. It's time to do that," Turner said. "We did all of the hard work when they were struggling, and now they're making billions."
Turner said then that he believed there's a lot at stake for the 1,800 auto workers in the Tri-State, noting that employees have been giving companies concessions in pay and benefits through every major downturn — whether that be the housing crisis or a global pandemic — for more than a decade.
Workers at the General Motors Cincinnati Parts Distribution Center in West Chester were called to join the strike by Fain on Sept. 22.
Roughly 100 union members went on strike with that plant. GM's website says 123 people work at the West Chester facility.
The strikes have targeted the Big Three — General Motors, Stellantis and Ford.
Although new plants joined the picket line Friday, progress was reported in talks Thursday night, and in a statement Friday morning, the union left itself room to delay expansion of the strikes. The statement said Fain would announce “whether more workers will stand up and join the ongoing strike” against the automakers.
The automakers' last known wage offers were around 20% over the life of a four-year contract, a little more than half of what the union has demanded. Other contract improvements, such as cost of living increases, restoration of defined benefit pensions for newly hired workers and an end to tiers of wages within the union are also on the table.
The union went on strike Sept. 15 when it couldn’t reach agreements on new contracts with Ford, General Motors and Jeep maker Stellantis.
It initially targeted one assembly plant from each company. Last week it added 38 parts distribution centers run by GM and Stellantis. Ford was spared the second escalation because talks with the union were progressing.
It wasn't clear whether Ford would be spared in Friday's moves. The union wouldn’t say what action it would take on Friday, reiterating that all options are on the table.
Fain said Tuesday that negotiations were moving slowly and the union would add facilities to the strike to turn up the pressure on the automakers if needed.
“We’re moving with all three companies still. It’s slower,” Fain said after talking to workers on a picket line near Detroit with President Joe Biden. “It’s bargaining. Some days you feel like you make two steps forward, the next day you take a step back."
The union has structured its walkout in a way that has allowed the companies keep making pickup trucks and large SUVs, their top-selling and most profitable vehicles. It has shut down assembly plants in Missouri, Ohio and Michigan that make midsize pickup trucks, commercial vans and midsize SUVs, all of which are profitable but don’t make as much money as the larger vehicles.
In the past the union had picked one company as a potential strike target and reached a contract agreement with that company that would serve as a pattern for the others.
But this year Fain introduced a novel strategy of targeting a limited number of facilities at all three automakers, while threatening to add more if the companies do not come up with better offers.
Currently only about 12% of the union’s 146,000 workers at the three automakers are on strike, allowing it to preserve a strike fund that was worth $825 million before Sept. 14.
If all of the union’s auto workers went on strike, the fund would be depleted in less than three months, and that’s without factoring in health care costs.
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