TheChek News Flow

Union leader Shawn Fain launched targeted approach that hits automakers GM, Ford and Stellantis simultaneously but risks uneven pain for workers

Over the summer, top officials at the United Auto Workers gathered for frequent strike-strategy meetings around a 30-foot table in a boardroom at union headquarters, overlooking the Detroit River.

Their plan: craft an approach that would throw the auto companies into disarray.

The tradition-steeped union for decades had largely stuck to the same basic playbook in its dealings with Detroit’s three automakers. Then just a few months into his job as the UAW’s top official, Shawn Fain, the 54-year-old who came up in the union as an electrician, was prepared to throw it into the trash bin.

“This strategy will keep the companies guessing,” Fain said late Thursday, on the eve of the UAW’s walkout at General Motors GM 0.86%increase; green up pointing triangle, Ford Motor F -0.08%decrease; red down pointing triangle and Chrysler-parent Stellantis STLA 2.18%increase; green up pointing triangle. The action was called after two months of negotiations failed to yield new labor deals for the union’s roughly 146,000 auto members.

The strike—which targets three assembly plants in three different states—was the first time the 88-year-old union had staged simultaneous walkouts at all three automakers. Fain has threatened walkouts at additional plants could come, and with little notice, the longer negotiations drag on.

The unusual deployment of a rolling, slow-burn approach is designed to stymie the car companies’ factory operations as a way to gain leverage for the union. It comes just as the carmakers are recovering from supply-chain dysfunction that disrupted their global output during the pandemic, illustrating the logistical havoc of sudden plant shutdowns.

For Fain, there are also risks. The novel tactic creates more complexity and confusion for the UAW’s members, and will require more discipline among workers in order to succeed, some workers and labor experts say. Unlike a traditional all-in walkout, Fain’s strategy is having an uneven effect on members within an organization whose motto is solidarity.

“If you’re going to take out one plant, take us all out, let us all stand together,” said Brooke Jesse, who works at a Ford assembly plant in Ohio that produces commercial vehicles. “We all have to feel the pain.”

Fain started his union career in Kokomo, Ind., at Chrysler 29 years ago. He was elected by a slim margin in March, under a new system in which members directly elect their leaders instead of the traditional style of local officials doing the voting. Fain campaigned on a hard break from the past, following a multiyear corruption scandal that resulted in the convictions of more than a dozen UAW officials, including prison time for two former union presidents.

There also was a perception that union leaders were too cozy with automaker executives, after federal prosecutors accused Fiat Chrysler Automobiles, since absorbed into Stellantis, of steering worker-training money to UAW officials. The automaker’s U.S. division in 2021 pleaded guilty to a criminal charge of conspiring to violate U.S. labor law.

Shortly after winning the UAW’s top office, Fain shook up his team, losing some of the union’s longtime staffers and bringing on new recruits with records of success in labor organizing outside the auto union.

The president’s core group of advisers included a cohort of experienced UAW members who were keen to work with the new administration, including people in research and organizing who were knowledgeable about the union’s history and had relationships with its locals.

There were also newcomers, especially in the communications, legal and political strategy departments. Members of this team largely had roots in the Service Employees International Union, a big healthcare union, as well as Labor Notes, an online publication that describes itself as a voice for union activists.

“I have my own ideas, but I thought it was important to bring in people that weren’t ingrained in the system,” Fain told The Wall Street Journal in an August interview from the union’s headquarters, known to members as Solidarity House.

Among those who became his closest advisers are Chris Brooks, an organizer and reporter who formerly wrote for Labor Notes and was a field director at the NewsGuild of New York. The NewsGuild earlier this year secured a pay increase of at least 10.6% for New York Times employees after a 24-hour walkout in December.

Benjamin Dictor, a partner at law firm Eisner Dictor & Lamadrid, also joined Fain’s inner circle. His firm worked with the International Brotherhood of Teamsters during its talks with the United Parcel Service, in which the union secured a new labor contract this year.

The new staffers brought a different perspective and also pushed for the UAW—a historically guarded and insular organization—to be more transparent and active on social media.

Since taking office, Fain has unleashed a torrent of social-media posts and regular livestreams. He stunned the car companies by talking openly about their bargaining offers, thrusting discussions that would normally be held behind closed doors into the public eye. Fain at one point made a show of tossing one of the car company’s proposals in the trash during a video address to members.

The new union leader has also taken a far more combative tone with the car companies, stoking speculation in Detroit earlier this summer that he might try an all-out strike at all three automakers.

Sitting in the third-floor conference room at a table covered with binders and coffee cups at their Detroit headquarters this summer, Fain and his advisers batted around a number of ideas for how they would stage a walkout.

Full strikes at all three were considered, said people with knowledge of the discussions.

Some on the leadership team, including at times Fain himself, appreciated how that approach would make a strong statement to the companies by bringing members out en masse.

Others had reservations, saying talks would likely stall in a full production shutdown, and worried the union would lose some of its leverage by going for the most aggressive plan first. There was also a simple financial calculation to consider: Such an option would rapidly drain the UAW’s $825 million fund that it uses to pay striking workers, likely depleting it within about two months.

While that all-in option was never officially eliminated—Fain even acknowledged publicly part of him itched to take that approach—his team moved on to other ideas.

There was UAW precedent for a more-limited, strategic strike of certain factories. Striking key parts factories that serve multiple assembly plants, such as engine or transmission operations, a so-called bottleneck strike, can quickly force closures.

In 1998, a strike at plants in Flint, Mich., led to domino-effect closures of other GM factories that depended on their parts. The 54-day action cost the automaker about $2 billion.

Some on Fain’s team worried that the bottleneck approach, while putting fewer members on strike, would also be too swift and severe, capable of taking down most of an automaker’s operation within days.

This would result in more members becoming unemployed even though they weren’t among the striking group, fallout that the union wanted to avoid.

The group instead zeroed in on a tactic to strike individual assembly plants of each company.

A progressive, cascading strike would allow for a longer runway to keep more UAW workers on the job, preserving the strike fund. And the uncertainty it would sow inside the automakers’ operations would give UAW’s negotiators leverage to exert pressure at the bargaining table, the union leaders decided.

The three plants now idled in the strike emerged as sweet spots. UAW officials wanted to spread the pain evenly across the three companies, people with knowledge of the plans said. Each of the three factories make midsize pickup trucks, for example: the Ford Ranger, Stellantis’s Jeep Gladiator and GM’s Chevrolet Colorado and GMC Canyon.

“In part, these plants were chosen to balance the impact across the automakers,” said Brandon Campbell, an executive board member at the UAW. “We don’t want to advantage one over the other.”

The union’s message with the initial targets was to show companies it wanted to continue bargaining and reach a deal swiftly, not hit companies with the maximum pressure right after the contracts expired, according to people familiar with the matter.

At the same time, these factories don’t produce the companies’ biggest moneymakers—large pickup trucks and SUVs such as Ford’s F-150 or GM’s Cadillac Escalade—leaving the union with those chips to play.

Over the summer, Fain surprised many in the auto industry by revealing that, in this round of talks, the UAW would break from decades of tradition by not picking one of the three automakers as its main bargaining target. He instead chose to negotiate with all three at the same time.

Historically, the union has targeted one automaker to reach a deal with first and then used it as a template for the negotiations at the other two. The first company is referred to as the “strike target” because if a deal can’t be reached, the union strikes it first.

The automakers and union exchanged proposals in late August and into September that included fluctuating offers around wage increases, cost-of-living adjustments and time off. The companies have offered around 20% increases over four years, plus lump-sum payments of more than $16,000 in signing bonuses and inflation-protection payments. The union in recent weeks had come off its initial 40% wage-increase proposal into the mid-30% range.

It became clear the gulf between the two sides was still significant, and just after midnight Friday about 12,700 workers went on strike. The plants affected—kept secret until just a couple of hours before the action—are a GM plant near St. Louis, Stellantis in Toledo and Ford near Detroit.

The union’s more targeted approach of walkouts at key plants at all three automakers has its advantages, making it difficult for the companies to devise contingency plans and helping stretch out the confusion for a longer period of time, labor experts and organizers say.

These surprise-tactic strikes have gained momentum with other unions, as some UAW staffers were aware. About two decades ago, the Association of Flight Attendants created its own strategy, which it called Create Havoc Around Our System, or CHAOS, and used it during negotiations with Alaska Airlines.

Over a period of several months, 24 flight attendants walked out on just seven flights without warning, causing sudden staffing complications and disruptions for the airline. Ultimately, the tactic won the union a new contract with top industry pay in return for greater productivity.

“It allows the union to continue to build the momentum of the strike, rather than having the excitement around that first day,” said Sara Nelson, international president of the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA, AFL-CIO.

Still, Fain’s strategy will require a higher level of execution and organizing than a more-routine strike, said Thomas Kohler, a law professor at Boston College Law School. There is a risk workers who remain on the job might slow down production, which could undermine the strike strategy and lead to possible action from the companies.

The action at the three plants was more muted than some expected the union to take, though it still has led to layoffs and crimped production at other facilities over the weekend.

The companies’ executives were quick to publicly vent their frustrations with the move.

“We don’t need to be on strike right now,” GM Chief Executive Mary Barra said on Friday. Ahead of the strike last week, Ford Chief Executive Jim Farley said: “We should be working creatively to solve hard problems rather than planning strikes and PR events.”

The White House also got involved. President Biden said he plans to dispatch senior adviser Gene Sperling and acting Labor Secretary Julie Su to Detroit in the coming days to offer support to the parties and urged the two sides to reach an agreement.

About 9% of the UAW’s members were on strike as of Sunday, while their colleagues continue to work full time without an active labor contract.

The strike so far has largely generated enthusiasm among the rank and file. Since it began, picket lines at the three plants were brimming with vocal supporters talking about history and justice.

“This was really nice because it kept everybody calm,” said Ford Michigan Assembly worker Samantha Hart of Fain’s targeted approach to striking, as she walked the picket lines early Friday. Hart’s brother-in-law also walked out at the Stellantis plant in Toledo.

GM said Friday it will likely soon idle operations at its Chevrolet Malibu factory in Kansas City, Kan., because it would run short of parts that are shipped from the St. Louis-area plant that is shut down for the strike. Roughly 2,000 workers would be laid off if the plant is idled.

One of them is Rob Pacheco, who works the assembly line at the Malibu plant. He said it is unclear when or whether he will receive strike pay, because he isn’t on strike. A UAW official said such situations will be decided case-by-case and that workers will be supported in some way, whether through state unemployment or union funds.

Pacheco said his income uncertainty is worth the broader fight for a better deal. “I don’t mind not being paid,” he said. “We all knew what we were getting into.”