The United Auto Workers’ (UAW) snap strike on Wednesday at Ford’s largest and most profitable factory was raising pressure on Stellantis and General Motors as negotiators resumed contract talks on Thursday, Reuters reported.
UAW negotiators were turning their attention on Thursday to talks with Chrysler-parent Stellantis, union president Shawn Fain said, confirming an earlier Reuters report.
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“Here’s to hoping talks at Stellantis today are more productive than Ford yesterday,” Fain wrote on social media. Stellantis did not immediately comment to Reuters.
The report said the Kentucky walkout was a warning to Stellantis and General Motors whose wage and benefits offers fall short of Ford’s, based on summaries the automakers and the UAW have released.
Some analysts reportedly saw Fain’s decision to shut down Ford’s Kentucky Truck plant, which builds Super Duty pickups and Lincoln Navigator SUVs, as a sign that the endgame could be starting in the nearly month long round of coordinated walkouts at the Detroit Three.
“Pressure was always needed to force a deal,” Evercore ISI analyst Chris McNally wrote in a note on Thursday.
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By GlobalDataLast Friday, Fain said if needed, the UAW would strike the GM assembly plant in Arlington, Texas that builds Cadillac Escalade, Chevy Suburban and other large, high-priced SUVs, Reuters noted. GM’s FLINT heavy duty truck assembly plant is another potential strike target.
Fain has scheduled a video address for Friday at 10am ET (3pm BST). In past weeks, he has used Friday addresses to order additional walkouts, or announce progress in bargaining, Reuters said.
Reuters noted the three Detroit automakers had more than doubled initial wage hike offers, agreed to raise wages along with inflation and improved pay for temporary workers, but the union wants higher wages still, the abolishment of a two-tier wage system and the expansion of unions to battery plants.
The report noted that, even with 8,700 workers at Ford’s Kentucky Truck plant now on strike, less than a quarter of the 150,000 UAW workers at the Detroit Three automakers are out but thousands more have been furloughed from jobs at operations that are not on strike because automakers said the walkouts made their work unnecessary.
Ford said on Wednesday it was laying off another 58 workers in Michigan as a result of the strike.
Ford has also warned workers at a dozen other factories could be sent home because of the truck plant walkout. Officials told Reuters new layoffs stemming from the Kentucky strike could begin in the coming days.
Fain and other UAW officials called a meeting with Ford on Wednesday and demanded a new offer, which Ford did not have, a Ford official told Reuters.
“We’re not gonna wait around forever,” Fain reportedkt said on social media platform X on Wednesday evening. “If Ford can’t get that after four weeks on strike, these 8,700 workers shutting down their biggest plant will help them understand it.”
