— About 13,000 U.S. auto workers stopped making vehicles and went on strike Friday after their leaders couldn’t bridge a giant gap between union demands in contract talks and what Detroit’s three automakers are willing to pay.Members of the United Auto Workers union began picketing at a General Motors assembly plant in Wentzville, Missouri; a Ford factory in Wayne, Michigan, near Detroit; and a Stellantis Jeep plant in Toledo, Ohio.
“Workers all over the world are watching this,” said Liz Shuler, president of the AFL-CIO, a federation of 60 unions with 12.5 million members. As the deadline approached, she cleaned up her workstation and walked out when the midnight bell rang. “I’m really happy that everyone stood together,” she said.
The strikes capped a day of both sides griping that the other had not budged enough from their initial positions. Top-scale assembly plant workers make about $32 per hour, plus large annual profit-sharing checks. Ford said average annual pay including overtime and bonuses was $78,000 last year. Automakers say they’re facing unprecedented demands as they develop and build new electric vehicles while at the same time making gas-powered cars, SUVs and trucks to pay the bills. They’re worried labor costs will rise so much that they’ll have to price their cars above those sold by foreign automakers with U.S. factories.
It’s tough to say just how long it will take for the strikes to cut inventories at dealers and start hurting the companies’ bottom lines. The bulk of Stellantis’s 6,600 workers can be found in and around Toledo at its Jeep Assembly complex.
RELATED: Because of how Ohio funds local governments, a strike by the UAW could have a difficult impact on host cities
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