TOLEDO, Ohio — The United Auto Workers -- now with more than 33,000 members on strike at Toledo's Jeep plant and other auto plants across the country -- will not expand its strike further right now, the UAW president announced in his weekly Friday address.
UAW President Shawn Fain made the announcement during his regular weekly Facebook live appearance, noting that the union had expanded the strike two days earlier by adding workers from Ford's Louisville truck plant to the walkout.
"We're done waiting 'til Fridays to announce expansion of our strike," he said.
UAW member Michael Mondragon said Fain's decision to make the calls for strikes less predictable by automakers benefits the union.
"I think that it's great as far as the negotiating power goes for us," Mondragon said. "It keeps all the CEOs in the other companies on their toes. They have no idea what's going to happen when, so they know that they have to be ready to negotiate whenever we make a phone call and say 'hey, we need to have a meeting, right now.'"
Though workers, observers and even the automakers have come to expect strike-expansion announcements with these Friday addresses, Fain said the UAW is switching up its strategy.
"This week we entered an entirely new phase of our stand-up strike," Fain said.
Fain also expressed appreciation for the workers who have been on strike the longest, including those at Toledo's Jeep Assembly Complex, who began the UAW's stand-up strike on Sept. 15.
"(I'm) extremely happy because I think that we just need to get out there and show them that we're not playing games," said Sherri Green, a Local 12 striker who has worked at several plants in her career. "I mean, these are our lives and this is the middle class."
Fain said union leaders decided to call a strike at Ford's Louisville facility Wednesday after they believed Ford was dragging its feet in negotiations, believing that a strike announcement would only come on Friday.
"They thought they figured out the so-called rules of the game so we changed the rules," Fain said. "And now there's only one rule: Pony up."
Fain again called out the record corporate profits of recent years, as well as large pay increases for automaker executives, saying that striking workers are prepared to stand their ground until unionized workers get their fair share.
"Income inequality in the U.S. has risen to heights not seen since the great depression," Fain said. "So I'm not the cause of raised expectations. The cause is overflowing corporate bank accounts."
Fain said the UAW now enters a "new phase" of the strike, one in which automakers should expect expansions of the walkouts at any time.
"Moving forward we will be calling out plants where we need to, when we need to," he said. "Not just Fridays anymore."
"Hopefully this is a step in the right direction to where we get more action, reaction instead of letting us sit out here and nothing happen. At least make it worthwhile," said Ira Deel, a Local 12 striker.
The strike continues in Toledo and elsewhere
When talks with Detroit's Big 3 failed to yield contracts by Sept. 15 -- when the previous contracts expired -- the UAW president announced workers at three plants would immediately strike. Jeep's Toledo Assembly Complex was among these first targets, as were a GM factory in Wentzville, Missouri, and a Ford plant in Wayne, Michigan, near Detroit. The nearly 6,000 workers at Toledo's Jeep plant have remained off the job since then.
A week later Fain announced the strike would expand to include workers at 38 General Motors and Stellantis parts-distribution facilities in 20 states. Ford was spared in this expansion, Fain said, because talks with that automaker had turned productive.
On Sept. 29, the UAW expanded the strike again, adding 7,000 more workers at a Ford plant in Chicago and a General Motors assembly factory near Lansing, Michigan. The expansion meant that about 25,000 workers -- or roughly 17% of the unions’ 146,000 members -- are now on strike across the country.
On Oct. 6, Fain announced that two straight weeks of good developments in negotiations led union leaders to decide against escalating the strike again.
But on Wednesday of this week, the UAW leader made the surprise announcement that 8,700 workers at Ford's Louisville, Kentucky, truck plant would immediately walk off the job, bringing the total number of UAW workers on strike against Detroit's automakers to 33,700 nationwide.
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