United Auto Workers president Shawn Fain took to social media on Friday, October 13, to deliver updates on the union’s ongoing strike against Detroit-Three automakers.
The UAW chief’s latest livestream comes just two days after the union called on 8,700 additional workers to abandon their positions at Ford’s largest truck plant, located in Kentucky. During a YouTube livestream, Fain explained that the OEM had sought to meet with UAW negotiators via Zoom on Wednesday but only to deliver the same contract offered two weeks before. In a face-to-face meeting with executives later that evening, Fain rejected the repeated offer and announced the strike immediately after.
In what he called a “new phase” for the UAW’s strike efforts against Detroit manufacturers, Fain announced he would no longer limit strike announcements to Fridays so as to prevent OEMs from delaying concessions until the last minute. “Ford thought they could just wait until Friday morning to make a better offer,” the United Auto Workers president commented. “They thought they figured out the so-called rules of the game, so we changed the rules.” Going forward, the union chief will instead initiate strikes on an as-needed basis with little notice given to automaker executives. In previous livestreams (all broadcasted on Fridays), Fain declined to escalate strike efforts against both Stellantis and General Motors due to eleventh-hour compromises, one of which he claimed was delivered minutes before his social media appearance was scheduled to begin.
The United Auto Workers union is now in its fourth week of strikes against Detroit-Three automakers. With the additions of Mack Truck employees and team members at Ford’s Kentucky plant earlier this week, roughly 33,700 UAW members are now on strike across the U.S. On Thursday, Ford Blue president Kumar Galhotra claimed the company was at “the limit” of what it could afford to give the union.
