Joe Biden is planning to travel to Michigan on Tuesday. UAW President Shawn Fain had invited leaders to come join the picket lines in the union strike against Ford, Stellantis, and General Motors.
Last Friday, the UAW called on distributors for General Motors and Stellantis to join the expanding strike. This brings the labor dispute to 38 locations in 20 states.
The UAW has withheld their endorsement of Biden for 2024, so this move is also likely calculated to help poor-performing and wildly unpopular Joe Biden shore up support in Michigan, considered a ‘swing state.’
Meanwhile the Detroit News is reporting on leaked texts showing the UAW Communications Director Jonah Furman highlighting their plan to pressure and ‘compression points’ against Ford so that they can continue striking for months.
UAW Communication Director Jonah Furman’s private leaked texts:
“And creating compression points of national attention for them to do the right thing is way different than just waiting for a month for the next offer. Plus, we’re breaking pattern and they’re bargaining against each other for the first time in 70 years.”
“And we can calibrate it exactly to their moves at the table. If Ford and GM won’t move, but Stellantis will, we can spare them” — and, for the first time in the union’s history, break its long-sacred practice of pattern bargaining by turning competitive rivals against one another in a bid to secure the best deal for dues-paying members.
“If we can keep them [Big Three Automakers] wounded for months, they don’t know what to do… this is recurring reputations damage and operation chaos.”
“The beauty is we’ve laid it all out in public and they’re still helpless to stop it.”
The Union has built up an $825 million strike fund, which provides eligible strikers $500 a week in strike benefits from the union’s fund.
There are a reported 145,000 UAW members among the big three automakers. If they were to strike at the same time, it could cost the Union Strike fund more than $70 million a week.
