A few hours after this post goes live, we’ll find out if the United Auto Workers union is going to strike on more of the Big Three’s plants. Given that nobody seems to see a miraculous resolution happening with General Motors, Ford and Stellantis in one morning, I think we can count on that happening.
Yes, we lead today’s morning roundup with more news from the UAW strike, which as it grows is proving to be one of the most important stories in the international business world. And hey, it may even coincide with a government shutdown next week. Sigh.
But it’s not all doom and gloom, friends! This is Friday, after all, so we have to have some fun stuff on tap for you. Like some news about the other Korean car company, accelerated EV plans from Toyota and more promising developments from a production Hyundai N Vision 74, which would be extremely rad.
Quick! Get me some hydrogen, we’re going to lay down some hot laps.
Update Friday 11 a.m. EST: The New York Times reports that the UAW will indeed strike at spare parts distribution centers owned by GM and Stellantis today—but not Ford, where negotiations seem to be progressing a little better. The original story follows below. —PG
This Is Not Your Father’s UAW, Example No. 1,298
Folks, there are a few takeaways from The Detroit News‘ scoop about leaked messages from a UAW group DM session on X (the social media platform formerly known as Twitter) that reveal some uncharacteristically hardcore tactics in play. First, the messages in question:
In a series of text messages obtained by The Detroit News from a private group chat on the former Twitter platform X, a close aide to Fain writes that union negotiators are using bargaining sessions to inflict “recurring reputations damage and operational chaos” on the Detroit automakers. “(I)f we can keep them wounded for months they don’t know what to do. The beauty is we’ve laid it all out in the public and they’re still helpless to stop it.”
And now, the takes:
- First and foremost, I don’t know how these messages were obtained by the News but in general, it’s foolish to trust any sensitive information to Twitter DMs. The whole platform is about as secure as leaving your front door open at night. On top of that, it’s owned by infamous union-hater Elon Musk who has already acted weird about the strike, so the UAW was really playing with fire here. Get Signal or something instead!
- I’ll also add that I’ve been a part of union negotiations too, and probably like any private conversation, you say stuff in the heat of battle that may not look great to the outside world. Having said that, these messages will easily be used as ammo to undermine the UAW’s cause. Don’t put anything in writing you don’t want in the newspaper. That’s another good lesson.
- The scoop comes from News editor and columnist Daniel Howes, who admonishes both sides here. For the union’s part, he wonders if these labor tactics will bring back some of the worst parts of Detroit’s past, when “a deliberate strategy begins to saddle GM, Ford and Stellantis with botched product launches, tarnished brand images and costly new labor agreements that would eviscerate their U.S. profitability.”
- But above all, he seems to wonder how the hell the Big Three got rolled so hard here: “Did anyone in management in this town see this coming — a wholesale abandonment of convention that effectively discards pattern bargaining, enlists industry practice in the service of the UAW, and dispenses with old strike tactics in favor of a rolling method designed to induce chaos and inflict financial pain?” They must’ve been counting on dealing with the sad, sycophantic company union they dealt with for decades. Not anymore.
It’s a mess! But really, the union’s asking for 36% pay increases and the automakers have come back with offers of 20% or so. I see them meeting halfway and getting this wrapped up at some point sooner than later. Just expect some major economic ripple effects if this does coincide with a shutdown.
Hyundai Trademarks N74; So You’re Saying There’s A Chance?
Earlier this year, our own Thomas Hundal nailed himself a good scoop when he reported Hyundai’s VP of the N division has a strong desire to take the Vision N 74 into production. That car, in case you forgot, is the Giugiaro-inspired performance car that runs on electric batteries and has a hydrogen fuel cell as a kind of range extender.
I think it’s rather unlikely that such a complicated drivetrain setup would ever go to production, but it seems like a great way to launch another performance EV (or even hybrid, maybe.) Now we learn from Car and Driver that a trademark has been filed for “N74” in Europe, which could mean a lot of things but seems promising:
Sometimes dreams do come true and automakers choose to green light the fancy concept cars they show off. Last year, Hyundai’s N Vision 74 made made quite the splash when the manufacturer debuted the car in South Korea. It wasn’t long before many fans (Car and Driver staff included) were asking what it would take for Hyundai to produce it. While Hyundai still hasn’t confirmed a production version of the car, the online forum 7th Mustang spotted that the automaker did file a trademark application for “Hyundai N74” with the European Union Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO).
The trademark request was filed on September 20, and the classification covers “automobiles, sports cars, vans, motor trucks, motor buses, and electric vehicles,” meaning the filing is for more than just naming rights. According to the EUIPO, the application is still under examination.
Automakers file patents and trademarks all of the time, so this doesn’t lock this car into production or anything; far from it. But it keeps coming up, and I find that very interesting.
Inside KG Mobility, The Former Ssangyong, Which Is Up To Some Interesting Stuff Too
I feel terrible admitting this, but I haven’t thought about Ssangyong Motor Co. in a while. I’m sorry! I’ve been very busy. But these days, it calls itself KG Mobility (probably saved some money dropping the two s-es, which, smart.) Like its compatriots Hyundai and Kia, it’s doing some interesting stuff lately in the EV space.
Bloomberg reports KG Mobility unveiled an electric version of the handsome Torres SUV you see above, which retails for about $30,000 in Korea after subsidies. And it plans to triple annual sales to 320,000 units in the next three years.
They have some interesting stuff on tap. Electric trucks!
KG Mobility plans to release an electric pick-up truck in 2024, a hybrid vehicle in 2025 and a new EV called the F100 in 2026. The company also wants to increase market share in commercial vehicles, especially electric buses in Southeast Asia after buying Edison Motors Co., Kwak said.
“All countries in Southeast Asia are talking about environmental problems, such as serious air pollution,” said Kwak, who became chairman of Ssangyong a year ago, about six months before it was renamed. “Almost all local governments in the region are trying to convert buses into electric vehicles.”
Next year, KG Mobility plans to resume electric-bus production at a factory that was owned by Edison in Gunsan, South Korea, he said. It also intends to build a plant for assembling battery packs in Changwon. The company last month signed an agreement to build a battery plant with China’s BYD Co. in South Korea, though it hasn’t said where or provided investment details.
While Bill Ford and Jim Farley are probably readying a strike team of lawyers right now over that F100 name, the reborn Ssangyong could be worth keeping an eye on in this space. Could any be U.S.-bound? If it does well enough, you can’t rule that out.
I Told You, Don’t Count Toyota Out
If you told me any car company wanted to go from 25,000 annual worldwide EV sales in 2022 to 600,000 in 2025, I’d tell you about the bridge I have for sale. Unless that company is Toyota, which I think could be a mega-player in this space if it wants to. Now we know that’s the exact target, per the Nikkei newspaper and reported by Reuters:
The Nikkei report said the Japanese automaker was likely to step up production of battery-powered vehicles over the coming years to reach annual output of more than 600,000 vehicles in 2025.
Toyota declined to comment on the report.
The company has previously said it targets sales of 1.5 million EVs annually by 2026 and 3.5 million, or about one-third of current global volume, by 2030.
Then again, every other big legacy OEM has had plenty of headaches on this front—cost, software, battery production, all of it. Can Toyota crack the code?
Your Turn
I reserve the right to come back with an update if an escalated strike gets averted, but since it probably won’t: What plants do you expect will join the work stoppage today? And how much longer will this last?
The only way I see Toyota hitting those EV sales goals is to buy an existing EV manufacturer.
I really hope Toyota releases that red sporty hatchback in the back middle to the US market.
“…X (the social media platform formerly known as Prince)”.
FIFY
My turn???
WEED
The one plant that contributes to the most work stoppages.
Eh, depends. When it comes to repetitive tasks your could argue the opposite for some people, lol.
ya, the strain has a big affect in addition to an individual’s metabolism.
C.sativa = speed
C.indica = snacks and a nap.
get them workers some sour diesel…
If it was my job to write/perform music, cook, or really anything that allows me to tap into my creativity then weed would be a performance enhancing drug.
However, in my line of work even the thought of being high on the job is mortifying to me. I’d never even vaguely consider it…although we get randomly drug tested and play by federal rules despite weed being legal in DC so it’s not like I even could if I wanted to.
YMMV. I agree for my job it would NOT be a great idea. I’d be paranoid to all-hell about everything (I already am).
For seriously repetitive tasks though, you could do worse.
No stoppages, but yeah really slows them down. LOL
“the social media platform formerly known as Twitter”
Gotta give Elon credit for one thing. His rebrand is getting him all this extra ink every time the platform gets referred to.
I kinda wish media would just stick to calling it twitter like everyone else. Most outlets think they’re taking the piss by doing this, but in reality they’re just validating Musk and helping him with the rebranding process.
Please Hyundai make an N7 and offer a sweet Mass Effect themed option package!
I would do unspeakable things to own an ME themed N7.
“I’m Commander Shepard, and this is my favourite EV on the market.”
Ssangyong will of course have to fight Ford for the F100 name, but I bet Jeep would have something to say about that Torres SUV. I count 7 slots in that grille!
Ford might not appreciate the Torres much, either.
That… is an interesting point!
Welp, fuck. Working in the parts department at a GM dealership, we knew this was gonna be coming. So did the folks at the PDCs. A few weeks ago, they had the white collars get forklift certified and given a rundown on what they’d be doing in the event of the strike. So really, at the moment, things will only be about a day behind. I’m sure that will get worse as time goes on, and cross-ships will be screwed up. I dunno, we’ll see, because honestly, I have no idea how this will pan out at this stage. Knowing what I know, I don’t think it’s gonna be the blow that the UAW was hoping for, but I also would guess that at the very least the efficiency will suffer. Who knows
At a guess this is going according to UAW’s plan. They needed someone to blink (Ford did) and will now focus hard on finalizing a contract with Ford that they can use as a template for contracts with GM and Stellanis.
There’s a pretty clear path to a settlement here because they split Ford off and once one big player in an industry settles the others tend to follow shortly after. I’m weirdly more optimistic for a relatively fast resolution than I was a week ago.
Oddly enough, I agree with that. It just kind of surprises me that Ford is the one stepping up to bat first, because Farley has had plenty choice words about the situation
I love the idea of the white shirts learning how to drive lifts and working on the line, haha. It’ll be like one of those episodes of undercover boss where the boss realizes how difficult the job actually is. Of course, unlike the episodes they won’t actually want to DO anything about it.
I haven’t seen the show. Is that how it usually goes down? I figured the point of the show was just propaganda.
I imagined the boss spends a single day giving the appearance of doing the job (at a leisurely pace, well off peak time and after being carefully trained by the most experienced workers) while bitching about how a blind, mentally challenged lemur could fill the role and how lazy/spoiled/incompetent the workers are. The episode concludes with the boss threatening to hire said lemurs on the cheap to replace said lazy, spoiled workers unless they shape up and take a pay cut.
Conversely the spin off show “Undercover Peon” would have the least experienced member of the team thrust with no instruction or training whatsoever into the CEO’s role, burdened with all the responsibility of the job but with zero authority to actually do anything (and of course raking in peon compensation) all on the day of a hostile shareholder’s meeting during the workers strike and with the executive assistant out sick and a major unfulfilled production deadline.
(Meanwhile the actual boss would be far away, playing golf with buddies on the company expense account)
The episode concludes with the frazzled team member blubbering through tears about how underappreciated and grossly undercompensated the boss is.
Yeah as a former union employee I suspect the UAW deliberately leaked this or knew full well it’d get out. You assume anything you distribute in writing to rank and file will be seen by the employer too, and that is true for all digital distributions as well.
Can Toyota crack the code: yes. But until now, they were officially against EVs and not vigorously pursuing them, even as they were assiduously digging into alternative and next-gen battery chemistries behind the scenes because hybrids.
Cry EVs, and let slip the dogs of war. It’s about to get real.
This is a slow start, but I agree. What the world needs is not more expensive battery-powered luxury cars for rich people. It needs the EV equivalent of a Corolla. Sure, Nissan tried, but it’s Nissan. The EV equivalent of a Corolla needs to come from a company that cares about the products they sell.
If they’re really trying to make an impact, they would go for the plants making the half ton pickups Shut down the RAM 1500, F-150 and Silverado and they’ll be in a hurry to make a deal. That or they’ll go the opposite way and try to keep it low impact and go for more smaller plants. I am leaning towards making it hurt this time.
The risk with shutting down trucks is that UAW knows the drivers of that market aren’t blue-collar workers using it as a work truck but people using them as a luxury commuter vehicle.
They risk alienating the customer base of truck buyers from supporting them. This would be disastrous once elections roll around if the politicians decided to throw the workers under the bus for disrupting the supply of these beloved trucks.
The sad reality is that we should all be fighting for the UAW to get the best deal, as it shows that workers elsewhere should be capable of holding their companies to task of sharing profits to the people who helped build that profit.
It’s the highest risk move for sure, but it also had the potential for the highest reward. I am not saying it’s a smart move, but I think Fain is more likely to make bold moves than take it slow, whether that works out well for him or not I don’t know.
Yet up in Canada the Ford-Unifor deal will be finalized tonight and then GM & Stellantis will prolly get their Canada deals done early next week. Usually Unifor pulls Fain like shit, yet they realized this time it was best not to. Good luck UAW, looks like Fain is the problem. This is going to be a months long strike, UAW will cave before holiday season.
Unifor was all, UAW, eh, we are with you! Ford gives them nice contract. Unifor now is saying, UAW you Hosers, Take Off, eh.
Can anyone confirm the tier 2 starting wage in Canada is $24 vs $17 in the US? Even if that $24 is canadian dollars, hilarious they get more.
Would that be hilarious? Is it hilarious to have so many people, who could be your friends, neighbors or family stuck making $17 an hour?
Nothing like people being taken advantage of to put me in stiches!
Do EVs get easier to homologate without fuel-burning engines if really just down to crash testing?
If so, would it make it easier for new entrants, like KG/Ssangyong, enter a new market? (with MG making big inroads into Europe, maybe they’re eyeing another continent)
The whole announcement is here, starting at about the 8:20 mark:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lphRMZF4Wmk
Yes but what if we didn’t improve their wages, and just gave the executives more fat bonuses for all that ‘hard work’ they do?
PROFIT!
LINE GO UP!
STONKS
HUMAN SACRIFICE PLEASES THE LINE
It’s especially dumb to say these things on a platform controlled by God Emperor Musk because he’s shown time and time again that he’s willing to weaponize anything he controls to help his far right agenda and that he doesn’t have any regard whatsoever for ethics, laws, or human life. Of fucking course this stuff LeAkEd…Musk hates unions, he hates labor, and he hates every single person other than himself.
Of course I’ve seen the N74 news and of course I’m extremely excited to see what eventually shows up. I have serious doubts that the production version will have a hydrogen powertrain in any capacity because there’s so little infrastructure to support it…but I do think it’ll be an EV or at the bare minimum a performance hybrid of some sort because Hyundai has been pretty open about the fact that pure ICE Ns are about to be a thing of the past.
They claim emissions killed the Kona N (I don’t buy it, I think low sales did), the Elantra N has already received its mid cycle refresh, and the Veloster N is dead…not to mention Hyundai is all in on EVs. The optimist in me wants it to be a hybrid pony car competitor, but the realist in me expects it to be an EV halo car that’ll probably cost six figures. Hyundai desperately wants to be taken seriously and a true halo car would present quite an opportunity, although I don’t know how well it would sell.
The pony car idea is partially because I’d buy one and I’m trying to manifest it…but also because that segment is on its deathbed. The Mustang is all that exists anymore and I think enthusiasts would be willing to buy it because the N brand is rapidly gaining respect. We shall see. Like I said…my money is on it being produced in small numbers as an electric halo car.
That’s just it. They don’t need it to sell well. A good halo car would give them more credibility that could sell their bread-and-butter vehicles. You sell a few of these, maybe throw a couple onto tracks and get decent numbers, and people will think more highly of Hyundai. You’ll sell a bunch of N-Lines to people who want the “racing” aesthetic, plus a bunch of other vehicles to the people who look and take Hyundai seriously.
But, yeah, making it a hybrid pony car would be amazing.
If it looks like the concept, I wouldn’t care if it came fitted with a briggs & Stratton one-pot. Engines can be swapped.
Hyundai trademarks ‘N74’ in Europe. Rumbling felt near the volcano that is home to the Nintendo lawyers.
The headwinds against the automakers could not have been worse. Biden kneecapped the railroad unions in “service of the economy” but he saw the carnage of that and it was far enough out from the election that his advisors thought he could get away with it.
UPS teamster strike showed that workers can actually get what they deserve. Biden stayed out of it. It showed healthy companies can and should share the profits with the employees not just those on wallstreet.
People believe what they feel rather then what may actually be true. People feel that this recent inflation was caused by profit taking by those in C-suites and wall street. Things like stock buybacks rather than compensation increases help solidify those feelings.
The American public especially the middle class is being squeezed into poverty and is finally waking up. The media and corporations answer has heretofore been that this will lead to inflation.
But while that argument may have flown when people were treading water it’s not gonna when they are already swallowing water.
UPS Teamsters didn’t strike. It was close but they managed to avoid that.
Thank you for the clarification – my apologies for mis construing that. I think the premise stands but getting the details right is important.
One other point to note, while the distinction is tricky, Biden (or anyone else in government) legally has no say here. The railroad is different because it’s under the federal umbrella. I’m not sure how that works/worked for UPS ( I suspect they would have no say in that either), but if it was USPS then they would be totally involved.
My opinion is that if the railroads are so crucial to the nation, they should be nationalized rather than under the control of private companies.
Same with the oil industry. The oil does not belong to ExxonMobil, it belongs to the people of the US. We pay them to pull it out of the ground and sell it to other countries.
While I’m at it, same with big pharma. Taxpayers fund the research only to be completely fleeced when it comes time to purchase the product.
Like I said before, the railroads are tricky. In some ways, they are federalized already and have been under federal jurisdiction since the early 1800’s. That doesn’t mean it’s a good thing, though. It’s such an interconnected web of government bureaucracy. Without getting too far in the weeds here, take the New Haven line on Metro-North. Some of it is under the control of the MTA and the northern (eastern) parts in Connecticut fall under the jurisdiction of CTDOT. It’s a total clusterfuck that requires employees that work on that line to pay taxes in two states, and neither state wants to fully pay to maintain it.
We are talking here about laws and such that date back to the 1840s, which is kinda of insane. Freight and Amtrak pay to “lease use” on that section of track and then the ownership changes to someone else depending on where. The amount of waste in terms of money is staggering in part due to the bickering and right-of-way arguments.
I could go on for a long time here, but let’s just say the difference in employee contracts between MNRR, LIRR, NJ Transit, and Amtrak are not even comparable. Plus, there are something like 10 different unions involved. And that’s just for that relatively small section of track.
The freight employees got puckered in their deal and that’s the hardest rail job there is, so I feel bad for those folks, however, federalizing is not the panacea it may seem.
There is no easy answer to rail and I chuckle when people on here say things like “We just need to build more light or high-speed rail.” It’s the worst idea ever. It’d cost more than Ukraine and it still wouldn’t work right.
Thanks for the info. I was vaguely aware that there was a bunch of weirdness with the railroads say 100 years ago, but I didn’t realize it all still persisted today.
It’s the same with the shipping industry, correct? A bunch of maritime law going back hundreds of years that complicates things today.
Just goes to show the importance of doing due diligence and not just impulsively passing laws/regulations.
Agree about the high-speed rail, I’m obviously no expert on the subject but even I know enough to realize that’s not an easy solution to anything. Where I live they have been talking about a commuter rail system from Boston to southeastern MA towns for over 30 years. It’s finally under construction, they’re spending billions on it, and I would not be surprised at all if it’s a massive fail with hardly any ridership. All it’s accomplished so far is raising housing costs in those areas.
There was a bus route to Boston, and it was cancelled due to lack of ridership. Not sure why a train that is arguably less convenient would fare any better.
Oh yeah, the fuckery still exists, lol.
As far as maritime issues, I don’t know all that much. I worked on a day charter boat for a few summers that shared the waterways with freighters, so there were some “rules of the road” things I had to know. That’s about my extent of knowledge there, other than knowing about The Jones Act… https://www.investopedia.com/terms/j/jonesact.asp
Just for funsies, you can google how the new Brightline link from Orlando to Miami went today. It was all good going south, and then there was a fatality on a southbound train in front of them going back north that ruined the schedule. Chaotic first day for the privately owned company. It wouldn’t have mattered if it was run by the state or the feds, either. The problem is that there is just no more room to build new tracks that would be sustainable or safe for high-speed rail.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/deadly-brightline-train-crash-in-delray-beach-delays-orlando-launch/vi-AA1h7gLw
Fuck calling it X. It’s Twitter.
Also, there’s a good thread on the UAW on Oppo:
https://opposite-lock.com/topic/84485/poll-are-uaw-demands-reasonable
Here’s a good comment someone left on an earlier Autopian article:
https://www.theautopian.com/a-new-era-of-technology-is-driving-a-new-era-of-labor-fights/#comment-182476
Supposedly, they already make $20 more per hour than Tesla and the transplants. Obviously Tesla’s workers are underpaid, Elon is a massive POS, and California is a much more expensive cost of living area, yet they still didn’t want the UAW. And Fremont used to be a UAW GM/Toyota facility! Perhaps they should use IBEW or some other union instead, since the UAW has too much baggage.
Maybe they should demand the lowest-paid worker be paid at least 1/50 of the CEO’s salary, or whatever the highest-paid “executive” makes, or that the highest paid “executive” cannot be paid more than 50x the lowest-paid employee. For example, if the CEO makes $25 million, the lowest pay would be $500,000. Obviously, they’d never agree to pay the lowest 500k, but they could limit CEO pay to 50x the lowest-paid temp. For example, if that lowest paid temp only gets 40k, then the CEO can’t get more than 2 million.
They need to focus on temps. Limit the number of temps, how long they can be temps, and to hire them full-on after the temp period, and to have the temp period count towards seniority status and benefits. This is the biggest thing for the union to focus on. Also, temps should be able to access a 401k and for the agency to provide the same match that regular employees get, vested from day 1.
Something else people may not know: temps have to pay union dues but receive no union benefits. Obviously this doesn’t apply in RTW states, and it also didn’t apply in Michigan during the 10 years or so that MI was RTW.
Eliminate childish parking policies and general union violence. Fain needs to make it clear that that shit won’t be tolerated. Toyota and Honda don’t do that shit because they don’t need to. Simply making the best cars is sufficient.
Make the workers half the board. This is common in places like Germany with the works council. VW tried to do that here, but it was ruled illegal without a union. GM/Ford/Chrysler have a union, so they can do it.
Half the board would be labor, the other half engineers. Supposedly, some of the Detroit CEOs are engineers, but they don’t make it obvious enough, and nobody would know that without reading the respective Wikipedia article. Toyota and Honda are companies that make it obvious they’re run by engineers.
Demand they make better cars, so that people will actually want to buy them. The best cars ever sold new at a GM dealership in the US were rebadged Toyotas (Chevy Nova, Geo/Chevy Prizm, Pontiac Vibe). Corollas, Vibes, and Tacomas were made by union labor, and they were just as good as their non-union counterparts, so that is prima facie evidence that it’s not necessarily the union holding them back. Having more engineers and labor on the board would help them immensely.
Pensions are outdated and a huge cost that weighs them down unnecessarily. Auto 5% contribution to 401k, plus an additional dollar-for-dollar match up to 5%, or if that’s not enough, make it 10%. That is, an employee that contributes 5% will get an additional 10% from the employer (or 15% for the higher contrib level). Even that higher, more generous contribution amount could still be cheaper for the employer than a pension, while providing more benefit.
here’s an article that Mark Reuss wrote for the Freep:
https://www.freep.com/story/opinion/contributors/2023/09/20/gm-uaw-shawn-fain-mark-reuss-2023-contract-strike/70899635007/
I mean, Tesla treats their workers like shit. A better comparison is to look at traditional auto makers that have non-UAW factories in the United States. I can’t find current numbers for what Toyota’s line workers make, but I found several news articles over the years that said Toyota’s workers make more than UAW workers. Since that was newsworthy, I assume they generally make about the same amount. Granted, Toyota’s workers keep more of that money because they are not paying union dues.
I am pro-union, but I struggle to side with the UAW on all their demands. That said, I agree they should get COLA’s and I agree that the temp system has been abused.
Nah… Pay the execs $50k/year salary. Then a separate fat $ amount bonus.
Fuck over the UAW & cap union shits at $50k. No bonuses. No overtime.
Fuck Fain and the UAW Stooge members.
The live stream just ended with the UAW. Big updates from Ford, negotiations are going well that seems they are not stopping more facilities for now. Stellantis and GM…. good luck
My internet connection shut down so I couldn’t see which locations are closing but they looked like distribution centers
yep, starve the company out, make them lay people off and pay the workers unemployment rather than deplete the strike fund. That is the current tactic. I do have to wonder if I would like to purchase any vehicle made at any of these brands in the past month or two.
Yup, GM & Stellantis distribution centers are striking, no new strikes on Ford.
When there’s a communications leak, especially on a platform where privacy might be suspect anyway, I always ask three questions.
Does it seem legitimate? This is a big “probably.” I don’t have any particular reason to doubt that less sensitive communications would go out over a Twitter chat, and the message does seem to reflect the general sentiment and tactics I would expect. That said, it’s not particularly difficult to appear to be someone else, especially since a blue check just means you paid now.
Who was receiving the messages? A Twitter group chat probably means they were trying to reach a bunch of people who would not otherwise be involved in the communications. It also means they likely understood the risk of bad actors, both in the chat and at Twitter. This isn’t some top-secret message between Fain and his closest allies.
Who benefits from this getting out? In this case, I get that there might be those who think it looks bad, but this seems like it sends a message without showing Fain’s hand. The UAW has a plan and is willing to push this for months (according to this message). This seems like the sort of thing that could have automakers thinking about how much of this strike they can tolerate and how much a better deal will really cost them.
This feels like it was always meant to leak, if only to put forward the idea that they’re not just playing hardball, but they’re willing to push farther. They want it known that they have a plan and can inflict more hurt.
It also makes me wonder whether they do actually have a plan for inflicting “operational chaos” for “months.” They might just be playing chicken, seeing who flinches first.
I won’t pay any attention to the UAW strike until there’s a settlement. All the posturing done for social media. Let’s say the UAW “wounded” the domestic manufacturers and they quit producing cars here. Would that mean the UAW “won?” The UAW has a symbiotic relationship with the Big 3. If they kill the hosts, they will die too. But, that’s OK, because they can all go make solar panels, right?
Nope, Obama’s Solyndra debacle definitely indicates we cannot make anything that compete’s with Communist slave labor on price for solar stuff.
Chuckle. I figured as much!
The only winners are the Union Reps and C-Suite employees at the automakers.
Maybe to make the strike more interesting and help negotiations, each week, the latest offers are evaluated. The worst one gets an extra plant on the strike list, and the best offer gets a plant removed from the list.
This is sorta tangential, but I wish we could see more alternative corporate structures that empower workers without needing an adversarial relationship between them and their company. This isn’t meant to be anti-union, but as everyone knows they have issues and the fighting tends to hurt the workers a bit even while they win gains. Employee owned companies are great, but I think there is room for hybrid companies where employees own a simple majority of the company and the rest is publicly traded, or is run as a consumer cooperative. That way there is access to outside funding early on, but overall control of the company is primarily by the employees. Growth is shared by employees like with profit sharing, so the motivations of employees and outside shareholders are more aligned.
I think there’s always going to be two major groups in a company that are in opposition: labor and management. Whether you like it or not, someone has to steer the ship. To establish a company. To get funding. To have a vision of where the company goes. That’s management. Labor does the work within the company’s framework. It’s up to management to establish a balance with labor. The day that trust is broken, it’s nearly impossible to re-establish balance. Could management allow a collaborative management concept? Sure they could if they didn’t have labor unions.
The number of non-union companies that screw over workers suggests that labor unions aren’t the only thing preventing collaborative management.
Certainly!
Amen.
One more than half the board members are non-executive employees. Preferably, elected by different divisions or otherwise representing different types of employees at the company.
They actually do this in Germany with the works council. Half the board is made up of labor.
VW tried to do this in the US, but it was deemed illegal without a union. The workers there voted against the union. VW didn’t even do any union busting (since they want the union in order to have the works council)
ESOPs are great. They lay out in plain sight the hypocrisy of most workers. Wokers complain that they want higher wages, then they complain when the dividend at the end of the year is smaller. And somehow they still try and blame someone else. It doesn’t stop. Nobody is every happy until they get paid not to work. That’s the American dream.
I do think that people in employee-owned companies are a little bit happier. But that doesn’t stop the whining.
We had an ESOP where I work and most people I talked to were happy with that, as one coworker recently said it made her feel good that she had a vested stake in the company.
This worked out very well for those that were vested when we were bought out by a larger company, one of the conditions was that they had to buy out our ESOP shares as well, at something like 3X the value. A good number of people received payouts in the 6 figures..
Corporate board said no, also they will all be getting multi million dollar bonuses this year because they shipped some manufacturing to a third world country with no environmental protection and then laid off a bunch of people.