Posts tagged General Motors
Ford lays off another 150 workers citing UAW strike
October 20, 2023 // Ford Motor (F.N) said late on Wednesday it is laying off another 150 workers in Michigan because of the ongoing United Auto Workers strike, bringing the total to 2,730 workers furloughed. Ford said the UAW's walkout last week at its Kentucky Truck Plant prompted the new layoffs at a Michigan axle plant. Another 16,600 Ford employees are on strike at three assembly plants, including Kentucky Truck, the company's largest plant worldwide.
AUTOS Ford lays off 700 who were building electric version of F-150
October 17, 2023 // The company said it will temporarily cut one of the three shifts at its Rouge Electric Vehicle Center in Dearborn, Michigan, near the company's main headquarters. It will rotate the layoffs between the three shifts. Ford had temporarily closed the plant this summer to upgrade its production capability, and the company said this latest layoff is related to "multiple constraints, including the supply chain and working through processing and delivering vehicles held for quality checks after restarting production in August."
Ford says it is ‘at the limit’ with UAW contract offer
October 13, 2023 // Ford officials said on Thursday that cutting a deal that does not allow the company to survive makes no sense and that striking the Kentucky truck plant would also hurt the UAW's profit-sharing checks. In a sign of the strike's expanding impact, Delta Air Lines (DAL.N) said on Thursday it is feeling a pinch from the automotive and entertainment labor strikes. Delta President Glen Hauenstein said the UAW strike has curtailed a "significant" amount of business in Detroit. Automakers have more than doubled initial wage hike offers, agreed to raise wages along with inflation and improved pay for temporary workers, but the union wants higher wages still, the abolishment of a two-tier wage system and the expansion of unions to battery plants. The UAW has room to expand its walkouts and increase the pressure on the Detroit Three to offer bigger wage gains, richer retirement packages and more assurances that new electric vehicle battery plants will be unionized.
75,000 Kaiser Permanente workers are on strike
October 4, 2023 // The multi-state strike comes during a time of elevated labor activity in the United States. Several large-scale strikes have paralyzed companies and entire industries in recent months. The United Auto Workers are on strike against Ford, General Motors and Stellantis — the first time the union has struck all three simultaneously. The entertainment industry also contended with dual strikes this summer after Hollywood’s writers’ and actors’ unions went on strike at the same time for the first time since 1960. The leadership of the Writers Guild of America reached a tentative agreement with Hollywood studios last month, but the actors’ guild strike is ongoing. The health care industry has been particularly affected by rising strike activity. From the start of 2022 through August of this year, the Bureau of Labor Statistics has tracked 42 work stoppages of 1,000 or more strikers. Its count shows a third of those strikes were in health care. That’s up from 24% of major strikes in 2019, the year before the pandemic. The increased number of health care strikes have happened despite health care workers making up only about 9% of private sector union members nationwide.
Mack Trucks Reaches Tentative Deal With Auto Workers Union To Avoid Strike
October 2, 2023 // The tentative agreement was reached just before the current contract between the company and its workers—which was agreed to after a two week strike in 2019—was set to expire.
Opinion: A rebirth of the union movement in the US
September 28, 2023 // Biden’s action is consistent not only with his career, but with the current environment of discontent. Winning back Democratic enclaves in the industrial belt, which Donald Trump won by surprise in 2016, was essential for the current president’s victory in the 2020 elections. And it will be so again in 2024. The capacity for union organization and mobilization explains a good part of the progressive shift by large cities and industrial centers towards the Democratic Party. These are places without whose support one cannot reach the White House. The UAW has not yet endorsed Biden for 2024.
Donald Trump: UAW negotiations ‘don’t mean as much as you think’
September 28, 2023 //
Ford pauses EV battery project; UAW calls decision ‘shameful’
September 27, 2023 // The Marshall project, named BlueOval Battery Park, was a collaboration with a Chinese firm called CATL. Michigan lawmakers had granted the project about $1.7 billion in cash and other forms of corporate welfare. BlueOval Battery Park drew major scrutiny, from Marshall residents to officials in Lansing and Washington, D.C. The chairs of three U.S. House committees sent letters to Ford CEO Jim Farley to inquire about the partnership; two of those committees said they were investigating the matter themselves. Republican lawmakers in Lansing said Ford’s decision is a commentary on the state of Michigan’s business climate, electric grid and energy transition. “After failing to land other high-profile Ford deals, Gov. Whitmer gave away the store to bring Ford to Marshall,” said Republican House Leader Matt Hall, R-Richland Township.
Unions rebut claims green jobs will be worse for workers
September 26, 2023 // Automakers are in the midst of a massive transition to electric vehicles and other zero-emission models. While many announced voluntary goals of their own prior to Biden’s election, the shift is encouraged in part through federal tax credits included in last year’s climate, tax and health care reconciliation law known as the Inflation Reduction Act. Supporters of the transition say the issue at the moment is not one of job quantity. Job growth in zero-emission vehicles has significantly outpaced internal combustion engine vehicles, according to a report released this month by the nonpartisan business group E2. While the gas- and diesel-powered vehicle industry grew by 1.6 percent last year, the electric vehicle industry grew by 26.8 percent. Amid the transition, the UAW has expressed concerns that many of the jobs at these new facilities offer lower pay and fewer benefits to workers compared with jobs manufacturing internal combustion engines.