Thousands of United Auto Workers union members have walked off the job as negotiations continue between the UAW and the Big Three automakers. This time, General Motors’ Arlington Assembly plant in Texas was impacted by the “Stand Up Strike.” 5,000 union members walked off the assembly line that builds the Chevy Tahoe and Suburban, GMC Yukon and Cadillac Escalade. It brings the total number of striking UAW members to over 45,000.
The announcement comes just hours after the automaking giant said it only had a net income of $3.1 billion – a 7.3 percent decline. GM also says the strike has cost it $800 million so far since the it started back on September 15, It estimates that number will increase by $200 million every week it continues. Tough.
“Another record quarter, another record year. As we’ve said for months: record profits equal record contracts,” Shawn Fain, UAW President, said in a statement. “It’s time GM workers, and the whole working class, get their fair share.”
Despite having made $10 billion in profits in the past nine months, breaking revenue records for another consecutive quarter, and beating Wall Street expectations, GM’s latest offer fails to reward UAW members for the profits they’ve generated. GM’s offer lags behind Ford, with the company proposing a two-tier wage progression, the weakest 401(k) contribution offer on the table, a deficient COLA and other shortcomings. On the heels of their previous quarter, which set “a post-bankruptcy record” in terms of revenue, it is clear that GM can afford a record contract and do more to repair the harm done by years of falling real wages and declining standards across the Big Three.
GM responded in a statement to Automotive News in regard to the UAW’s move to have 5,000 employees walk off the job.
GM, in a statement, said it was “disappointed by the escalation of this unnecessary and irresponsible strike.” It said the company had upped the value of its previous proposal to the union by 25 percent last week and that the UAW’s actions are “harming our team members who are sacrificing their livelihoods” and are “having negative ripple effects on our dealers, suppliers, and the communities that rely on us.”
It seems the UAW has big, profitable vehicles in its sights right now. Just a day earlier, on October 23, about 6,800 union members walked off the job at Stellantis’ Sterling Heights Assembly Plant in Michigan which builds the Ram 1500. A few weeks earlier it closed Ford’s Kentucky Truck plant which builds, well, trucks.
This is the first expansion of the strike at a GM facility since its Lansing Delta Township assembly plant was added on September 29, according to AutoNews. That factory, and Arlington Assembly, are now added to a list of GM’s Wentzville plant and 19 parts distribution centers that have been stopped due to the strike.