The list also calls for the automakers to shorten work weeks, restore cost-of-living adjustments and significantly expand retiree benefits. The union formally presented its economic proposals last week to GM, Ford Motor Co. and Chrysler successor Stellantis as the negotiations barrel toward a Sept. 14 deadline that could lead to production-crippling strikes.
Fain, on a livestream for members announcing the demands, called them the most “audacious and ambitious” set of proposals in decades. He presented charts showing the automakers’ recently announced second-quarter profits, followed by a chart showing wage concessions made by the union since 2007.
“If the companies want to brag about record profits, then it’s time for record contracts,” he said. “It’s time for them to deliver for our members, and we’re going to deliver for our members, come hell or high water.”
Delivering on many of the UAW’s demands could prove challenging for the Detroit 3.
The automakers, according to sources, have no appetite for adding long-term structural costs such as pensions, cost-of-living adjustments, layoff protection or expanded retiree benefits.
“Realistically, you should not expect to get it all, because the car companies are not going to grant it all,” said Marick Masters, a business professor at Wayne State University in Detroit who specializes in labor issues.
“In theory, a strike could force the companies into making major concessions and granting a considerable part of the overall package, but if they were to do that, it could drive them out of business.”
GM, in a strongly worded statement, pushed back against what the union proposed.
“The breadth and scope of the Presidential Demands, at face value, would threaten our ability to do what’s right for the long-term benefit of the team,” the company said. “A fair agreement rewards our employees and also enables GM to maintain our momentum now and into the future.”
Among the most ambitious demands is what Fain called a “working family protection program,” which would continue to pay workers for community service projects or other tasks if a plant were idled.
The idea would be similar to the jobs bank, which was created in the 1980s but eliminated in the runup to the 2009 bankruptcies of GM and Chrysler. That program gave workers 95 percent of their usual take-home pay while on layoff. At the program’s height, the Detroit 3 were spending billions of dollars a year paying thousands of idled employees, according to Masters.
“That contributed to the companies’ financial woes,” he said. “Many workers spent their time taking classes or doing other things — essentially sitting around.”