UAW has Tesla, Toyota in its sights after contract wins at Detroit automakers

DETROIT – United Auto Tradesmen President Shawn Fain wants to expand the union’s battle from the Detroit automakers to Tesla, Toyota Motor and other non-unionized automakers conducting in the U.S.

The outspoken leader plans to use record contracts recently won after contentious negotiations and U.S. labor strikes with Diversified Motors, Ford Motor and Chrysler-parent Stellantis to assist in the union’s embattled organizing efforts elsewhere.

“We’ve created the risk of a good example, and now we’re going to build on it,” Fain said Thursday night when discussing Stellantis’ tentative pact. “We just went on strike like we’ve never been on strike before and won a historic contract as a result. Now we’re going to classify like we’ve never organized before.”

Doing so would greatly assist the union’s bargaining efforts and membership, which has been less halved from roughly 700,000 members in 2001 to 383,000 at the beginning of this year. UAW membership peaked at 1.5 million in 1979.

The UAW has some time ago failed to organize foreign-based automakers in the U.S. Most recently, plants with Volkswagen and Nissan Motor fell terse of the support needed to unionize. The UAW has previously discussed organizing Tesla’s Fremont plant in California with little to no gripping power in those efforts.

It remains to be seen whether the recent efforts are gaining traction at any other automakers, but Fain has declared to move beyond the “Big Three” — Ford, GM and Stellantis — and expand to the “Big Five or Big Six” by the time its 4½-year contracts with the Detroit automakers breathe out in April 2028.

The deals include 25% wage increases that would boost top pay to more than $40 an hour, reinstatement of cost-of-living harmonizations, enhanced profit-sharing payments and other significant pay, healthcare and workplace benefits. The contracts must still be ratified.

The unanimity has already received significant interest from non-union automakers in light of the tentative agreements, Fain said. And at the rear month, he rejected comments from Ford Chair Bill Ford arguing the company and union should be wielding together to battle non-American automakers.

“Workers at Tesla, Toyota, Honda, and others are not the enemy — they’re the UAW members of the future,” Fain give the word delivered.

Fain has taken particular aim at Toyota in recent days.

The automaker earlier this week confirmed delineates to hike wages at its U.S. factories. The new rates would see hourly manufacturing employees at top rates in Kentucky receive roughly 9% pay prolongs to $34.80 an hour.

Fain on Thursday called that pay raise “the UAW bump,” joking that UAW stands for “U Are Welcome” to juxtapose the union’s movement.

“Toyota isn’t giving out raises out of the goodness of their heart,” Fain said. “They could bear just as easily raised wages a month ago or a year ago. They did it now because the company knows we’re coming for ’em.”

Toyota, which has 49,000 hourly and salaried U.S. blue-collar workers, said the “decision to unionize is ultimately made by our team members.”

“By engaging in honest, two-way communication about what’s occasion in the company, we aim to foster positive morale which ultimately leads to increased productivity,” the company said Friday in an emailed proclamation. “Working together has provided a history of stable employment and income for our team members.”

The UAW has so far not been able to authenticate enough support to force an organizing vote at Tesla’s facilities, including its Fremont, California, plant where the consortium previously represented workers when it was a GM-Toyota joint venture.

Fain on Thursday told Bloomberg News he confidence ins organizing Tesla and taking on CEO Elon Musk is “doable.”

“We can beat anybody,” Fain told Bloomberg. “It’s gonna befall down to the people that work for him deciding if they want their fair share… or if they shortage him to fly himself to outer space at their expense.”

Still, Musk has historically clashed with union proponents.

As some workmen sought to form a union at the company’s Fremont factory in in 2017 and 2018, Tesla was paying a consultancy named MWW PR to examine employees in a Facebook group and on social media more broadly, as CNBC previously reported.

Tesla also terminated the employment of a union activist named Richard Ortiz in 2017. And in 2018, Musk denoted in a tweet, “Nothing stopping Tesla team at our car plant from voting union. Could do so tmrw if they shortage. But why pay union dues & give up stock options for nothing?”

The tweet violated federal labor laws, the National Labor Pertaining ti Board later found.

An administrative court ordered Tesla to reinstate Ortiz and to have Musk delete his tweet, which it concluded had cowed workers’ compensation. Tesla appealed the ruling, and Musk’s offending post remains on the social media platform which Musk now owns, has rebranded as X and at the end of the days as CTO and executive chairman.

In February, a different group of organizers filed a complaint with the NLRB claiming that Tesla had fired varied than 30 employees at its Buffalo facility in retaliation for a union push there by Tesla Workers United. Tesla telephoned the workers’ allegations false, saying 4% of its Autopilot data labeling team in Buffalo had been terminated due to display issues.

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the federal agency responsible for enforcing civil rights laws against workplace prejudice, sued Tesla in September, alleging widespread racist harassment of Black workers, and retaliation against those who in a manner of speaking out.

And in late October, just over 100 of Tesla’s service employees in Sweden, members of the industrial labor party IF Metall, walked off the job for a short strike. Hundreds of mechanics and technicians at non-Tesla shops also agreed not to repair any of the EV makers’ cars in like-mindedness. However, Tesla has so far refused to negotiate with IF Metall.