This article is brought to you by Bob Stephenson for City Council District 2. As a UAW Local 292 Kokomo Indiana retiree, I am ready to STAND UP shoulder to shoulder with the UAW! Now is the time for our community to rally with the UAW! This fight for fair compensation will benefit everyone in Kokomo! And I am ready to work for you on the Kokomo Common Council, representing District 2!
United Auto Workers (UAW) President Shawn Fain announced late Monday night via YouTube that the Big Three auto manufacturers have until noon Friday, Sept. 22, or else more UAW locals will be called on to walk out.
Fain praised the locals that had been called to walk out last Friday. GM’s Wentzville, Mo., assembly plant, Stellantis’ Toledo assembly plant, and Ford’s Michigan Assembly all walked out last Friday at midnight while the rest of the unions approximately 150,000 members continued working at their various locals nationwide.
Ford also has furloughed 600 workers from Michigan Assembly due to the effects of the strike. Since then, General Motors is pondering a layoff of 2,000 from its Kansas City assembly plant in reaction to the Wentzville strike.
In Fain’s statement, he chided the automakers for their pace of negotiations with the union.
“We (the union) have been available 24/7 to bargain a deal…still the Big 3 failed to get down to business,” said Fain. “We are not going to wait around forever for them to drag this out. I’m going to be crystal clear again right now, if we don’t make serious progress by noon on Friday, Sept. 22, more locals will asked to stand up and strike.”
No responses have come as of yet from the three automakers’ executives to this new deadline.
On a related note, the Canadian Auto Workers (CAW) also had a strike deadline against Ford at midnight Monday, Sept. 18.
Stellantis’ Kokomo Operations employs approximately 4,500 hourly union workers. GM Holdings Kokomo Operations, at the former Delphi Electronics Corp. complex, is down to fewer than 145 union workers with plans for assembly work there ending in October of this year.
These locals are still at work amidst the strike at this time.