The United Auto Workers (UAW) President Shawn Fain said Friday the UAW strike will expand an additional 38 distribution center locations in 20 states across the United States.
On Tuesday, UAW announced they would strike at additional locations by Friday should “serious progress” not be made by then.
On Sept. 15, 13,000 U.S. auto workers went on strike after automakers and their employees could not reach common ground between union demands and what the Detroit automakers are willing to pay.
The UAW strike began with a General Motors assembly factory in Wentzville, Missouri, a Ford factory in Wayne, Michigan, near Detroit, and a Stellantis factory in Toledo, Ohio.
Additional Ford locations were not added to the ongoing strike since they have met some of the unions demands during negotiations this past week.
The union’s demands include a 46% wage increase, restoration of traditional pensions, cost-of-living increases, reducing the workweek to 32 hours from 40 and increasing retiree benefits.
The auto companies claim they cannot meet the union demands due to needing to invest profits in the transition from gas to electric vehicles.
The Detroit News reported Thursday that a spokesman for Fain wrote on a private group chat on X, formerly Twitter, that union negotiators aimed to inflict “recurring reputations damage and operational chaos” on the carmakers, and “if we can keep them wounded for months they don’t know what to do.”
“It’s now clear that the UAW leadership has always intended to cause months-long disruption, regardless of the harm it causes to its members and their communities,” GM said in a statement.
Ford spokesman Mark Truby called the messages “disappointing, to say the least, given what is at stake for our employees, the companies and this region.”
The UAW spokesman, Jonah Furman, did not confirm writing the messages, which were linked to the same picture as his X account, and called them “private messages” that “you shouldn’t have,” the newspaper reported.
