Sen. “I know who I am,” said John Fetterman (D-Pa. ), whose office announced that he would drive from his Pennsylvania home to an auto factory outside Detroit to join thousands of striking autoworkers on the picket lines on Saturday. My entire team and myself will be there for these brave workers as long as they continue to stand on the picket lines,” said the freshman senator,
, in an interview with X, formerly Twitter. We will support them in any way possible until they reach a fair agreement.”wrote in a postThe United Auto Workers and the “Big Three”, Ford, General Motors, and Stellantis, failed to reach a deal before the workers’ contract expired at midnight Friday. The union negotiations focused on issues such as pay increases, shorter working weeks, improved retirement benefits, job security, and the impact of a shift to electric vehicles. The majority of union members agreed that a strike would be authorized if the deadline was not met. Are you with the Big 3 CEOs, who earned $74 million in the past year and now claim they cannot afford to pay their employees? Or are you on the side of the
workers who build the American cars & trucks we Pennsylvanians drive?”
President Biden, who has campaigned on being pro-union, on Friday acknowledged that the Big Three companies needed to “go further.”
“I believe they should go further. “Nobody wants to strike,” Biden added. “But I respect workers’ rights to use their options under the collective bargaining system and I understand the workers’ frustration.”[UAW]Not all workers are slated to strike at once, either.
UAW President Shawn Fain called on three facilities to kick off the “stand up strike” after a deal wasn’t reached.
“This strategy will keep the companies guessing,” he said during a Facebook Live event shortly after the strike began. This will give our national bargainers maximum leverage and flexibility, and we’ll go to the extreme if necessary. Everything is on the table.”
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