Ford CEO Jim Farley always thought that his company and the United Auto Workers UAW) rubbed along pretty well together. That is until this past summer and fall when the UAW’s pugnacious new president Shawn Fain – after scoring a massive contract victory at UPS – turned his sights on Detroit’s D-3 (Ford, Stellantis, General Motors) automakers as his next targets. All those contracts were due for negotiation at the same time.
Fain wanted to try a new union strike strategy – he’d hit all three at once. The traditional UAW template had always been break one manufacturer after the other in the hopes they’d fold before you got to the last one. In this new, improved strategy, Fain mapped out specific plants of each to strike on a rotating basis until the automakers cried uncle.
Ford was the first to capitulate.
…Pugnacious union president Shawn Fain has himself a victory to crow about…
