POLITICS Trump criticizes UAW leadership amid strike, warns autoworkers' jobs are moving to China
Former President Donald Trump warned that U.S. autoworkers' jobs will move to China and accused the United Auto Workers' leadership of failing its members, thousands of whom went on strike Friday against General Motors, Ford and Stellantis.
"The autoworkers will not have any jobs, Kristen, because all of these cars are going to be made in China. The electric cars, automatically, are going to be made in China," Trump told NBC News' Kristen Welker in an exclusive, wide-ranging interview set to air Sunday on "Meet the Press."
"The autoworkers are being sold down the river by their leadership, and their leadership should endorse Trump," added the frontrunner for the Republican presidential nomination.
Approximately 13,000 U.S. autoworkers stopped making vehicles and went on strike following failed negotiations on a slew of issues, including higher pay.
The strike marked the first time the United Auto Workers union targeted the three automaker titans simultaneously.
Workers walked out at GM’s midsize truck and full-size van assembly plant in Wentzville, Missouri; Ford’s Ranger pickup and Bronco SUV plant in Wayne, Michigan; and Stellantis’ Jeep Wrangler and Gladiator plant in Toledo, Ohio.
Trump specifically criticized UAW President Shawn Fain. “I think he’s not doing a good job in representing his union, because he’s not going to have a union in three years from now. Those jobs are all going to be gone, because all of those electric cars are going to be made in China. That’s what’s happening,” Trump said.
Fain has previously said that a second Trump presidency would be a “disaster.” But he has also withheld his endorsement of President Joe Biden.
Speaking from the White House on Friday, Biden said he hopes all parties are able to strike “a win-win agreement.”
“The companies have made some significant offers,” Biden said, adding “But I believe they should go further to ensure record corporate profits mean record contracts for the UAW.”
Biden said he also respects the right of workers to “use their options under the collective bargaining system.”
Trump has sought to seize the mantle of most fervent China hawk in the U.S. presidential election. He also tried to make Biden’s electric vehicle push a key part of his case against the president.
The crumbling relationship between Washington and Beijing, the world’s two largest economies, intensified under the Trump administration.
Trump placed blame squarely on China for a wide range of grievances, including intellectual property theft, unfair trade practices and the coronavirus pandemic.
Biden has sought to work consistently with allies in order to mount a more united pushback against China.
Biden has also previously said that during his political career, he has spent more time with Chinese President Xi Jinping than he has with any other world leader.
The union has sought a wage increase of up to 40% (amounting to 46% compounded) over the length of the next four-year contracts, along with full pay for 32-hour workweeks, better retirement pensions and improved health care.
“I know that our demands are ambitious, but I’ve told the companies repeatedly I’m not the reason that members’ expectations are so high,” UAW President Shawn Fain said earlier this month. “What’s driving members’ expectations are the Big Three’s profits.”
Annual gross profits have risen by 34% at Ford and 50% at GM since 2019, the last time the UAW and the Big Three entered contract negotiations. Stellantis, which formed when Fiat Chrysler merged with Peugeot in 2021, grew its annual gross profit by 19% from 2021 to 2022.
Another key reason the UAW is pushing hard for steep wage increases is to make up for historically high inflation since securing its current contracts in October and December 2019.
Since then, hourly U.S. wages among motor vehicle and parts manufacturers (including union and nonunion workers) grew by 14.8%, to an average of $27.99 as of August. Across all industries, average hourly earnings grew by 19% over that period, to $33.82.
Inflation has eroded a lot of those gains, with the Consumer Price Index showing costs rising by 17.7% over that time. Under previous UAW contracts dating back decades, many Detroit autoworkers had received cost-of-living raises to keep pace with inflation, but those provisions were jettisoned after the 2008 financial crisis upended the car industry.
Wages among Big Three workers can vary, largely depending on the terms of the labor contract in force when they were hired — a so-called “tiered” pay practice the UAW has called to eliminate. (UPS workers secured a contract last month that curtailed a similar structure.) For now, the tiers include temporary or part-time employees making the lowest hourly wages, “in-progression” full-time employees with earnings around the middle of the pay scale and veteran full-time staffers making up to the maximum wage.
Maximum average hourly wages are $31.77 at Stellantis, $32 at Ford and $32.32 at GM.
Workers say they haven’t been rewarded as handsomely as the executives running their companies during a period of high profits.
GM chief Mary Barra’s compensation grew by 32.5% from 2018 to 2022. During the same period, the median GM employee’s pay grew by just 2.8%, public filings show.
Ford appointed a new CEO, Jim Farley, in 2020, and pay for that role jumped by 18% from 2018 to 2022, while the median Ford employee’s pay rose by 16.1%.
Data for Stellantis is unavailable because the company was formed only in 2021 and is now headquartered in Amsterdam, where pay disclosure rules differ from those in the U.S. But disclosures show the company’s CEO, Carlos Tavares, making 365 times as much as its median employee.
That ratio is 362-to-1 at GM and 281-to-1 at Ford, putting all three automakers above the average S&P 500 company’s ratio of 272-to-1, according to the AFL-CIO, a major coalition of unions.
“I feel like this money should be spread around,” said Troy Dale, a UAW Local 862 member at Ford’s truck plant in Louisville, Kentucky. “Not evenly per se, but show us the same gratitude you’re showing the CEO.”
Dale said that after more than seven years of service, he makes $29.63 an hour, still short of the company’s top rate.
Most workers at the plant live paycheck to paycheck, he said. His own family’s finances are deeply tied to the facility, where his son also works and where his daughter started just this week.
“This 40% would help a whole lot of people,” Dale said.
In the event of a full strike, the Goldman researchers had forecast GM and Ford to lose about $2.5 billion and $3 billion, respectively, every week.
The firm also modeled the cost of the UAW’s proposed 40% wage increase, projecting $4 billion to $6 billion in added costs over four years for GM and Ford each. (It didn’t provide estimates for Stellantis.) For comparison, the automakers made a combined $25.9 billion in net income last year alone.