UAW's Fain to go on Facebook Live Sunday as pressure builds for GM to get a deal

Negotiations between the United Auto Workers and General Motors are expected to continue Sunday after the union took surprise strike action late Saturday against one of GM's key plants: Spring Hill Assembly in Tennessee.

On Sunday morning, the UAW announced that President Shawn Fain will hold a Facebook Live at 7 p.m. Sunday to go over the details of the tentative agreement it has with Ford Motor Co. Chuck Browning, the UAW's vice president in charge of negotiations with Ford, will join Fain. Later in the evening, the contract details will be available online, the union said.

This news follows the union having reached an agreement with Stellantis on Saturday. That deal mirrors much of what was in the tentative deal it had reached with Ford on Wednesday. That leaves only GM without an agreement after 45 days of the strike, despite long marathon-bargaining sessions into the early morning hours over the past few days.

The intense pressure on GM, especially with the elevated strike action at Spring Hill Assembly, means the automaker will have to get a deal together sooner rather than later, labor experts said.

"Striking the Spring Hill facility is the knockout punch to GM," said Erik Gordon, a business professor and labor expert at the Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan. "GM either will concede what it has to reach a deal or will shut down production, with conceding being more likely given the car companies' pattern of concessions this year."

The impact of taking out Spring Hill

GM builds its Cadillac top sellers at Spring Hill: The XT5 and XT6 SUVS and the new Lyriq all-electric SUV. It also makes the GMC Acadia mid-size SUV there. That vehicle is slated to move to Lansing Delta Township Assembly early next year.

"It's pretty important because of the Lyriq," said Art Wheaton, director of Labor Studies at Cornell University. "(GM has) had so many problems getting them out the door, there’s no excess inventory on the Lyriq. They make some good money on the other vehicles there too and there are thousands of people working there, so it’s an important and large plant."

Spring Hill constituted about 6% of GM's production over the first eight months of the year and raises the total level of struck production at GM to about 36%, added Marick Masters, a business professor and labor expert at Wayne State University.

"The tentative agreements with Ford and Stellantis put more pressure on both the UAW and GM to settle," Masters said. "Obviously, a stalemate was encountered in round-the-clock bargaining that compelled the union to call the fifth wave of strikes."

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GM said about 4,000 people work at Spring Hill Assembly, of which 3,200 are hourly employees. It is unclear how many are union represented and currently on strike. Masters said there about 14,000 GM workers on strike across other facilities.

The Spring Hill complex is also significant because its engine plant supplies several GM factories that make other top-selling vehicles. There is also a symbolic reason why taking strike action against Spring Hill matters, said Rebecca Givan, associate professor at the School of Management and Labor Relations at Rutgers University.

“Taking that factory out points to the spirit of militancy in the UAW because that was the Saturn plant and where partnership was supposed to be the way of the future," Givan said.

GM broke ground on Spring Hill in 1985 and it started building Saturn vehicles five years later, according to an article in Hagerty. Saturn would come to end during GM's bankruptcy in the Great Recession.

"Now the UAW is saying, 'We’re willing to strike Spring Hill,' " Givan said. "A lot of the UAW troubles have came from partnership and joint management-labor work. Fain was elected by saying, 'We’re going a different way. ' ”

The strike action there also signals that GM and the union were not close to a tentative agreement because the union "would not have escalated at Spring Hill if they were close to a deal," Wheaton said.

But he expects the strike could be short-lived. Wheaton noted that it took a one-day strike against GM by Unifor — the union that represents Canada's autoworkers — on Oct. 10 for the company to follow the pattern set by Unifor’s tentative deal with Ford.

"Maybe GM’s trying to show some resistance?" Wheaton said. "But that strike only lasted a day and GM said, ‘We give up.’ I don’t think that GM is going to win by holding it up. There is an avalanche of success on Shawn Fain’s part to follow the pattern. But it doesn’t mean that GM has to follow the deal on Sunday, they could do it on Monday.”

GM issued a statement late Saturday that said, "We are disappointed by the UAW’s action in light of the progress we have made. We have continued to bargain in good faith with the UAW, and our goal remains to reach an agreement as quickly as possible.”

Focus on Ford, but GM talks continue

A tentative deal may not happen Sunday in part due to the union's schedule. The UAW National Ford Council members come to Detroit to decide whether to send that agreement to the general membership for a vote. If the council gives its approval as expected, the union will hold a Facebook Live session to review the agreement publicly. Given that the UAW has announced a time for that session, it signals that the deal is moving forward.

Once the highlighter of the deal, known as the White Book, is published online later Sunday night, local union leaders would get a rundown in regional meetings, then take that information and host sessions for their members to review and discuss what’s in the agreement. Then members would vote on whether to ratify the contract.

"The focus of Shawn Fain is clearly on Ford today, but you can bet Mike Booth is trying to move GM along," said Harley Shaiken, a labor expert and professor emeritus at the University of California-Berkeley.

Booth is the union's lead negotiator against GM. The UAW started its targeted Stand Up Strike on Sept. 15. While the strikers at Ford and Stellantis are now off the picket lines, preparing to return to work as they consider their tentative contracts for ratification, GM has the following facilities still on strike: 18 parts distribution centers, Wentzville Assembly in Missouri, Lansing Delta Township Assembly in Michigan, Arlington Assembly in Texas and Spring Hill Assembly.

"GM has now been on strike a day or so longer than the sit-downs in Flint lasted in 1936-37," Shaiken said. "With Ford and Stellantis with T.A.s, what’s the holdup at GM? Not certain, but it could pertain to the language on the master agreement and the Ultium plant in particular and battery plants more generally."

Battery plants in master agreement

Wheaton agreed, saying after Fain announced Oct. 6 that GM had agreed its electric-vehicle battery plant employees would get the same benefits as other union members in the UAW's master agreement with GM, “We never heard any more details on it."

During GM's third-quarter earnings call last week, an analyst asked CEO Mary Barra about the idea of GM's joint-venture battery plant, Ultium Cells LLC, being part of the master contract. Her reply was, "We did have some conversations, and we did put an offer on the table that would put the Ultium Cells under the scope of the master agreement. And we believe at the time that it would allow for — which it must have benchmark economics and also operating flexibility — because the battery cell plant is very different than some of the traditional operations. But at this point, that offer remains open."

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Staff writer Eric D. Lawrence contributed to this report. Contact Jamie L. LaReau: jlareau@freepress.com. Follow her on Twitter @jlareauan. Read more on General Motors and sign up for our autos newsletter. Become a subscriber.