The threat of a strike continues to hover over this week’s Detroit Auto Show like a dark cloud, or Bob Lutz in a Czechoslovakian fighter jet. There have been a lot of theatrics from the UAW’s cranky uncle President Shawn Fain, who spends more time with garbage cans than Oscar the Grouch (he throws away the contracts he doesn’t like), but there are some signs of improvement as 11:59 PM on Thursday approacheth.
That’s good news for Ford (which is using the threat of the strike to play up the threat of delays to the manufacturing of police cars) and good news for consumers who might be stuck with higher prices even longer if the UAW and Detroit automakers can’t make a deal. Speaking of deals, how big of one is the discovery of a huge load of Lithium in the United States?
The UAW Will Now Maybe Accept Only A 36% Pay Increase
No one knows exactly what automakers might ultimately accept in a deal with the United Auto Workers union and, at the same time, no one knows if the UAW will actually strike. The not-knowing is how negotiations work. I have my own theories, but they’re just theories. At best I can try to read the tea leaves and there’s been some progress in the last day towards resolution.
Here’s how Michael Martinez from Automotive News breaks it down:
The union in recent days has made counteroffers to all three automakers that include the new target. It previously had demanded raises totaling more than 40 percent.
Exact details of the proposal were not immediately available, and the situation remains fluid as all three companies pass counterproposals back and forth. One person familiar with the offers said the UAW’s new request was as low as 36 percent.
It’s important to clarify that this isn’t a sudden 36% increase if it happens, but a large immediate raise with smaller raises to follow. While the end of two-tier wages (having two different classes of workers) seems to be nigh, there are a bunch of concepts floated by the UAW that seem to be no-go for the automakers for now, including a 32-hour work week and bringing back medical benefits for retirees. The UAW also wants Cost-Of-Living-Adjustments back, whereas the automakers seem more comfortable with handing out bonuses based on company performance.
So, they’re closer, but not exactly close yet.
Ford Threatens Cop Cars And Ambulances If Strike Happens
There are a lot of pretty bad things that could happen if prolonged strikes occur, for everyone. Today’s big concern, at least for Ford, is cop cars, at least according to a story posted last night in The Detroit Free Press:
Keeping emergency vehicles running is essential for the company that dominated 53% of the law enforcement vehicle market in 2022, and Ford said it alerted early the UAW about needing to maintain a parts depot in case of a strike for this purpose.
“Police, first responders and the emergency and utility services teams who serve this country rely upon Ford trucks and vans for their mission-critical work,” Ted Cannis, CEO of Ford Pro, told the Detroit Free Press in a statement Monday. “We have an obligation to them and to those whom they serve to ensure these vehicles are ready when duty calls with parts and depot operations.”
Getting ready for this means, potentially, having salaried workers keep those specific plants running. Is this that big of a deal? For Ford, probably, as I’m sure they’re loathe to give up any fleet market share. But the curiosity of Detroit’s automotive media coverage is that there are reporters focused on specific car companies and, in the give-and-take of that coverage, inevitably some stories are going to feel like water-carrying for those companies. I’m not saying that’s happening here, but I also think that Mr. Cannis is maybe laying it on a little thick here and I don’t believe cop cars will suddenly fall apart, a la Blues Brothers, if there’s a strike, if there’s a strike. If I’m wrong, someone please explain why in the comments.
This article does end with a great kicker, though, with a quote from a UAW member at a Ford truck plant in Louisville:
“We had a meeting at our local yesterday going over strike benefits, strike assignments, what to do at 11:59 pm on Thursday if we walk out, etc. They didn’t give us much information because everything is still up in the air,” the Kentucky plant worker said. “I think you should expect a fired up crowd of people. Some really angry at the company. Others like myself kind of 50/50 on the whole thing. Mr. Fain has most people I have talked to extremely united. It’s a weird thing because it’s against the companies not necessarily management at each location. Like, I like my current supervisor so it isn’t anything against him.”
I think this is important. A lot of Fain’s rhetoric has been pointed at the CEOs and the sort of general, populist sentiment about the “top 1%” because the animosity between local management and workers hasn’t bubbled up much in talks thus far and may be less of an issue than it was in the past. Plus, for all the complaints about executive bonuses and backroom deals, it was the now-incarcerated former UAW leadership that should shoulder a lot of the blame for the current contract.
Credit where credit is due, I think Ford CEO Jim Farley and GM CEO Mary Barra have both managed to keep temperatures low even as Fain goes on rant-after-rant. Stellantis CEO Carlos Tavares has been a little rougher and, if I had to guess, I still think Stellantis is the biggest strike target.
Whether You Should Buy A Car Now Depends A Lot On Which Car You Want
There are a lot of good deals out there for car purchases as the summer winds down, but how good of a deal depends on what you actually want and how much financing you need. The weekly car market update from Cox Automotive has some slightly good news:
A new vehicle’s average transaction price (ATP) in August increased only 0.6% from July at an initial estimate of $48,451. The average price lost further ground on the average MSRP, falling to 99.1%, the lowest level since May 2021. The average price was up 0.1% from a year ago, while the average MSRP increased 0.6% in August from July and was up 2.3% from a year ago.
Manufacturers’ average incentive spending increased 10.3% to $2,365, up 113% from a year ago. Incentives as a percentage of average transaction price increased to 4.9%, the highest level since September 2021
The best news here is probably the big increase in incentives, which is a clear sign that inventory levels are rising to a point where automakers feel comfortable they can maintain a margin while still moving product. Obviously, a strike could absolutely destroy this positive movement if it drags out long enough to restrain supplies.
A Quick Note About That Lithium In The United States
Many of you have reached out to send the news that there’s probably a huge amount of lithium–that stuff in all those EV batteries–underneath the ground in Thacker Pass, Nevada. “Lithium discovery in US volcano could be biggest deposit ever found” is the headline from Chemistry World.
Here’s their lede:
A world-beating deposit of lithium along the Nevada–Oregon border could meet surging demand for this metal, according to a new analysis.
An estimated 20 to 40 million tonnes of lithium metal lie within a volcanic crater formed around 16 million years ago. This is notably larger than the lithium deposits found beneath a Bolivian salt flat, previously considered the largest deposit in the world.
‘If you believe their back-of-the-envelope estimation, this is a very, very significant deposit of lithium,’ says Anouk Borst, a geologist at KU Leuven University and the Royal Museum for Central Africa in Tervuren, Belgium. ‘It could change the dynamics of lithium globally, in terms of price, security of supply and geopolitics.’
That’s not not a big deal, but I want to discuss a few things before anyone starts declaring the end of dependence on Chinese battery companies.
First, this report can be read here. The main author, Thomas R. Benson, is an employee of and shareholder in the company, Lithium Americas, which is currently planning to mine lithium at this site (a large amount of which will go to General Motors).
Second, there’s plenty of lithium in the world in places that are not in an unstated cold war with the United States. According to the most recent USGS report, there’s more lithium that exists in reserves in Australia, Argentina, Chile, and other places than in China. And humanity is finding more all the time because now we’re looking for it.
Third, as I recently pointed out, not all extraction of lithium is straightforward and an abundance of it doesn’t mean that there’s enough processing capacity to turn all of this lithium into batteries. You know who has a huge lead on processing? China.
Still, if you ignore the political and environmental issues, it’s good news for the inevitable pipeline of secure battery production the United States wants to build. Now, if only someone can find cobalt anywhere that isn’t the fucking Congo.
The Big Question
Here’s an easy one. Pick the number, compounded over the life of the contract, that the UAW inevitably accepts. The union started at 46% and has worked its way down to maybe 36%, while Ford is up to 16%. It’s possible there are slight variances between automakers, so just pick one number and you can take credit for it ending up in any deals.
38% and 4-day week is dropped, imo. I think the short week was never the goal but negotiating tactic for Fain.
I say 24.5% but if Fain or the unikon had any semblance of what they were doing they tie jobs and pay to the CEO and upper management pay and bonuses. Farley bonus was a certain percentage pay goes up the same percentage. And it goes up by that amount every time bitch gets a raise or bonus. Is it that hard to figure out? The workers do more than mgmt.
Well tying worker pay so some percentage of CEO compensation would make it harder to pay themselves more. Simply unacceptable!
(in case it wasn’t clear, that was sarcasm)
Yes it was clear. And humorous. I am king of sarcasm not understood on this site.
In and age where shilling has got to what used to be considered satire, you can’t be too careful…
Whatever economics the UAW gains, they’ll just continue their descent into irrelevance. From 1.5 million to 380,000 members and dropping. And how many of that 380,000 are nurses, academics, etc? They’ve been totally unable to organize transplants, or even Tesla Fremont that was UAW under the GM/Toyota joint venture. The graft, corruption, and featherbedding of the previous leadership has made the union toxic to anyone not currently in it.
I agree, but be prepared to be attacked, insulted, and threatened by a few people on here because they think truth is what they believe not real truth.
The UAW requests are ridiculous. Nobody in the real world lives like that. Yeah, the CEO is overpaid. That has nothing to do with the unskilled labor. If they get a huge wage, look for more manufacturing to move to Mexico.
GM’s revenue per employee is upwards of a $1M and they had a net profit of $8.9B in 2022. Skills have nothing to do with it; the employees that generate that revenue and profit deserve a bigger share of it than what they are currently getting.
Yeah butthe robots have not yet risen up to attack the humans and demanding equal treatment for disparity of work.
If you are upset about the “unskilled” people building the cars getting a decent wage, wait until you hear about the billions the “skilled” people at Wall Street get every month off their labor.
Never negotiated before, have you?
A small request for the site admins. Inline video’s are fun and all, but please don’t set them to autoplay (Autopian play?). Really what purpose does that serve?
I gotta second this—if I’m interested in the video, it’s annoying to have to jump back to the start!
I agree with all of this. But I want to comment on the point on the supervisors. Most of my friends in the corporate world are middle to upper (but not executive) management at this point. They are plant managers who actually care about the people on the floor. They are sales and procurement directors who are trying to bridge a gap between their own morals and the bullshit coming down from the C-suite.
Yeah, yeah, we can make jokes about “middle management” all day. But they’re not the ones taking home 8 figures and planning RIFs while spouting that “people are our greatest asset.”
Hey, Geologist here. This is an excellent example of some of the issue of Lithium mining when you dig into it a bit. In short, when you find deposits you don’t get just lithium, and it won’t be in a useable form. You get various complex metal compounds and mineral assemblages. Sometimes you’re lucky and the nature of the deposit makes extraction easy. Ideally it is at concentrations the make extraction economical, and you will also get other rare earth minerals out of the deal that will help pad the bottom line.
Most lithium comes from deep within the earth and the igneous (new rock) deposits are sparse of the metal. What you want to find, and what we have concentrated on finding, are the results of hydrothermal activity and areas where vast amounts of water have evaporated. If you dissolve lithium from igneous rock at depth and that mineral-rich water bubbles up hot to deposit those ions in layers where conditions promote crystallization. Likewise, if you have a huge evaporative basin and keep dumping water into it over thousands of years, you eventually get some layers of lithium. Ten million pounds of modern seawater can contain up to two pounds of lithium ions. The right evaporative conditions cause the metals to precipitate out of the water and sink to the bottom. (along with a shitload of salt, i.e. Bonneville salt flats)
Now that we’re looking hard for Lithium and we know how to find the “easy” deposits, we’re going to be inventing ways to find other concentrations we can extract. That said, it takes time and infrastructure to get started, and a lot of money. Two hundred years ago we used to rely on individual people picking out nuggets of gold. Now we just scrape the whole formation and process it through big complex machinery that will extract even the smallest amounts of the yellow stuff. A high-grade ore from a successful gold mine today may have less than 10 grams of gold per metric ton, and the process of extraction is still profitable. As we mine more and more lithium we will get more economic at extracting more of it, the same way we learned new techniques to extract gold. Hopefully our ability to crank up lithium mining sites, and improving our technology of extraction, will outpace our needs for the stuff as EVs become more common.
There’s an interesting story locally in Utah, where a company that wants to mine Lithium here is asking for a ton of water from the GSL. They are promising to use advanced non-evaporative methods, they are promising to return all the water they get after the mining is done, and that it will be as clean as they got it. Hard to believe and trust. But then it got me thinking, where are they going to get all the water needed for Thacker Pass mining….
I’m sure I could find out if I did some digging, but I wonder how much lithium is concentrated in GSL water? Make a slurry out of lake water and a precipitate bed and then “distill” off the water. . . might be quite the haul of light metals. But, capturing the vapor, condensing, and then flushing it back to the GSL at or below the original dissolved solids concentration might be the most expensive part.
There’s always a catch. How much (potentially CO2 releasing) energy will be required to extract and process the lithium? Will the lifetime usage offset that?
Heck, Cobalt, Ontario could be valuable, they just can’t get enough children to enslave to mine it economically.
I gotta go with 41 because….. P41??
42%
They drop the four day work week demand and settle on 42. Because 42 is the answer to everything!
IMHO, based off the raises everyone I know has received in the past three years, they need to stick to their picket signs for a big pay raise. The UAW has been left behind.
So long and thanks for all the fish!
But just for the line that makes Ford Prefects.
Wait, we were supposed to get raises?
The 32 hour work week is the most intriguing to me. And I hope they get it.
Same. That will be a huge step in normalizing it. I’ve actually got the VP of Operations on board with it at our company, however corporate isn’t interested as of now. I even stressed that it helps with retention and recruitment, because it seems like our US headquarters has a hard time holding on to people.
I was just reading yesterday that there’s a big push for this in Australia too.
I would even be happy with 4 10’s
“Here’s their lede”
Sweet baby Jesus, thank you for using the correct word. This is why I subscribe.
26%. Each side has to make the same ten point concession, leaving everyone equally unhappy. A perfect compromise.
That seems entirely reasonable, and thus doomed to be wrong.
It was also my guess, for the same reason.
30%, i dont think they will sign for less than this.
Police unions and the UAW are unions that other unions don’t like.
28%, over 4 years, maybe with a small adjustment if inflation increases. Yes eliminate 2 tier workers, Yes profit-sharing bonuses (as in current policy), No medical for retirees (they don’t vote any more!), and no 32 hour work week (this was never going to fly).
Automakers agree to not work against unionization of battery plants. Union claims they got single tier, big increases, and COLA.
Everyone goes home slightly disappointed. Strike averted and economy / stock market continues rolling along, helping current administration at election time.
The police vehicle shit is absolutely pandering to try to get the public to turn against the UAW. A strike is almost certain to happen this Thursday night. However, it seems increasingly likely that the UAW is going to strike strategically– quitting work on high value lines like premium trim SUVs and trucks. Even if they do stop work on service parts lines (which are typically very low volume and low margin for everyone not selling aftermarket), it’s not like every police vehicle in the country is going to suddenly stop running.
Fuck the OEM C-suites. And best of luck to the workers.
A lot of people will have the attitude that less revenue generator units on the road will be a GOOD thing.
I’m sorry, but the “we build the police cars, thus you shouldn’t strike” argument is such horseshit. I get it’s to a type-of-guy. But, Jesus when did we rearrange society to the demands of the police. God forbid they drive a slightly used car! If it was really “mission critical”, which the militarization of language is also fairly problematic. I didn’t know the police were planning on invading Afghanistan via Police Interceptor. If it was truly “mission critical”, maybe take the L for America and pay the unions demands.
My guess 28%
Shit, my town still drive crown vic’s… Ford’s excuse kinda falls on deaf ears for this one.
We also seriously need to get more cops out walking their beats anyway.
Seriously, they want all the military toys, time to give them the full experience! There is nothing more military then aimlessly walking around trying to look busy.
A question I haven’t seen answered well is the following:
Assuming the end of the two-tier system, is the published raise number going to be across the board? Or is it for the bottom tier to “catch up” to the top tier? If it’s across the board, will the bottom tier get a higher number up front, or how will that be handled?
I understand the details might not be known until pen is put to paper, but I don’t even know how either side is asking for this to be handled.
Yeah I have these questions too. Such as, if the 2-tier system is gone a new hire gets paid close to someone with 5 year’s experience? Or is there already a scale outside the 2-tiers for experience?
This would be a good article for someone to write. I admit I have no idea how the tier system or the whole wage system in general works for the UAW, beyond the extreme basics that have been reported everywhere. Does a first-year worker get paid the same as someone with 25 years of experience? Do all jobs get paid the same, even if some require more or less skill? I would hope not, but from my position of ignorance that seems to be what is described.
I don’t know the specifics for the UAW either, but if it’s anything like the USW had when I worked in the steel mill, there are wage grades within the union that roughly correspond to job duties and are filled by either skill and/or seniority.
So at least in my experience, it would be unlikely for a 25 year veteran to still be working as a grade 1 laborer. On the other hand, a skilled millwright/maintenance worker would be hired at the same wage as a veteran, but might have to work nights for 20 years before they have enough seniority to bid on a day position.
Maybe the autoworkers are totally different though, idk.
24%
Very close to my guess of 25%
I’m going with 20%
I’ve been feeling 21%