Detroit
Strike rumbles on: Shawn Fain (pictured), president of the United Auto Workers (UAW) union, has warned that the current strike action by 13,000 workers at the Ford, General Motors and Stellantis factories in Detroit will be expanded unless there is “serious progress” over pay. The strike, which started last Friday, is the first time in UAW’s 88-year history that workers from the carmakers have walked out all at once, says Claire Bushey in the Financial Times. The UAW is demanding higher wages for nearly 150,000 members as part of a “broader battle to protect workers” during the clean energy transition, which it estimates could cost 35,000 jobs.
The strike comes at a time of wider labour unrest and casts a cloud of uncertainty over an industry that accounts for 3% of the US economy. President Joe Biden has been “forced to weigh in on the dispute” and his would-be challenger Donald Trump is due to make a speech to union workers in Detroit next week, say Ryan Felton and Nora Eckert in The Wall Street Journal. Although the
