7 October 2024
Once again, Stellantis is dominating our headlines with its latest challenge: playing hardball with the UAW.
Last last week Stellantis filed nine lawsuits against the union, the first one in U.S. District Court in California, seeking to block any attempt to strike over commitments made in the 2023 national contract. The UAW and President Shawn Fain have been saber rattling for weeks threatening to strike Stellantis over its lack of action in reopening its idled plant in Belvidere, Ill.
The company says it has the written and legal right to delay those plans if market conditions don’t warrant the reopening. Moreover, the company said today the UAW wants to reinvent the onerous jobs bank that pays laid-off employees not to work — one of the chief reasons its predecessor Chrysler and General Motors needed bankruptcy protection during the Great Recession.
The pro-management argument is that Stellantis needs to protect its interests and tell Fain enough is enough after giving the union lucrative pay raises in 2023.
But the UAW and its allies say Stellantis is a mismanaged company that needs to live up to its 2023 promises sooner rather than later. They have arguably the most pro-labor president in U.S. history on their side — in an election year no less.
“Stellantis, formerly FCA, formerly Cerberus, formerly Daimler, formerly Chrysler, is following in a long line of failing corporate executives blaming autoworkers for their own mismanagement,” Fain said in a statement this afternoon.
“It is gross mismanagement by top executives that is killing this company. It is laughable that Stellantis claims our proposal to reopen Belvidere is ‘outrageous.'”
As always with controversies like this, the truth is probably somewhere in between.
But if you ask Stellantis shareholders, suppliers, dealers or other stakeholders, you might get this question: Doesn’t Stellantis have enough other problems right now than to get into another fight with the UAW?
In other news, Florida dealerships are bracing for another potentially lethal storm just two weeks after Hurricane Helene ravaged the southeast. Hurricane Milton is a Category 5 storm and still strengthening. It could slam the Gulf Coast of Florida on Thursday.
There’s still plenty of recovery going on from Helene. GM said today it has restarted production at plants in Texas and Michigan that had supply chain interruptions caused by that hurricane.
And here’s a couple other stories to check out.
We have a preview of the 2024 Paris auto show, which starts next Monday amid the growing EV competition between Chinese and Western automakers.
We also have the first big announcement from The Battery Show in Detroit. Nissan Motor Co. is joining ChargeScape, the alliance created in 2023 by competitors Ford Motor Co., American Honda Motor Co. and BMW.
That’s it for now. Have a great rest of your day.
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