President Joe Biden has called on three major U.S. automakers and their workers’ union, United Auto Workers (UAW), to work on reaching an agreement to avoid potential strikes, PBS reports.
UAW is comprised of 146,000 workers at Ford, General Motors, and Stellantis, whose worker contracts are set to expire at 11:59 p.m. on September 14.
The Union’s president, Shawn Fain, is asking for an end to different wage tiers among workers, as well as reinstating cost-of-living pay and retiree health coverage and providing defined benefit pensions and pay raises.
Automakers claim that they are unable to provide this for their workers due to development costs throughout the transition to electric vehicles.
As this transition from gasoline vehicles takes place, however, President Biden is urging a strike be avoided by ensuring workers are provided “good jobs that can support a family.”
Biden said that factories built by these automakers throughout the transition to EVs should be looking to “retool, reboot, and rehire,” offering comparable wages and giving existing workers the first chance to take new jobs.
“The UAW helped create the American middle class and as we move forward in this transition to new technologies, the UAW deserves a contract that sustains the middle class,” stated President Biden.
