Yahoo Autos Fain: 'It’s Not The UAW And Ford Against Foreign Automakers. It’s Autoworkers Everywhere Against Corporate Greed.'
Good morning! It’s Tuesday, October 17, 2023, and this is The Morning Shift, your daily roundup of the top automotive headlines from around the world, in one place. Here are the important stories you need to know.
1st Gear: Billy Ford Thinks UAW Should Give In
Bill Ford, executive chair of the company started by his great-grandfather, wants United Auto Workers leaders to end their strike against the Big Three before it hurts them even more. He said the strike is hindering the company’s ability to compete with automakers like Toyota and Tesla.
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UAW President Shawn Fain responded to Ford’s remarks with this statement:
“Bill Ford knows exactly how to settle this strike. ... He should call up Jim Farley, tell him to stop playing games and get a deal done.
“It’s not the UAW and Ford against foreign automakers. It’s autoworkers everywhere against corporate greed. If Ford wants to be the all-American auto company, they can pay all-American wages and benefits. Workers at Tesla, Toyota, Honda, and others are not the enemy — they’re the UAW members of the future.”
Last week, the union escalated matters with Ford at its largest and most profitable plant, Kentucky Truck. Fain said it was a “new phase” of talks with more unpredictability. The move more than doubled the number of Ford workers on strike to 16,600. That’s far more than the 9,400 striking at GM and 8,000 striking at Stellantis. The move comes even though Ford has offered the highest pay among the three automakers.
“Shutting down that plant harms tens of thousands of Americans right away, workers, suppliers and dealers alike,” Bill Ford said. “If it continues, it will have a major impact on the American economy and devastate local communities.”
The UAW has now gone longer without a tentative agreement than it did when it went on strike against GM in 2019. That year, the two sides reached a tentative deal on the 31st day of the strike, and the union disbanded its picket lines nine days later after ratification.
The strike against the Big Three started on September 15 with just three assembly plants suffering walkouts. Since then, it has expanded to about 34,000 workers at 44 facilities across the country.
2nd Gear: GM’s Cruise Under Investigation
Auto safety regulators have reportedly opened a probe into whether General Motors’ self-driving unit Cruise has taken enough precautions with its autonomous vehicles to keep pedestrians safe. From Reuters:
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) said its Office of Defects Investigation has received two reports from Cruise of incidents in which pedestrians were injured, and has identified two further incidents via videos posted to public websites.
NHTSA said the reports include Cruise autonomous vehicles “encroaching on pedestrians present in or entering roadways, including pedestrian crosswalks, in the proximity of the intended path of the vehicles”.
“This could increase the risk of a collision with a pedestrian, which may result in severe injury or death,” the agency added.
A spokesperson for Cruise said the company communicates regularly with NHTSA and “has consistently cooperated with each of NHTSA’s requests for information – whether associated with an investigation or not – and (plans) to continue doing so”.
The probe comes just a couple of weeks after a hit-and-run incident in San Francisco where a pedestrian was hit by a driver, thrown into the next lane and hit a second time by a Cruise vehicle which didn’t stop in time. Officials in California and the federal government say they have been talking to Cruise about the situation.
In August the California Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) said it was investigating incidents involving Cruise in San Francisco, after a Cruise robotaxi was involved in a crash with an emergency vehicle.
The California Public Utilities Commission voted in August to allow Cruise robotaxis as well as Alphabet’s Waymo to operate around the clock despite the fact that one one in San Francisco wanted that to happen.
