The UAW's Stand Up Strike Against All Three Detroit Automakers

Just before midnight on September 14, 2023, Shawn Fain went live on the union's social media channels and named three factories. Fain had been president of the United Auto Workers for about six months, elected in the union's first direct vote of its members after a federal corruption scandal sent two former presidents to prison. The three plants he named were a General Motors assembly plant in Wentzville, Missouri; Ford's Michigan Assembly Plant in Wayne, Michigan, which built the Bronco and the Ranger; and Stellantis's Jeep complex in Toledo, Ohio. When the contracts expired at midnight, workers at those three plants walked out. Workers at every other plant stayed on the job. For the first time in its history, the UAW was on strike against all three Detroit automakers at once, and it had chosen to do it in a way that none of them could predict.

In short: In 2023 the UAW used a rolling "Stand Up Strike," adding plants a few at a time, to pressure GM, Ford and Stellantis simultaneously. After about six weeks, it won contracts with large raises, restored cost-of-living adjustments and an end to the worst wage tiers, and it raised hard questions for other unions about strategy, transparency and timing.

Why the union was ready to fight

The 2023 strike was the product of grievances that had built up for fifteen years. In 2007 and especially during the 2009 bankruptcies of General Motors and Chrysler, the UAW accepted deep concessions to keep the companies alive. Those included a two-tier wage system, in which newer workers were paid far less than veterans for the same work, the loss of cost-of-living adjustments, the end of traditional pensions for new hires and limits on the right to strike during the bankruptcy period.

The companies recovered. In the years before 2023 the three automakers reported large profits, and executive pay rose with them. Workers who had made sacrifices during the crisis felt they had not shared in the recovery. Meanwhile, the industry was beginning its shift to electric vehicles, and workers worried that new battery plants, many built as joint ventures, would be non-union or would pay less.

The union itself had changed. After the corruption scandal, a reform movement won a referendum in 2021 that allowed members to elect their top officers directly. Fain, running as a reformer, narrowly won in a runoff in early 2023. He came in promising a more confrontational approach and a break from what he called the union's cosy relationship with management.

How the rolling strike worked

The traditional approach to auto bargaining was pattern bargaining: the union would choose one company as a target, strike it if necessary, and then use that settlement as a model for the others. The Stand Up Strike broke with that tradition in two ways.

First, it targeted all three companies at once. No company could gain market share while its rivals were shut down.

Second, it escalated gradually. Instead of calling out every one of its members at the three companies on day one, the union started with three plants and added more over time, announcing each new wave in Fain's live broadcasts. On September 22, the union expanded the strike to dozens of GM and Stellantis parts distribution centres, while sparing Ford, which Fain said had made meaningful progress at the table. A week later it added a Ford assembly plant in Chicago and a GM plant near Lansing, Michigan. In October it struck Ford's highly profitable Kentucky Truck Plant in Louisville, and later GM's large SUV plant in Arlington, Texas, and a Stellantis truck plant in Sterling Heights, Michigan.

The approach had several advantages. It conserved the union's strike fund, since only a fraction of members drew strike pay at any time. It kept the companies guessing about which plants would be next. It rewarded companies that bargained seriously and punished those that did not. And because the targeted plants were often ones that produced high-profit vehicles or critical parts, each wave caused damage out of proportion to the number of workers involved.

The companies responded by laying off workers at plants affected by the strike's ripple effects, arguing that they could not keep plants running without parts. The union disputed some of those layoffs as pressure tactics.

Why it was called a stand-up strike

The name was a deliberate echo. In the winter of 1936 and 1937, autoworkers in Flint, Michigan, occupied General Motors plants for six weeks in the sit-down strike that forced GM to recognize the UAW. The 2023 union borrowed that history and turned it around: instead of sitting down inside, workers would stand up and walk out, plant by plant. The branding mattered. It connected a modern bargaining campaign to the union's founding story, and it told members that the union saw itself as a fighting organization again, not a partner in management.

Fain leaned into that history throughout the strike. He wore union-themed T-shirts, spoke in the language of class conflict and framed the dispute as a fight between workers and billionaire shareholders. Some observers found the rhetoric overheated; many members found it a welcome change from the union's earlier tone.

The math of endurance

Every strike is a contest of who can hold out longer, and the rolling strategy changed that math. A union strike fund pays members a weekly benefit while they are out, and a full walkout by every member at all three companies would have drained the fund far faster than a partial one. During the strike, the UAW raised its weekly strike pay to $500, and it extended benefits to members laid off because of the strike's ripple effects, a decision that protected morale but cost money.

The companies, meanwhile, had to weigh the cost of lost production against the cost of a settlement. Each new wave raised the price of saying no. Because the union targeted plants that built profitable trucks and SUVs, a relatively small number of strikers could cause disproportionate losses. Ford's Kentucky Truck Plant, struck in October, built some of the company's most profitable vehicles, and its shutdown sent a signal that the union knew exactly where to aim.

The strategy also had risks. Workers at plants that were not called out could grow frustrated watching others carry the fight, and workers at struck plants could wonder why they were sacrificing while others kept working. The union managed those tensions by explaining its choices publicly and repeatedly, which was itself a break from earlier practice.

A president on the picket line

On September 26, 2023, President Joe Biden joined UAW members on a picket line outside a GM parts facility near Detroit, speaking through a bullhorn and telling workers they deserved significant raises. It was the first time a sitting president had joined a picket line. The appearance was symbolically significant: presidents have intervened in labor disputes before, but usually as mediators or to end strikes, not to stand with strikers.

Critics argued that a president should not take sides in a private labor dispute, especially one with economic consequences for the whole country. Supporters responded that the federal government had bailed out GM and Chrysler in 2009, that workers had made sacrifices to save the companies, and that a president who claimed to be pro-union should act like it. Whatever one thinks of the gesture, it marked how much the politics of organized labor had shifted.

What the contracts won

The strike ended in late October 2023, after about six weeks, when the union reached tentative agreements first with Ford, then with Stellantis and finally with GM. Members ratified all three.

The core terms were similar across the companies. The contracts provided a 25 percent increase in base wages over the life of the agreement, which runs to the end of April 2028, along with the restoration of cost-of-living adjustments. They sharply shortened the time it takes new workers to reach top pay and moved many temporary workers into permanent jobs, largely dismantling the tier system that had divided workers since the crisis. They improved retirement contributions, though they did not restore traditional pensions for workers hired after 2007. Stellantis agreed to plans to reopen its idled plant in Belvidere, Illinois, a commitment that became a subject of later dispute. The union also won the right to strike over plant closures, and commitments on bringing workers at some battery plants under the master agreements.

The union did not win everything it asked for. Its opening demands had included a 40 percent raise, a shorter workweek and restored pensions for all. Some members voted against ratification because the gains fell short of those goals.

The questions it raised

The Stand Up Strike was widely regarded as a success, and it raised questions that other unions are still working through.

Transparency. Fain bargained in public to an unusual degree, posting the union's demands and the companies' offers in his broadcasts and even throwing a company proposal in a wastebasket on camera. That openness built enthusiasm among members and public support, but it also made compromise harder, because the union had set public expectations. Traditional negotiators argue that bargaining in private allows more flexibility. Reformers argue that members deserve to know what is being negotiated on their behalf.

Timing and solidarity. After the strike, Fain called on other unions to align their contract expirations with the UAW's, around May 1, 2028, so that workers across industries could take action at the same time. Whether other unions follow, and whether coordinated action on that scale is legally or practically feasible, remains to be seen. Coordinated bargaining across different employers runs into legal limits, especially the secondary-boycott rules in the Taft-Hartley Act.

Organizing the non-union plants. After the strike, non-union automakers, including Toyota, Honda and Hyundai, announced wage increases for their American workers, a sign of the strike's influence beyond the union. The UAW followed with organizing campaigns at foreign-owned plants in the South. In April 2024, workers at Volkswagen's plant in Chattanooga, Tennessee, voted to join the UAW, the first successful vote at a foreign-owned auto plant in the South. A month later, workers at a Mercedes-Benz plant near Tuscaloosa, Alabama, voted against joining. The mixed results show both the momentum and the obstacles.

The electric-vehicle transition. The shift to electric vehicles remains a central concern for autoworkers. Battery plants require fewer workers than engine plants, and many are located in states with weaker labor laws. Federal policy on electric vehicles has changed significantly under the Trump administration, adding uncertainty about the industry's direction.

The limits of one union's win. A strong contract at three companies does not reach the parts suppliers, many of them non-union, whose workers earn far less than assembly workers. The wage gap between the top of the supply chain and the bottom is one of the next problems any autoworker strategy will have to address, and one that a single master agreement cannot solve.

What the strike says about corporate power

There is a larger argument here about how corporations and workers share the gains of a business. In the years before the strike, the automakers spent heavily on stock buybacks and dividends, rewarding shareholders while workers' wages, adjusted for inflation, had fallen behind. The union's case was simple: the companies could afford to pay more, and workers deserved a larger share of what they helped produce.

The companies argued that they faced intense competition, including from non-union automakers and from electric-vehicle makers like Tesla, and that higher labor costs would make it harder to invest in the transition to electric vehicles. That is a fair concern, and the industry's future is genuinely uncertain. But the strike demonstrated that workers acting together could win far more than they could alone, and that companies had more room to pay than they initially claimed. Coverage of these questions, including how automakers and other large companies use their profits, is gathered on our corporate power topic page.

For progressives, the strike also offers a quieter lesson. It won public sympathy not mainly through slogans about corporate greed, though there were plenty of those, but through specific, explainable demands: pay that kept up with prices, an end to two workers earning different wages for the same job, and some security if a plant closed. Specific demands are easier to defend at a dinner table than broad ones, and they travel further.

What you can do

The Stand Up Strike succeeded because workers, the public and political leaders paid attention. Here are ways to stay involved.

• Watch where organizing is happening next. The labor page shows the newest union elections counted by the National Labor Relations Board, including those at auto, battery and parts plants. Look for wins and losses in the South, where the next big fights are likely.
• Pay attention to the 2028 contracts. The UAW's contracts with the Detroit automakers expire at the end of April 2028. Follow coverage on the workers and unions topic page, and notice which other unions line up their own contracts.
• Tell your representatives what you expect. Federal policy on electric vehicles, trade and labor law shapes autoworkers' futures. Use the representatives lookup to contact your members of Congress about where they stand.
• Support autoworker communities. Plant closures and layoffs hit towns hard. Food banks, legal aid groups and worker centres in affected communities are listed on the organizations page.