Still, Mr. Wheaton said any strike is risky and a prolonged strike could seriously hurt Fiat Chrysler, particularly if production of its most profitable vehicles is affected.
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However, according to one of the the sources, the UAW’s negotiating team had been pulled from the bargaining table as of Tuesday afternoon.
Should the UAW strike, it would be the union’s first walkout against one of the Detroit automakers since 2007.
While the Local 249 in Kansas City and Ford Motor Company has resolved their small-scale issues, the company continues to talk with leaders of the UAW to come to an agreement on a new national contract. “Every effort will be made to keep the membership informed”.
“FCA U.S. confirms that it has received strike notification from the UAW”, the Detroit-area automaker said in a statement Tuesday.
Do workers get strike pay? Both must be done on the days and times assigned to them.
As the UAW leadership met with its locals to explain the specifics, the voices against the tentative agreement began to grow.
A prior proposal from Fiat Chrysler for a new labor deal included wage hikes and bonus incentives, but the union doesn’t like the fact that it continues to employ a two-tier wage structure that raises concerns among members about job security. Unfortunately, neither the union nor Ford Motor Company went into any detail as to what the issues were, but they were severe enough that the union had authorized a strike at the KC F150 plant.
Gary Spangler, a veteran worker at the Kokomo Transmission Plant in Indiana, said workers there have been told the call to strike on Fiat Chrysler is nationwide, not just the key Kokomo-area transmission plants and a casting plant that feeds them.
Sean McAlinden, chief economist at the Ann Arbor, Michigan-based automobile industry consultancy, said the figure is based on the estimated per-vehicle profit of Fiat Chrysler autos sold in the USA market.
A UAW spokesman declined to comment beyond what the letter said.
Striking costs each individual in the pocketbook and is not done lightly, said Dziczek, who predicted from the start that a strike was likely at FCA but takes no delight knowing that she might be proven right.
“A lot of them think they’ve got their shiny new toy back now that they’re allowed to strike”, he said. “It puts too much pain on both sides”, Dziczek said.
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Those companies have been working under indefinite contract extensions since the union’s contract covering a few 140,000 members expired September 14.
