As of today, only 17 percent of the UAW's members at the Big Three are on strike
Right now, the economic pain has been minimal. It could get much worse.
With Friday’s announcement that the United Auto Workers (UAW) would increase the number of UAW members out on strike against Ford, GM and Stellantis, the total number of workers striking is 25,000, or 17 percent, of the 146,000 UAW members employed by the Detroit-based car companies.
On Friday, UAW President Shawn Fain announced on Facebook Live that the UAW was calling an additional 7,000 members out on strike to join the 18,000 already-striking members.
Though the UAW spared Stellantis in this week’s strike expansion, the members ordered to strike, according to the UAW, are:
Local 551 members at Ford’s Chicago Assembly Plant
Local 602 members at Lansing Delta Township, but NOT members at Lansing Regional Stamping
Despite the UAW’s strike having only 17 percent of the potential members out on strike, layoffs have already been in the thousands as non-striking plants have gone idle.
Meanwhile, some smaller suppliers are are beginning to layoff as well, according to CNBC earlier this week.
On Tuesday, Eagle Industries, a company that molds high volume polyurethane foam products for the automotive industry, announced that it may need to lay off a substantial portion of its 171 hourly workers, citing "unforeseen business circumstances."
“While the automakers and their larger Tier 1 suppliers likely have the resources to weather an extended work stoppage,” reported CNBC, “there's a network of smaller suppliers that could be hit hard by a prolonged strike — or even go out of business entirely.”
“The economic spillovers from the U.A.W. strike remain contained as we near the two-week mark,” Gabriel Ehrlich, an economic forecaster at the University of Michigan told the New York Times on Thursday. “We are seeing some layoffs among automotive suppliers, ranging from seat makers to steelworkers. We would expect these impacts to accumulate as the strike persists and additional targets are announced.”