Perspective: UAW contract talks open with dueling absurd visions

Auto suppliers plan for uncertainty amid UAW strike, shift to EVs.

As you may have heard, Paul Reubens, the writer and actor who created the character Pee-wee Herman, died recently.

He was a complicated and subversive artist, whose character — somewhat like Reubens himself — vacillated from simple childhood joys to campiness and sometimes darker matters.

Pee-wee's Playhouse Christmas Special is a family tradition at my house. After the big opening number with a cavalcade of guest stars, we find Pee-wee revising his Christmas letter to Santa — an epic catalog of everything he can think of. It's so long that it just about crashes his robot, Conky 2000.

Naturally, I was reminded of his expansive wish list in these early stages of the UAW's negotiations with the Detroit 3. In early August, President Shawn Fain outlined 10 major "members' demands," such as defined benefit pensions and eliminating the eight-year ramp to full pay that he considers a lower "tier" of employee status. Beyond those core items, he also talked about ideas such as paring back to a 32-hour workweek.

That one likely provoked some sardonic chuckles from automaker executives and factory managers who might say that rampant absenteeism means many already are punching in only four days a week.

UAW strike just one issue to watch in auto industry.

The UAW's profligate wish list is not unique to 2023 and Fain. It's long been standard in negotiations for each side to start off asking for the moon.

What is unusual is sharing such a list openly, rather than behind closed doors with the negotiating teams.

Fain's unusually public approach — not just regarding these demands, but throughout the early months of his UAW presidency — makes a lot of sense for healing a fractured union and connecting with a membership that is still getting used to things such as electing its own leaders.

The risk is that by sharing all of the ideas of what could be won, he is setting expectations unreasonably high in a way that makes it too hard to win ratification for an agreement that ultimately will include some measure of compromise.

Only time will tell how well he can walk that line: Getting members fired up to strike and demand gains commensurate with automakers' pandemic-induced profit surge ... and then getting them to vote to accept a reasonably lucrative deal that comes up short of these early August fantasies.

Of course, there are two sides to every negotiation — or arguably four sides, as the UAW seeks to negotiate three automaker contracts. And preposterous posturing is hardly limited to labor's side.

Stellantis is the most likely strike target of the UAW, though the union continues to negotiate with all three. (UAW presidents traditionally have not narrowed efforts to one company until after Labor Day.)

The manufacturer of Jeeps, Rams and Peugeots, based in France, has become the largest and most profitable of the Detroit 3, and its predecessor was most involved in the UAW's bribery scandal.

It's tried to maintain a positive disposition about the talks, even noting in a statement that it is not looking for concessions from the union.

But CEO Carlos Tavares, wary of the costly transition to electric vehicles, stressed the need to ensure that middle-class consumers can continue to buy new cars.

"If we want to protect the jobs in the U.S. and the manufacturing footprint in the U.S., we need to find the conditions to make a $25,000 BEV in the U.S. that we can sell at significant volumes with reasonable margins for that proposal to the market to be sustainable," Tavares told reporters.

A clean, affordable, low-maintenance car that sells for about a third of the median U.S. household income — and also generates a reasonable return for the manufacturer — sounds like a fantastic idea. And while it would be fantastic — in the sense of wonderful or marvelous — his vision sounds a lot like fantasy.

EVs cost several thousand dollars more to make than gasoline-powered autos, and the cheapest car Stellantis sells in the U.S. is the slow-selling Fiat 500X, which starts at $27,965 before shipping charges. That's 12 percent more than his supposed EV target price.

Fain has called the automakers the "one true enemy" of UAW members and complained that "executives have lavished themselves with fat salaries" while earning "obscene" profits. That's part of his justification for the "audacious and ambitious" opening salvo.

In the movie Pee-wee's Big Adventure, our hero gets called names by a spoiled neighbor, to which he repeatedly responds: "I know you are, but what am I?"

Both sides in the auto talks are being at least a little unreasonable. Here's hoping that in the next month or two, they can get past the name-calling and find a workable solution members will ratify. Then Fain could quote another great Pee-wee line: "I meant to do that."

UAW contract talks open with dueling absurd visions

As the opening salvos in the 2023 UAW negotiations rang out, I was reminded of Pee-wee Herman's epic wish list to Santa.

Jamie Butters is the executive editor of Automotive News.