The United Auto Workers strike against Stellantis, GM, and Ford will likely end up inflicting $10 billion in financial damages — on the car companies, their suppliers, and the wages of workers, according to Patrick Anderson of the Anderson Economic Group.
He said there may be tentative agreements with all three companies now, but it will take time to get operations back to normal.
"We still don't have all these plants started up," Anderson said. "Hopefully Ford [the first company to reach a deal] will be able to start their plants this week. But I mean Springhill, Tennessee, was just struck on Saturday evening, and the Arlington Truck Plant was struck in the middle of last week. So there's a lot of damage that's still occurring. And of course we still need ratification votes on three contracts."
Anderson said the union's new strategy — targeting all three companies at once, and adding new strike targets from week to week to increase pressure on the companies — worked.
"President Sean Fain and the UAW leadership achieved a stunning victory. There's no two ways around it. They achieved every one of their major objectives," he said. "But there's a high cost to that, and part of that is the loss of goodwill with the automakers and some of these communities. [Sean Fain] referring to Ford and GM and Chrysler as the enemy? I think that's a sting that's not going to go away."
