Transcript: UAW strike kicks off new era for US labour

This is an audio transcript of the FT News Briefing podcast episode: ‘UAW strike kicks off new era for US labour’

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Josh Gabert-Doyon
Good morning from the Financial Times. Today is Friday, December 15th, and this is your FT News Briefing.

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Ukraine got a big win from the EU yesterday and central banks are starting to send mixed signals. Plus, for US union leader Shawn Fain, the historic auto workers strike is only the beginning.

Claire Bushey
By encouraging everyone to line up their contract expiration dates. That is laying the groundwork for potentially sweeping labour action on May Day 2028.

Josh Gabert-Doyon
I’m Josh Gabert-Doyon, in for Marc Filippino and here’s the news you need to start your day.

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European Union leaders have agreed to officially start negotiations with Ukraine to join the bloc. Hungary’s prime Minister Viktor Orbán has been the only holdout, but he dropped his opposition yesterday. The agreement is a big milestone for Ukraine’s quest to join the EU after its war with Russia is over. And it comes at a critical time for the war torn country. The EU has struggled to approve a €50bn funding package for Kyiv, and support from Washington is still being held up in Congress.

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Both the Bank of England and the European Central Bank announced yesterday that they’re holding interest rates steady. It’s a sign that there are still lingering concerns over inflation. Meanwhile, the US Federal Reserve signalled it was open to lowering rates in an announcement made earlier this week. Here to talk with me now is Katie Martin, the FT’s markets editor. Hello, Katie.

Katie Martin
Hey, how you doing?

Josh Gabert-Doyon
Good. OK, So to start, what do we know about central banks’ attitudes right now?

Katie Martin
We know a lot more than we did a few days ago. And we’re seeing some big gaps opening up between how different central banks are thinking about the world. On the one hand, you’ve got the US Federal Reserve, which has not explicitly saying rate cuts are definitely coming next year, but they’re kind of hinting pretty heavily that they are. You know, flip over to the other side of the Atlantic. You’ve got the European Central Bank really not toeing the line with the states and saying that no discussion over cutting interest rates. Similarly, we’ve also had the Bank of England which said there’s still a way to go until it’s comfortable with where inflation is. So you can see this growing chasm between the major central banks.

Josh Gabert-Doyon
All right. But even still, all three central banks decided to hold rates steady this week. How the markets reacting to all this?

Katie Martin
So the Fed’s the biggie. I mean, you know, investors do care about the ECB and the Bank of England, but really what the Fed says goes for markets. So we’ve seen a quite significant jump in government bond prices globally, and that’s pulling down yields hard. And so if you’ve got a floating rate mortgage or if you’re a company that’s borrowed on a floating rate basis, then happy days, because effectively, you know, in a lot of cases, the rate that you’re paying that debt back every month is going to fall pretty dramatically. So that has a real world impact as well. But also, stocks are raising higher. Various kind of benchmark measures of stocks in the states are close to record highs. So it’s very much setting the scene for a much more constructive environment for stocks next year. We’re not likely to be so dependent on just this tiny clutch of Magnificent Seven, very AI-flavoured tech stocks. It’s likely to broaden out through the rest of the system. So it’s quite a big kind of festive present for investors.

Josh Gabert-Doyon
Katie Martin is the FT’s markets editor. Thanks, Katie.

Katie Martin
Pleasure.

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Josh Gabert-Doyon
If you’re Shawn Fain, now seems like a good time to do a victory lap. The president of the United Auto Workers Union recently brokered major contracts with the Big Three American carmakers. The deals ended a historic six-week strike that had captured the nation’s attention. But Fain isn’t done yet. He has big plans for the future. Claire Bushey has been covering the fallout of the strikes and she joins me now. Hi, Claire.

Claire Bushey
Hey, how are you?

Josh Gabert-Doyon
I’m doing well. So Claire by the looks of it, Shawn Fain has been on the stump in recent weeks talking to UAW members. Where did you see him?

Claire Bushey
I went to a rally in Belvidere, Illinois. I am at the community building and I just walked past a line of people that is more than a block long. It was both a victory lap and also sort of a call to expand the fight for the working class.

Audio clip of Shawn Fain
It’s a good day to being Belvidere.

Josh Gabert-Doyon
And when Fain took the stage, what did he have to say?

Claire Bushey
He got up there and he said this one was personal. He actually talked about how it wasn’t just about the autoworkers. He talked about how the billionaire class has been hurting US communities for decades.

Audio clip of Shawn Fain
For 40 years, our country’s been going backwards. The working class keeps getting left behind while the billionaires strip our communities for parts.

Claire Bushey
And no one has done anything about it.

Audio clip of Shawn Fain
And there’s only one thing that can stop that. It’s us.

Claire Bushey
Fain also emphasised that bargaining great contracts leads to organising. If workers at Ford, General Motors and Stellantis are able to go on strike and win a better contract than anyone thought they could get, then other workers are gonna look at that and say, I want part of that.

Josh Gabert-Doyon
What sort of role has Shawn Fain played in kicking off this wider movement?

Claire Bushey
A lot of it was rhetoric. Shawn Fain did these live streams during the strike and he would tell people about these other fights that were happening in healthcare or for casino workers. He was always sending messages that, you know, this is about the UAW, but this is also about the whole working class. And then when the strike settled, they also encouraged all US unions to start lining up their contract expiration dates with the auto workers, which is on April 30th, 2028. In the United States, unions typically cannot go on strike unless their contract has expired. So by encouraging everyone to line up their contract expiration dates, that is laying the groundwork for potentially sweeping labour action on May Day 2028, May Day being a day that is associated historically with the labour movement.

Josh Gabert-Doyon
Right. And how do Fain’s UAW union members view this approach? I mean, people standing in this long line in Belvidere, what did you hear from them?

Claire Bushey
The people that I talked to were very favourable. They seemed to really admire his fighting spirit.

Audio clip of Tonya Glover
They didn’t have a choice but to listen to us.

Claire Bushey
I spoke with a woman, Tonya Glover, and she was a third generation UAW member.

Audio clip of Tonya Glover
I’m number 12 in my family to work at Chrysler.

Claire Bushey
She was in sort of that very long line of workers who were standing to get into the hall, to see Fain. And she mentioned that she wasn’t sure that she liked the contract that was bargained at first.

Audio clip of Tonya Glover
Actually, I was going to vote no . . . 

Claire Bushey
But it was one of these, you know, livestream videos that Fain did where he talked about this contract being the path to get better contracts in the future.

Audio clip of Tonya Glover
You’ve got to start somewhere. So this is a start.

Claire Bushey
And that ultimately persuaded her to vote in favour of the contract.

Josh Gabert-Doyon
OK. So it seems like he has a pretty solid base of support, but what are some of the challenges Fain’s facing in keeping the labour movement alive?

Claire Bushey
It’s hard to organise. US labour law is fundamentally reactive, so it’s entirely possible for companies to fire union leaders. And then the most that those workers can win is reinstatement and backpay, and that can take months or years to have that happen. So Shawn Fain and the UAW have a lot of momentum right now. Eventually, they are going to collide with all these big forces that are allied against them. But the night before, they were supposed to kick off their strike against the Big Three, Fain gave this livestream speech to UAW members and the public. And he said that you have to have faith that you can move mountains.

Shawn Fain
And yes, these corporations are mountains.

Claire Bushey
The mountains were General Motors and Stellantis and Ford.

Shawn Fain
But together we can make these mountains move.

Claire Bushey
And in the end, they moved them.

Josh Gabert-Doyon
Claire Bushey is the FT’s Chicago correspondent and covers the US auto industry. Thanks, Claire.

Claire Bushey
Thanks very much.

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Josh Gabert-Doyon
You can read more on all of these stories at FT.com for free when you click the links in our show notes. This has been your daily FT News Briefing. Make sure you check back next week for the latest business news.

The FT News Briefing is produced by Kasia Broussalian, Sonja Hutson, Fiona Symon, Marc Filippino and me, Josh Gabert-Doyon. Our engineer is Monica Lopez. We had help this week from Joanna Kao, Sam Giovinco, David da Silva, Michael Lello, Peter Barber, Gavin Kallmann and Zach St Louis. Our executive producer is Topher Forhecz. Cheryl Brumley is the FT’s global head of Audio and our theme song is by Metaphor Music.

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