Following a six-week-long targeted strike against Ford, Stellantis, and General Motors, the United Auto Workers (UAW) reached a tentative agreement on a new master contract with The Blue Oval in late October, which was ratified by members a couple of weeks later. That new deal includes some considerable investments on FoMoCo’s part in terms of products and production, including its Cyclone V6 engines, the EcoBoost Nano powerplants, the 2.0L Duratec I-4 engine, and both the 8- and 10-speed automatic transmissions, to name just a few. With that locked up in a contract previously scheduled to expire in late April 2028, the UAW is currently working on organizing non-union plants in the U.S. – but it’s also looking ahead a few years as well, according to The Guardian.
“We have to pay for our sins of the past. Back in 1980 when Reagan at the time fired patco workers, everybody in this country should have stood up and walked the hell out,” UAW president Shawn Fain said while speaking to union members at the UAW’s national political conference in Washington DC. “We missed the opportunity then, but we’re not going to miss it in 2028. That’s the plan. We want a general strike. We want everybody walking out just like they do in other countries.”
Fain noted that he wants to conduct this general strike on a specific day as well – May 1st, 2028 – which also happens to be otherwise known as International Solidarity Day, or May Day. The UAW reportedly rescheduled the end date for its new contracts with the Detroit Big Three automakers to coincide with this specific date, and is encouraging other unions to do the same.
A general strike would involve a mass action across multiple industries, but it’s something that hasn’t been terribly common in the U.S. after the Taft-Hartley Act was passed in 1947, which aimed to restrict secondary strikes.
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