The United Auto Workers union said Friday that 97 percent of its members voted to authorize strikes against General Motors, Ford Motor and Stellantis if the union and the companies cannot negotiate new labor contracts.
The result gives the union’s president, Shawn Fain, the power to tell workers to walk off the job once current contracts expire on Sept. 14.
Strike authorization votes are usually formalities that pass by significant margins and do not guarantee strikes. But this vote comes as the reinvigorated UAW takes a more assertive stance toward automakers, part of a larger shift in organized labor.
GM, Ford and Stellantis have posted strong earnings for nearly a decade. That has emboldened Mr. Fain and his members to call for substantial wage increases, cost-of-living adjustments, and improved pensions and health care benefits.
“This is our time to take back what we owe,” he said on Facebook Live on Friday. “We are united, and we are not afraid,” he added.
Mr. Fain, who was narrowly elected president this year in the union’s first direct election of its top leaders, appears to have united union members. He appeared at rallies with workers in Detroit on Wednesday and in Louisville, Ky., on Thursday and Friday. About a dozen similar events are planned over the next two weeks. Such events have been rare in contract negotiations over the past 20 years.
“There’s nervousness, but there’s excitement,” Luigi Gjokaj, a vice president at UAW Local 51, said at the Detroit rally. “If the company comes to the table and they are fair, we will have an agreement. If there is a need to strike, we are ready.”
Mr. talked to Fain among about 100 workers in that rally from the bed of a pickup truck just outside a Stellantis plant that makes the Jeep Wagoneer, a highly profitable sport utility vehicle.
“We’re not asking to be millionaires,” he said to loud cheers. “We just want our fair share.”
In a statement after the strike vote was announced, Ford said it looks forward to working with the UAW toward “creative solutions at a time when our industry needs a skilled and competitive workforce more than ever.”
This month, Mr. Fain sent the companies a list of demands, including the possibility of working only four days a week and a 40 percent wage increase, citing the chief executives of GM, Ford and Stellantis have been awarded larger compensation packages in the last four years. New hires at auto plants start at around $16 an hour and within a few years can reach the $32 an hour that veteran workers earn.
GM, Ford and Stellantis have suggested they are likely to agree to some sort of higher wages. In a new indication of how the talks are going, an Ohio battery plant owned by GM and LG Energy Solutions, a South Korean battery maker, agreed Thursday to raise wages by 1,900 UAW workers by 25 percent on average.
Mr. Fain has repeatedly criticized wages at the plant, which started at about $16 an hour, as too low. The plant is covered by a separate collective bargaining agreement from the one the union is negotiating for workers at GM-owned plants. Wages there now start at around $20 an hour.
The three manufacturers aim to minimize rising labor costs in any new contracts as they spend tens of billions of dollars on a crucial transition to electric vehicles. The companies have suggested that agreeing to all or most of Mr. Fain’s demands would leave them at a competitive disadvantage against Tesla, the dominant maker of electric cars, and European and Asian that automaker operates nonunion plants in the United States.
GM said in July that it expected to earn more than $9.3 billion this year, about $1 billion more than the previous forecast. Stellantis, which is based in Amsterdam and owns Chrysler, Jeep, Ram and other car brands, made 11 billion euros (about $11.9 billion) in the first half of this year, a record. Ford expects pretax earnings of $11 billion to $12 billion this year. All three companies generate most of their revenues in North America.
“Regardless of what others may think, business profits enable investments in the future, supporting long-term job security and opportunities for all,” said Gerald Johnson, GM’s executive vice president for in global manufacturing and sustainability, in a video message to employees last week.
The UAW typically names a company it will focus on in negotiations and will target for a strike if it can’t reach an agreement. The union has not been done so far, even though Mr. Fain is publicly sparring with Stellantis.
After Mr. Fain presented his demands, Stellantis responded with proposals that would increase how much workers contribute to the cost of health care, reduce company contributions to retirement accounts and allow the company to temporarily shut down plants with little advance notice.
In a Facebook video, Mr. Fain angrily denounced the Stellantis proposals and threw a copy into a trash can. “There’s that place, the trash, because it is what it is,” he said.
Stellantis’ chief operating officer for North America, Mark Stewart, said in a letter to employees that he was “incredibly disappointed” by Mr. Fine. “Theatrics and personal insults will not help us reach an agreement,” Mr. Stewart said.
Tensions between the UAW and Stellantis, formed over the 2021 merger of Fiat Chrysler and Peugeot SA, have been simmering since the automaker idled a Jeep plant in Illinois. One of the main goals of Mr. Fain will get the company to reopen the factory.