As United Auto Workers negotiators bargain with Detroit’s Big Three automakers for a new four-year contract, the union will almost certainly face a critical decision: whether to call a strike against one of the Big Three, should they believe that action to be necessary.
It’s been 17 years since the last major strike at a U.S. automaker. The UAW struck two key General Motors plants in 1998 — Flint Metal Center and Delphi Flint East. The 54-day strike, the longest in three decades, crippled the Detroit automaker. It forced GM to idle nearly 180,000 employees and shutter 26 of 29 North American assembly plants. It idled more than a hundred auto supplier plants.
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