By TOM KRISHER and DAVID KOENIG (AP Business Writers)

DETROIT (AP) — The United Auto Workers union expanded strikes towards Detroit automakers Friday, ordering 7,000 extra employees to stroll off the job in Illinois and Michigan to place extra strain on the businesses to enhance their presents.

It was the second time the union has widened the walkout, which began two weeks in the past at three meeting crops earlier than the latest addition of a Ford plant in Chicago and a General Motors meeting manufacturing facility close to Lansing.

Union President Shawn Fain advised employees in a video look that the strikes had been escalated as a result of Ford and GM refused “to make meaningful progress” in ongoing contract talks. Jeep maker Stellantis was spared from the third spherical of strikes.

Ford and GM shot again as a disagreement with the union additionally intensified. Ford accused the UAW of holding up a deal primarily over union illustration at electrical car battery crops, most of that are joint ventures with a Korean producer.

“There is still time to reach an agreement and avert disaster,” Ford stated in an announcement, including that the strikes are beginning to have an effect on fragile firms that make elements for factories affected by the walkouts.

GM’s manufacturing chief stated the union was calling extra strikes “just for the headlines, not real progress.”

The GM plant in Delta Township, close to Lansing, makes giant crossover SUVs such because the Chevrolet Traverse and Buick Enclave. A close-by steel elements stamping plant with 300 employees will stay open, Fain stated.

The Chicago Ford plant makes the Ford Explorer and Explorer Police Interceptors, in addition to the Lincoln Aviator SUV. The Explorer Interceptor is the nation’s top-selling police car.

Fain stated union bargainers are nonetheless speaking to all three firms, and he was hopeful they may attain offers.

Stellantis, he stated, made important progress moments earlier than his look on Facebook Live by agreeing to unspecified cost-of-living raises, the suitable to not cross a picket line and the suitable to strike over plant closures.

Raneal Edwards, a longtime GM worker who works on the Lansing-area manufacturing facility, stated she was “shocked but happy” to listen to that her plant would be part of the strike.

“I feel like they don’t understand that this is about more than wages,” Edwards stated. “It’s about having security at our jobs.”

Edwards stated she believes the UAW’s technique of slowly including extra crops will work. “I love it because it keeps us on our toes. No one knows what’s next,” she stated.

But in a notice to employees Friday, Edwards’ boss, GM manufacturing chief Gerald Johnson, stated the corporate has but to obtain a counteroffer from union leaders to a Sept. 21 financial proposal.

Ford CEO Jim Farley accused the union of holding an settlement hostage over union illustration of employees at future electrical car battery factories.

Farley, on a convention name with business analysts, stated excessive wages at battery crops would make Ford’s electrical automobiles a lot costlier than these from Tesla and different rivals.

“Record contract? No problem. Mortgaging our future? That’s a big problem. We will never do it,” Farley stated.

Ford’s battery crops, Farley stated, haven’t been constructed and principally are joint ventures with a South Korean battery maker. “They have not been organized by the UAW yet because the workers haven’t been hired and won’t be for many years to come,” Farley stated.

Fain later accused Farley of mendacity in regards to the talks and stated the union gave Ford a counteroffer on Monday however has not heard again. The union is way aside on financial points with Ford, Fain stated, resembling a defined-benefit pension for employees employed after 2007 and medical insurance for retirees. Workers employed after 2007 get a 401(ok)-style retirement plan.

But Fain did say “job security in the EV transition” stays a difficulty.

Automakers have lengthy stated that they’re keen to present raises, however they worry {that a} expensive contract will drive up car costs, making them dearer than fashions made at nonunion U.S. crops run by overseas automakers, largely within the South.

The union counters that labor prices are solely 4% to five% of the price of a car, and that the businesses are making billions in income and may afford massive raises.

Wedbush analyst Dan Ives stated the expanded strikes present either side are digging in for a doubtlessly lengthy battle.

Ives wrote in a notice to traders that President Joe Biden’s administration is watching union calls for collide together with his push for cleaner electrical automobiles. Biden, who has billed himself as essentially the most union-friendly president in historical past, traveled Tuesday to the Detroit space to stroll picket strains with employees at a GM elements warehouse.

Republican front-runner Donald Trump additionally traveled to the Detroit space this week for a rally at a nonunion truck elements maker.

Offers on the desk from the businesses will add $3,000 to $5,000 to the price of a median electrical car that will be handed on to shoppers, Ives wrote. Such prices “would ultimately be a torpedo to the future business models” of the automakers, he wrote.

The electrical car battery crops are an enormous subject for the union’s future. Some business executives, together with Farley, say it would take as much as 40% fewer employees to make EVs as a result of they’ve fewer shifting elements. So the union is seeking to manage battery crops and win prime wages so displaced employees have someplace to go, particularly these making combustion engines and transmissions.

Other business officers, together with GM CEO Mary Barra, say there can be sufficient jobs for all because the business strikes away from gasoline automobiles.

The automakers’ final recognized wage presents had been round 20% over the lifetime of a four-year contract, a bit of greater than half of what the union has demanded. Other contract enhancements, resembling price of residing will increase, restoration of defined-benefit pensions for newly employed employees and an finish to tiers of wages throughout the union are additionally on the desk.

The union went on strike Sept. 15, instantly after its contracts expired.

The UAW initially focused one meeting plant from every firm. Then final week it added 38 elements distribution facilities run by GM and Stellantis. Ford was spared from that enlargement as a result of talks with the union had been progressing then.

The union has structured its walkouts in a means that has allowed the businesses to maintain making pickup vehicles and enormous SUVs, their top-selling and most worthwhile automobiles. Previously it shut down meeting crops in Missouri, Ohio and Michigan that make midsize pickup vehicles, business vans and midsize SUVs, all of that are worthwhile however don’t make as a lot cash because the bigger automobiles.

The new strikes towards GM and Ford goal crossover SUVs which are massive moneymakers for each firms.

In the previous, the union picked one firm as a possible strike goal and reached a contract settlement with that firm to be the sample for the others.

But this yr Fain launched a novel technique of concentrating on a restricted variety of amenities in any respect three automakers.

About 25,000, or about 17%, of the union’s 146,000 employees on the three automakers are actually on strike, permitting it to protect a strike fund that was value $825 million earlier than Sept. 14.

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Koenig reported from Dallas. Associated Press Writer Joey Cappelletti in Lansing, Michigan, contributed to this report.