NBC’s Cheung: Auto Workers Want to Get as Much as They Can Because ‘We’re Not Past High Inflation’

On Friday’s broadcast of MSNBC’s “Andrea Mitchell Reports,” NBC News Business and Data Reporter Brian Cheung stated that auto workers are pushing for higher wages in part due to the massive inflation in recent years, but also because they “want to make sure that they can extract as much now, given the fact that we’re not past high inflation.”

Host Andrea Mitchell said, “[L]et’s talk about the backdrop here: The workers gave up a huge amount in salary and pension benefits back when there was the government bailout. The auto industry was going bankrupt and the White House stepped in and they ended up with a bailout, a federal bailout. Now they’re making money, but they’re also transitioning to electric vehicles, they see their jobs disappearing with robotics, and they want a 40% increase, which sounds huge. But they say this is catchup. At the same time, you’ve got huge profits and salaries for the CEOs.”

Cheung responded, “Yeah, and the other thread, too, Andrea, is on inflation, right? We’ve gone through an extraordinary amount of inflation to the likes that we have not seen in over four decades in this country. So, the workers are saying, okay, yeah, the average wage has indeed gone up, keep in mind that they negotiated their current wages back in 2019, prior to the inflationary episode that we saw after the pandemic. So, their argument is that, you could look at the data and see that, yes, wages in the automotive industry, as measured by the government, for both union and non-union work have gone up by 14%, 15% since the last contract negotiation. But prices, over that point in time, have gone up by 18%. So, they’re saying that their wages haven’t kept up with those changes. And because these contracts only get negotiated essentially every four years, they want to make sure that they can extract as much now, given the fact that we’re not past high inflation.”

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