The day after the United Auto Workers announced a tentative contract agreement with GM, which was the last of the Big three to reach a deal with the union. Labor notes, which is a wonderful publication. Please check it out if you want to get good information about what's happening [00:00:16] with workers in the country. Well, labor Notes received reports from Toyota workers stating that they were given pay raises out of the blue. Now, it wasn't really out of the blue. Keep in mind that Toyota employees are not unionized, and I would venture to say [00:00:33] was that the executives at Toyota do not want the workers to unionize. And so this was a bit, in my opinion, of a preemptive effort to prevent the workers from unionizing. So I'll make my case after I give you the details [00:00:49] about how they've been given pay raises. And apparently they're going to get some better benefits as well. So Toyota, whose US factories again, are not unionized, will increase pay for most assembly plant workers from $31.86 an hour to $34.80 an hour starting January 1st, [00:01:08] according to a spokesperson for Toyota. Now, as for the benefits, Toyota also said that it is cutting the amount of time needed for US production workers to reach top pay to four years from eight years and increasing paid time off. [00:01:25] In a statement regarding the wage hikes, Toyota North America's executive vice president said this, quote, we value our employees and their contributions, and we show it by offering robust compensation packages that we continually [00:01:42] review to ensure that we remain competitive within the auto industry. The UAW has declined to comment. This is great news. We're very happy for the Toyota workers. But was I do think that, again, after you see the massive win [00:01:59] that the United Auto Workers were able to get as a result of their strike, as a result of being part of a union with an incredible leader like Shawn Fein. I think Toyota was a little worried that our employees might get some ideas, and we don't like ideas. - So what do you think? - It's this is not even arguable. [00:02:18] It's obvious. These are gains that were made by the UAW. They took their, you know, instead of eight years to get to top pay, it's now three. They've gotten rid of the tier system where all employees are now, a part of the, the company in the same way. [00:02:36] And that and that helps with worker solidarity. Nobody feels like, oh, this guy across from me has a way better job than I do for doing the exact same work. And so Toyota understands they see the writing on the wall. And also, and the UAW is coming for them. [00:02:54] They've mentioned that one of their goals within the next five years is to go unionize the shops at Volkswagen, Toyota. ET cetera. Places like Tesla, they're coming for those places. And what would again, what I try to say every single time we talk about this, [00:03:10] Anna, those those, those bosses at Toyota would never have done this on their own. Ever. True. Ever, ever, ever, ever, ever. They never they wouldn't have just been like, oh, let's let's pay these guys more. Let's decrease the amount of time it takes to get to top pay. [00:03:28] Let's increase the benefits. It's not true. It's always got to be worker militancy. In fact, why don't we go to the Sean Fein video? Because I believe this is what Toyota was actually concerned about. We demanded a longer contract because one of our biggest goals coming out of this [00:03:44] historic contract victory is to organize like we've never organized before. When we return to the bargaining table in 2028, it won't just be with the big three, but with the big five or big six. [00:04:00] God damn it! What a stud. Like, seriously, man, I just love the strength like we need. We need a president like that again. As I try to tell everybody whenever we talk about this. And Joe Biden didn't do this for anybody, Gavin Newsom didn't do this [00:04:17] for anybody here in California. As a matter of fact, he put a provision that would have made it easier for striking workers to get unemployment benefits. He said, oh, let me veto that. That passed. And like, these politicians are not getting these gains for us. [00:04:34] They're just not they never will. They're too bought and paid for. So it's got to be worker militancy via organizing and threatening to withhold your services, man. Withhold your labor striking these guys at their bottom line. That's that's how these things get done. [00:04:49] Joe Biden, Sleepy Joe not gonna do it for, you know, crying about this on Twitter, getting mad that somebody might one day vote Republican and blah, blah blah. It don't matter. It doesn't matter. These parties are not gonna get these gains for us. [00:05:05] When you look at the Scandinavian model, they don't have a federal minimum wage. They don't sit around waiting for their lawmakers or their government to set what their what the bottom pay needs to be in the country. [00:05:21] They have their unions fight on their behalf. And because of that, wages, you know, relative to the United States are higher there. And so I just I love this because it shows you the kind of fear that [00:05:37] non-unionized companies have in regard to seeing these wins that, like the UAW has, they don't want their workers to unionize. But the other thing that I want to mention is, once you have this bifurcated system where some of the workers in the auto industry are unionized and they're getting [00:05:54] paid more as a result of that, what ends up happening is the non unionized company has to compete for workers, so they have no choice but to increase the wages as well in order to be appealing to workers who might consider working there. [00:06:09] But study after study shows unionized workers make more money, have better benefits than non unionized workers. So for the Toyota folks, you should still consider it, especially when you have someone like Sean Fein leading the UAW. [00:06:25] He's not playing around, he's playing hardball. And obviously he yields results. If you enjoyed this video, that's because of our members. They make us independent. They make us strong and they make us honest. Become a member today by hitting the join button below.