The economic impact of the UAW’s strike against General Motors goes a lot deeper than you may think. Automotive analyst John McElroy says the more than month-long work stoppage has a huge trickle-down effect.
“They have caused at least 120,000 supplier workers to be out of work for a month,” says McElroy. “They don’t get any strike pay, and they don’t get any signing bonus. It has really hurt a lot of suppliers. I’ve talked to a lot of them who are going to report losses for this time period in the tens of millions of dollars.”
On top of that, McElroy points to data which shows each strike against GM causes the automaker to lose market share. He says a new way of bargaining needs to be discussed or conceived.
State officials said this week when the September unemployment rate was released that it did not include the UAW-GM strike, and the jobless rate is expected to be higher next month from the current 4.2% as a result.
