(NewsNation) — Detroit’s Big Three announced they’ve started pausing factories and laying off an additional 800 factory workers as the United Auto Workers strike nears the one-month mark.
On Monday, Chrysler parent Stellantis said it’s laying off another 570 workers and General Motors announced cuts of nearly 200 employees.
Ford said Monday another 70 workers had been laid off in Michigan, bringing the total at the automaker to 1,865 since the strike began.
“They’ve also laid off an additional 800 workers because those are plants that would be supplying engines and transmissions to the plants that are currently shut down,” said Lauren Fix, an automotive analyst. “So we have a lot of cost to manufacturers.”
A total of 4,835 workers have lost their jobs since the strike began. Ford, Stellantis and General Motors haven’t indicated any plans to rehire them if automakers are able to reach an agreement with UAW.
Fix said manufacturers and suppliers are enduring the impact of the ripple effects of the strike as UAW continues weekslong negotiations for better benefits and better pay.
Sodecia Automotive, a Detroit-based supplier, laid off 62 percent of its workforce on Monday due to the work stoppage, while thousands of non-union workers were laid off at Ford, GM and Stellantis factories.
“Sadly, that’ll be passed along to you, when you go to purchase a vehicle. It’s going to cause the cost of vehicles to go up. They say it won’t. But we all know someone’s going to be paying that price and it’s going to be the buyer,” Fix said.
An additional 4,000 union workers at Mack Trucks joined in on the picket lines this week after voting down a new contract agreement. With those workers added, the total number of UAW members has surpassed 30,000 across 22 states.
However, progress has been made with the Big Three to meet the union’s long list of demands.
Fix said the UAW’s push for a 32-hour work week is now off the tablex, but the plan to shift to building electric vehicles is a sticking point.
“From what I understand, They’re just waiting on this EV issue,” she said. “Electric vehicles, if we were to go 100%, would be 40% less members or workers from the UAW, they would become more robotic, a lot of things that still be made overseas.”
Meanwhile, Michael Marzillo, a UAW representative at Chicago’s Ford plant, said while tentative agreements with any of the automakers are a good sign, union members are still on strike until the contracts are officially authorized, and some workers are already struggling financially from the work stoppage.
“Even if, with the tentative agreement and the voting, you’re still on strike until it passes,” Marzillo said. “We haven’t gotten our strike pay yet. That’s not coming for a couple of weeks. And there are a lot of people that live paycheck to paycheck.”
The strike began Sept. 15.
GM and Canadian union Unifor reached a tentative agreement on Tuesday just hours after 4,300 workers went on strike at three GM facilities.
The union said the tentative agreement follows the pattern agreement Unifor reached with Ford Motor F.N last month and includes wage hikes of up to 25%. The strike ended after about 12 hours in which it had threatened the largest U.S. automaker’s profitable full-size truck production. Workers must still vote to approve the agreement.
Reuters contributed to this story.