The country’s largest auto union began a historic strike at midnight Friday. Here is what to know about why auto workers are striking and what is at stake.

United Auto Workers President Shawn Fain announced the move at a Thursday night press conference. In making the announcement, he emphasized the magnitude of the decision and said that three different Big Three auto plants would see work stoppages.

“This is our generation’s defining moment,” Fain told his members. “The world is watching.”

Why is this strike historic?

The union represents some 150,000 workers at General Motors, Ford, and Stellantis, the company that took over Chrysler’s operations, so the number of people involved is huge.

Any union of that size announcing strike action is big news. The last time UAW went on strike, a six-week stoppage against GM in 2019, it cost the auto giant some $3.6 billion and Michigan, home of many GM workers, experienced a recession during that quarter.

But this time is a bit different. This strike is the first-ever work stoppage to involve all three Big Three Detroit automakers. Fain also said that the stoppages would be strategic, targeting one major plant each of GM, Ford, and Stellantis. That means that it could drag on longer than other strikes and gives the union leverage to keep adding more pressure by shutting down additional factories.

The locations picked to strike are the GM Wentzville Assembly, Stellantis Toledo Assembly Complex, and the Ford Michigan Final Assembly and Paint plants.

What do they want?

The union is pushing for massive changes to workers’ contracts.

The headline demand from the union is a huge 36% pay bump over the next four years. Employees at the three automakers currently earn between $18 to $32 an hour, meaning that such a dramatic increase would see wages pushed as high as $43.52 per hour.

There is currently a gulf between the union’s demand and the automakers’ offer. The Big Three have countered with wage increases ranging from 17.5%-20% over the life of a contract, although the UAW has dug in its heels in asking for the bigger pay boost.

Another bold change that the union is seeking is for the automakers to provide workers with a four-day workweek that would see members working 32 hours for 40 hours of pay.

“Our members are working 60, 70, even 80 hours a week just to make ends meet. That’s not living. It’s barely surviving and it needs to stop,” Fain said during a recent livestream on Facebook, where he has periodically been providing updates about the negotiations.

Fain told In These Times, a liberal magazine, that UAW leadership was advocating for sub-40-hour work weeks as far back as the 1930s and 1940s.

“I don’t consider [a 30-hour work week] ambitious,” he said. “I consider it almost a human rights issue. Our lives, our workers’ lives, can’t revolve around the companies. Our members are workers. Their health is sacrificed.”

The union is also seeking an end to tiered employment, which is the system of giving new workers less pay and benefits than those who have been working with the Big Three for longer. UAW also wants expanded benefits overall.

Who is leading the charge?

Fain is the man of the hour. The 54-year-old has only led the union for a short period of time but has already orchestrated a historic strike.

Fain was elected in March to lead the UAW and narrowly ousted the union’s previous president by running a campaign in part pushing for a more confrontational stance in contract negotiations. He hails from a lineage of autoworkers and his grandfather was among the first to join the union in 1937.

Fain’s hard-line negotiation tactics and firm demands are a notable contrast to those of his predecessor, Ray Curry. Ahead of the election, Fain released a statement bashing the old guard of UAW leadership and calling for aggressive bargaining.

“For too long, the UAW has been controlled by leadership with a top-down, company union philosophy who have been unwilling to confront management, and as a result we’ve seen nothing but concessions, corruption, and plant closures,” he said.

Why now?

The timing of the strike is because the life of the workers’ existing four-year contracts came to an end on Sept. 15. There had been weeks of fruitless negotiations leading up to the strike announcement and negotiations will continue with UAW leadership and the automakers even as the three plants strike.

Fain’s election, which was largely predicated upon bigger union demands and more aggressive bargaining, set the stage for this year’s strike. The action also comes amid a flurry of other union activity, which has vaulted organized labor back into the headlines.

President Joe Biden has cast himself as the most union-friendly president in history and his time in office has lined up with some historic growth in the labor movement.

After a period of tense negotiations, and with the threat of a strike looming, the Teamsters union and UPS reached an agreement on a contract package that boosted wages, in addition to other changes.

In late 2020, the first Starbucks store in the U.S. voted to unionize. That set off a wave of other efforts at stores across the country, and now workers at the company have won union elections at some 300 locations.

The labor movement’s moment in the spotlight was highlighted in an inaugural “State of the Unions” address by AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler ahead of Labor Day.

“For a long time, working people in this country have felt powerless. They’ve been powerless,” she said. “Working people are reclaiming our power. Working people are taking on the companies that have exploited us for a long time now.

“So, the state of the unions? The state of the unions is on the rise,” Shuler added.

How consumers be affected?

The strike is not good for those looking to buy a car. Even though only three plants are involved, the specter of drawn-out work stoppages and other plants being pulled offline during the talks is hanging above the car-buying market.

Dan Bowling, a distinguished fellow at Duke University School of Law where he teaches labor and employment courses, told the Washington Examiner that the new car market was already struggling a bit to keep up with demand before the strike and this will only add more pressure for buyers.

“That’s why the used car market has exploded,” he noted.

Bowling thinks that not only will the decreased supply of new cars put upward pressure on prices, but used car prices will also surge as those who might have gone out to purchase a new car now turn to the used car market.

The price pressure from the strike is obviously bad news for consumers because inflation has already been wreaking havoc on the economy. It is also bad news for Biden, who has been working to tout cooling inflation.

What’s next?

The strike could drag on, given that the union didn’t announce a full work stoppage across all plants. That means there is less of a hit on union members. Bowling explained that they could change the plants that shut down too, further complicating the situation.

“I think the UAW [will do] something of a whiplash strike where they go from different plant to different plant at different times. Different pressure points,” he said, evoking a war that has different fronts and battles. “It can be a very effective tactic for unions.”