The Unit­ed Au­to Work­ers ex­pand­ed its strike against ma­jor au­tomak­ers Fri­day, walk­ing out of 38 Gen­er­al Mo­tors and Stel­lan­tis parts dis­tri­b­u­tion cen­ters in 20 states.

An­oth­er 5,600 ad­di­tion­al work­ers joined the strike on top of the 13,000 of the 146,000 mem­bers that be­gan the strike one week ago.

Ford was spared ad­di­tion­al strikes be­cause the com­pa­ny has met some of the union’s de­mands dur­ing ne­go­ti­a­tions over the past week, said UAW Pres­i­dent Shawn Fain.

“We’ve made some re­al progress at Ford,” Fain said dur­ing an on­line pre­sen­ta­tion to union mem­bers. “We still have se­ri­ous is­sues to work through, but we do want to rec­og­nize that Ford is show­ing that they are se­ri­ous about reach­ing a deal.”

“At GM and Stel­lan­tis, it’s a dif­fer­ent sto­ry,” he said. Those com­pa­nies, he said, have re­ject­ed the union’s pro­pos­als for cost-of-liv­ing in­creas­es, prof­it shar­ing and job se­cu­ri­ty.

The union is point­ing to the com­pa­nies’ huge re­cent prof­its as it seeks wage in­creas­es of 36% over four years. The com­pa­nies have of­fered a lit­tle over half that amount. The UAW has oth­er de­mands, in­clud­ing a 32-hour work week for 40 hours of pay and a restora­tion of tra­di­tion­al pen­sion plans for new­er work­ers.

The com­pa­nies say they can’t af­ford to meet the union’s de­mands be­cause they need to in­vest prof­its in a cost­ly tran­si­tion from gas-pow­ered cars to elec­tric ve­hi­cles.

The UAW’s con­tract with the au­tomak­ers ex­pired at mid­night on Sept. 14, and work­ers walked out of a Ford as­sem­bly plant near De­troit, a GM fac­to­ry in Wentzville, Mis­souri, and a Jeep plant run by Stel­lan­tis in Tole­do, Ohio.

Fain said ear­li­er this week he would call on work­ers at more plants to strike un­less there was sig­nif­i­cant progress in con­tract ne­go­ti­a­tions with the car­mak­ers. Bar­gain­ing con­tin­ued Thurs­day, al­though nei­ther side re­port­ed any break­throughs, and they re­mained far apart on wage in­creas­es.

The com­pa­nies have laid off a thou­sands of work­ers, say­ing some fac­to­ries are run­ning short on parts be­cause of the strike.

Still, the im­pact is not yet be­ing felt on car lots around the coun­try – it will prob­a­bly take a few weeks be­fore the strike caus­es a sig­nif­i­cant short­age of new ve­hi­cles, ac­cord­ing to an­a­lysts. Prices could rise even soon­er, how­ev­er, if the prospect of a pro­longed strike trig­gers pan­ic buy­ing.

The union is seek­ing pay rais­es of 36% over four years, an end to low­er pay scales for new work­ers, and most bold­ly, a 32-hour work week for 40 hours of pay. The car com­pa­nies say they can’t af­ford the union’s de­mands de­spite huge prof­its be­cause they need to in­vest in the trans­for­ma­tion to elec­tric ve­hi­cles.

One week ago, work­ers went on strike a week ago at three as­sem­bly plants — a Ford fac­to­ry near De­troit, a GM plant out­side St. Louis, and a Jeep plant owned by Stel­lan­tis in Tole­do, Ohio.

The De­troit News re­port­ed Thurs­day that a spokesman for Fain wrote on a pri­vate group chat on X, for­mer­ly Twit­ter, that union ne­go­tia­tors aimed to in­flict “re­cur­ring rep­u­ta­tions dam­age and op­er­a­tional chaos” on the car­mak­ers, and “if we can keep them wound­ed for months they don’t know what to do.”

Ford and GM seized on the mes­sages as a sign of bad faith by the UAW.

“It’s now clear that the UAW lead­er­ship has al­ways in­tend­ed to cause months-long dis­rup­tion, re­gard­less of the harm it caus­es to its mem­bers and their com­mu­ni­ties,” GM said in a state­ment.

Ford spokesman Mark Tru­by called the mes­sages “dis­ap­point­ing, to say the least, giv­en what is at stake for our em­ploy­ees, the com­pa­nies and this re­gion.”

The UAW spokesman, Jon­ah Fur­man, did not con­firm writ­ing the mes­sages, which were linked to the same pic­ture as his X ac­count, and called them “pri­vate mes­sages” that “you shouldn’t have,” the news­pa­per re­port­ed.

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Sto­ry by DAVID KOENIG | As­so­ci­at­ed Press