Well, you knew United Auto Workers president Shawn Fain was going to be feeling invincible after laying siege to the D-3 this fall. He got most of what he wanted after successfully pulling off a simultaneous multi-pronged attack on all of the major car manufacturers at once.

You also know dang well that the major auto makers who remained union-free were going to beef up their offerings to their workers, simply because they had a good sense of what number was next on the UAW’s dance card.

Toyota heard the music first.

Toyota Motor (7203.T) said on Wednesday it is raising the wages of nonunion U.S. factory workers just days after the United Auto Workers union won major pay and benefit hikes from the Detroit Three automakers.

Hourly manufacturing workers at top pay will receive a wage hike of about 9% effective on Jan. 1, the company confirmed. Other nonunion logistics and service parts employees are getting wage hikes.

The largest Japanese automaker also said it is cutting the amount of time needed for U.S. production workers to reach top pay to four years from eight years and increasing paid time off.

…”We value our employees and their contributions, and we show it by offering robust compensation packages that we continually review to ensure that we remain competitive within the automotive industry,” Chris Reynolds, Toyota Motor North America’s executive vice president, said in a statement.

The pay of production Toyota workers in Kentucky at top scale will rise by $2.94 to $34.80 an hour.

Honda was only a beat and a half behind…

Honda Motor (7267.T) said on Friday it would give production workers at its U.S. facilities an 11% pay hike starting in January, a decision announced a couple of weeks after the United Auto Workers (UAW) union and the Detroit Three automakers agreed to new contracts.

The Japanese automaker also said it would cut the time it takes factory workers to get to the top-wage tier to three years from six, in line with a key concession the UAW won in its negotiations with General Motors (GM.N), Ford Motor (F.N) and Chrysler-parent Stellantis (STLAM.MI).

…with Hyundai and Volkswagen scrambling to break out the checkbooks as they caught up to the “Don’t you know we love our workers!” line dance.

Volkswagen (VOWG.DE) said on Wednesday that it would hike salaries for production workers at its Tennessee-based Chattanooga assembly plant by 11%, weeks after the United Auto Workers union won significant pay and benefit hikes from the Detroit Three automakers.

The German company and other non-union automakers in the U.S. have come under increased pressure to improve pay and benefits following the record contracts achieved by the UAW in late October after thousands of its members went on a six-week targeted strike.

…Hyundai Motor (005380.KS) has also announced a 25% increase over the next four years for non-union production workers in Alabama and Georgia.

Elon Musk has been winning battles against labor unions lately, scoring two big ones in recent weeks.

In Sweden, he’s momentarily triumphed over what he called an “insane” war against the company by a whole galaxy of labor union rogues banding together against his non-union repair shops.

A Swedish county court issued a temporary injunction granting Tesla the right to take delivery of license plates for its cars, potentially offering the company a partial reprieve from a spiraling strike.

The monthlong walkout by members of an industrial union at seven Tesla-owned repair shops in Sweden has become a veritable storm of industrial action, with eight other unions throwing their weight behind workers’ demands for a collective bargaining agreement. That’s meant the initial action involving a share of about 130 Tesla workers may now be backed by thousands of Swedish union members.

Since last week, sympathy action among postal workers have disrupted the Swedish Transport Agency’s deliveries of license plates to Tesla, as current regulations require them to be shipped via the Swedish postal service, PostNord AB.

…Swedish and other Scandinavian labor unions have wide-ranging rights to exert pressure when their peers enter conflicts with companies. Other actions currently affecting Tesla include a blockade among dockworkers who are refusing to load or unload the company’s cars cars at Swedish ports. Trash pickups and electrical work at Tesla Supercharger stations also are hindered.

And in the US, Musk and Tesla won against a claim that he’d illegally fired employees who were attempting to organize for a union.

A U.S. labor board has dismissed claims that Tesla Inc (TSLA.O) illegally fired employees working on Autopilot software at a New York factory to put an end to union organizing.

A National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) regional official on Friday tossed out a complaint filed in February by Workers United, a union seeking to organize workers at Tesla’s Buffalo, New York “gigafactory.”

Workers United claimed that within days of announcing a union campaign earlier this year, Tesla fired dozens of workers from its Autopilot department. Tesla has said the firings were based on performance reviews and not tied to union activity.

Probably just as well he won’t be as distracted now that Fain’s made it clear the war is on.

The UAW is launching a campaign to organize 13 non-unionized automakers.

The union announced it's targeting workers across 13 automakers: BMW, Honda, Hyundai, Lucid, Mazda, Mercedes, Nissan, Rivian, Subaru, Tesla, Toyota, Volkswagen and Volvo. https://t.co/xknbABEbcT

— Axios (@axios) November 29, 2023

How much is bluster, how much is really happening on the floor?

…Driving the news: The union announced Wednesday that it’s targeting nearly 150,000 workers across 13 automakers: BMW, Honda, Hyundai, Lucid, Mazda, Mercedes, Nissan, Rivian, Subaru, Tesla, Toyota, Volkswagen and Volvo.

• At Toyota, employees at multiple U.S. Toyota plants are coordinating efforts with the UAW to unionize their operations, Axios has learned.

Zoom in : Workers have formed a voluntary organizing committee at Toyota’s plant in Georgetown, Kentucky, in partnership with the UAW, according to sources familiar with the efforts who spoke to Axios.

The bulk of that article is Toyota scuttlebutt from the UAW. All I can think is, hey, if those guys want to cut their own throats and unionize in this economy, it’s still a free country. But I’m curious what the real numbers in a vote would shake out to. They’ve tried to organize across a number of states and companies plenty of times before and come up short.

Fain’s got his sites sights set on all of them though. He wants those sad membership numbers to climb.

The United Auto Workers formally launched one of the largest organizing drives in its history with campaigns at 13 automakers, in an effort to leverage record gains from its recent labor deals in Detroit.

The UAW plans to target nearly 150,000 workers at U.S. factories owned by large foreign automakers including Toyota Motor and Volkswagen , as well as newer electric-vehicle manufacturers such as and Rivian Automotive, the union said Wednesday.

The UAW now represents about 145,000 workers at Ford Motor, General Motors and Chrysler-parent Stellantis. The widespread organizing campaigns are a bid to significantly add to its ranks for the first time in decades and rebuild the union’s clout in the auto industry, after company downsizing and outsourcing reduced its U.S. footprint.

UAW membership has slipped from a peak of roughly 1.5 million people decades ago to around 400,000 today, a tally that includes nonautomotive workers.

If it were me, I’d take everything the automakers were offering and gladly not have to pay the union dues. I’m cheap and practical that way, especially in low tax states when compensation is already nearly at parity with unionized workers.

But who knows what’ll happen on this round in the TikTok age?

…In the past, the UAW typically kept bargaining and organizing plans under a tight lid. The new leadership team is more vocal, deploying livestream videos and TV appearances from Fain and leaning into social media to get the message out to nonunion workers.

It’s gonna be really interesting.