A Fox Business host wrote off the United Auto Workers strike against General Motors as “just four or five guys in shorts” on Tuesday, despite the fact that almost 50,000 workers were on strike for a second day.
Showing video from one location in Lordstown, Ohio, where about 10 people were gathered outside the GM East Plant, “Making Money” host Charles Payne reduced the nationwide strike to just a handful of people.
“We’ve seen videos in front of these plants and — four or five guys in shorts,” he said on Fox News’ “America’s Newsroom.”
“Look at this. I mean, that’s not — that’s probably a plant that has thousands of workers. You know, this is not like a strike or, you know, the kind of historic strikes that we’ve known or used to be accustomed to.”
The Lordstown plant shown in the video is actually an unallocated plant, which ceased production in March. According to local news station WKBN, the UAW strikers would be taking six-hour shifts to protest outside each entrance of the plant beginning at midnight Sunday due to an agreement by union members to strike outside all GM facilities.
Payne went on to say that, with “GM losing $100 million a day and striking workers making 200 bucks a day, who can hold out the longest? This is, I think, really a tough one for the UAW leadership to continue to get its workers riled up about.”
Though the strike is estimated to be costing GM $100 million a day in lost operating income, workers are receiving $250 a week (not $200 a day) in strike pay, which is close to the poverty threshold.
GM and auto workers nationwide are striking indefinitely over pay, job security and health benefits, and more than 50 facilities across the country have ceased operation as a result.
The union has a strike fund of more than $700 million, which is being used to provide workers with strike pay and health coverage.
Fox News did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
View the Fox News clip below: