With a looming deadline of midnight Thursday and no deal in sight between auto manufacturers and the United Auto Workers, a strike is looking more likely to happen by the minute. 

As the deadline approaches, the union is considering striking at certain factories owned by the Big Three automakers — Ford, General Motors, and Stellantis — instead of an industry-wide work stoppage, according to a report from the Associated Press.

The president of the United Auto Workers, Shawn Fain, is expected to make these developments public and update union members on the state of negotiations during a press conference on a Facebook Live event Wednesday evening.

A targeted strike would allow members to prolong the strike if necessary. If all of the 146,000 members went on strike simultaneously, the $825 million strike fund would only provide for about three months of pay at $500 a week per union member. A strike at a few plants, though, could last much longer.

In the latest development in the negotiations, the union has lowered its demands for wage increases to somewhere between 30 and 40 percent from 40 percent, though the specific details are being negotiated. Under the current contract negotiated in 2019, union employees start at about $18 an hour and can make up to $32 an hour.

“We’re asking for double-digit pay increases. We have been, we’ve been very upfront about that from the get-go,” Mr. Fain said on CNBC’s “Squawk Box” Wednesday. “What’s good for the CEOs is good for the members, our members helped generate those massive profits — the quarter of a trillion dollars in profits they’ve recognized in the past decade.”

When asked whether the union had “come down to 30 percent or below 30 percent,” Mr. Fain responded, “No.”

Ford’s chief executive, Jim Farley, has maintained that the wages offered by his company are “significantly better than what we estimate workers earn at Tesla and foreign automakers operating in the U.S.,” though the last offer from Ford featured a 9 percent wage increase over four years, leaving a gulf between the union and the company.

Aside from the marquee issue of wages, union officials are also pushing for more time off and shorter hours, including a 32-hour, four-day work week without a corresponding cut in pay.

The union is also demanding cost of living adjustments, retiree health plans, and a return to defined-benefits pensions, which were included in the union’s contract until 2007. 

Employees hired before 2007 were able to retain their plans, but those hired after 2007, now a majority of union members, do not have pensions. Although defined-benefits plans were once common in America, they have been on the decline since the 1980s. Today, only 15 percent of full-time employees have access to a defined-benefit pension, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Alongside these demands, the union wants limits on the use of temporary employees in factories — who are paid less than union employees but often do the same tasks — limits on forced overtime, and a variety of other auxiliary demands like the right to strike over plant closings.

An issue under negotiation that also touches the center of President Biden’s domestic infrastructure agenda is the inclusion of employees at electric vehicle manufacturing plants in the union.

Employees at joint-venture plants that produce electric vehicle parts like batteries are generally paid less than those who work at plants that produce traditional autos, and Mr. Fain has said that the union is entitled to a “just transition” as plants that produce traditional auto parts close and electric vehicle plants open.

With the potential of a strike looming, Mr. Biden, whose administration has been an ally of unions but has also worked with the Big Three to advance electric vehicle production, has been tight-lipped in recent days.

In the last public comments from the president, around Labor Day, Mr. Biden said that he didn’t think that the UAW would end up going on strike. White House officials have since walked back this comment, saying that the president was being optimistic.

Mr. Biden’s point man on the issue, Gene Sperling, a top economic advisor to the president, told NPR that the president “stands with UAW workers” and that he’s taking an optimistic view of the situation under the belief that “they can find that win-win opportunity.”

Although Mr. Biden himself hasn’t commented in weeks, a deputy Treasury secretary, Wally Adeyemo, has said that it “is the belief of the Biden administration” that the “auto companies and the unions are working from a position of strength” and that a strike can be avoided.

Mr. Fain has explicitly stated that the union is not opposed to a “green economy” or a transition to electric vehicles, but said, “The E.V. transition is at serious risk of becoming a race to the bottom,” and, “We want to see national leadership have our back on this before we make any commitments,” according to an internal memo obtained by the New York Times.

“We support a green economy,” Mr. Fain said at a virtual rally. “You know, we have to get behind this. We have to have a planet that we can live on.”

On the other hand, the auto manufacturers maintain that the transition to electric vehicles limits the pay increase they can give to employees.

The union, which endorsed Mr. Biden in 2020, has also withheld its endorsement of him in 2024, citing their concerns about electric vehicle manufacturing jobs and a demand for support from the president.

Other elected officials have also begun taking sides on the issue as the strike deadline approaches. The chairman of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions, Bernie Sanders, published an article in the Guardian imploring “every American” to support the union if it goes on strike.

“Despite a massive increase in worker productivity, despite CEOs now making nearly 400 times more than what their employees earn, despite record-breaking corporate profits, dividends and stock buybacks, average American workers are worse off than they were 50 years ago,” Mr. Sanders wrote.

The senator has been joined in supporting the union by Democrats like Senator Brown and Speaker Pelosi, among others. On the other side, Republicans have been tight-lipped on the issue, though those who have spoken on it oppose the union’s demands.

“The UAW endorsed Biden in 2020,” Congressman Paul Gosar said. “I encourage and welcome all companies and employees to relocate to Arizona, where the wages are great, there are no forced dues, union membership is not mandated, and the economic prospects are endless.”