Auto workers on strike since midnight at General Motors (GM) are between a rock and a hard place — a hugely profitable company making outrageous demands for concessions and a union leadership that made no plan for winning a strike and has not even told members what they’re going out for. Picket signs say simply, “UAW on Strike.”

Over the last decades, many other unions have taught themselves how to do contract campaigns and strikes, with members on board from the get-go. But to look at the UAW’s (United Auto Workers’) confrontation with GM this week, you’d think none of that experience had ever happened.

Not a button was distributed in the plants. Members heard not a word from leaders about bargaining goals. There was no survey of the membership, no contract action teams, no bargaining bulletins to keep members in the loop. No “practice picketing,” no turndown of overtime, no outreach to the public, no open bargaining.