In order to build power in the industry as a whole, the metal unions first had to build it in individual sectors. While the engineering industry was asserting its power on the Nicisemi, auto faced its own battles – owing to its Eastern Cape roots and the peculiarities of the industry, auto had its own dynamics, and these differences with engineering would, at times, lead to tensions in the development of Numsa's integrated bargaining strategy.

Naawu's expansion into the Transvaal had entailed intensive plant-by-plant struggles for recognition and bargaining rights. In the Eastern Cape, however, the union had long been a member of the Industrial Council for the Automobile Manufacturing Industry, where it faced large auto assemblers, and through this experience Naawu had a profound influence on the new labour movement countrywide. As Bonner observed, ‘The motor unions brought with them a unique set of experiences into Fosatu … an understanding of industry-wide organisation, together with a sense of pragmatism and power not shared by the rest of the unions. They represented a clear majority of motor workers in the Port Elizabeth/Uitenhage area, and were able to bargain from a position of representivity and strength on the industrial council.’

Naawu was convinced that centralised bargaining was the best way to manage negotiations across companies and to raise wages and conditions across the industry. It argued against those who believed this would sap worker control and militancy. The 1980 VW dispute had shown that worker muscle could also be successfully flexed outside auto industry talks. Bonner observed that the auto unions turned the state's cooption strategy on its head: ‘Neither registration nor industrial councils had succeeded in taming the motor unions. Instead the whole exercise of registration was being thrown into disarray.’

Naawu, however, was not yet able to bargain across auto nationally and had the cumber - some task of coordinating bargaining all year round in different forums while struggling to break into industrial councils. In tyre, rubber and assembly, a regional industrial council existed only in the Eastern Cape.