As negotiations kicked off between the United Auto Workers (UAW) and Stellantis — the parent company of Chrysler and Jeep and one of the Big Three automakers, along with Ford and General Motors, who collectively employ around 150,000 UAW members — one person was conspicuously absent from the proceedings.

Mark Stewart, Stelllantis’s chief operating officer, was not at the bargaining table in Detroit, Michigan. Instead, he was apparently in Acapulco, Mexico, at a second home. According to the UAW, Stewart did not attend negotiations over Zoom either.

Yet Stewart found time to pen a letter urging a deal based in “economic realism” — a response to workers’ ambitious demands for an end to tiered contracts, the right to strike over plant closures, and 40 percent raises over the life of the four-year contract, which would claw back concessions made during the Great Recession. Stewart characterized UAW president Shawn Fain’s comments on the negotiations, such as a video in which the union president throws a paper containing Stellantis’s proposals in a garbage can, as “theatrics.”