[“The GM CEO, she got 36 percent in raises since our last
contract, making $26 million,” one worker says. “Like Fain said,
they’re price-gouging the American public for billions of profits.
They don’t earn that, sitting around eating bonbons.”]
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‘NO JUSTICE, NO JEEPS!’ SCENES FROM THE AUTO WORKERS STRIKE  
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Keith Brower Brown, Luis Feliz Leon and Jane Slaughter
September 15, 2023
Labor Notes
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_ “The GM CEO, she got 36 percent in raises since our last
contract, making $26 million,” one worker says. “Like Fain said,
they’re price-gouging the American public for billions of profits.
They don’t earn that, sitting around eating bonbons.” _

Picketers responded to drivers honking in front of Ford’s Michigan
Assembly plant near Detroit on Thursday night. Thirteen thousand
workers in Michigan, Ohio, and Missouri are striking three big auto
plants, Jim West, jimwestphoto.com.

 

The strike is on. Last night the Auto Workers (UAW) shut down three
major assembly plants at Ford, General Motors, and Stellantis
(formerly Chrysler). It’s the first time in history the union has
struck all three companies at once.

New UAW leaders kept a tight lid on plans for which plants to strike,
counting on members to be more prepared to quickly swing into action
than management. The strategy, so far, seems like a success, with
widespread reports of managers caught by surprise
[[link removed]],
after making costly materials moves for strike prep at the wrong
plants.

At each striking plant, auto workers have organized strong, jubilant
pickets on barely an hour's notice. Here are dispatches from Labor
Notes reporters on the ground.

MISSOURI ON THE MARCH

At 10:30 p.m. Central Time, Kim Forschim got off her eight-hour shift
assembling front fascia on Chevy Colorado trucks at GM’s Wentzville
Assembly Center near St. Louis. Strike news had spread like wildfire
on the floor. Managers, scared of sabotage, locked the bathroom doors
minutes before the strike began.

With a hundred others, Forschim headed to the UAW Local 2250 hall to
volunteer for the first picket shift. Working five years as a temp,
starting in 2017, motivated her to stand and fight for higher pay and
ending tiers.

“What really gets me is how the news talks like we get $60 or $70 an
hour,” Forschim said on the line. “None of us make that! We get
$32 an hour if we're lucky. New temps get $16 an hour and no raises,
no vacation, no sick days. It’s hard to live like that.”

When the strike clock struck at 11 p.m. Central, teams of 15 leapt out
of vans to picket every gate of the plant. Workers on night shift
walked off the job and drove out of the parking lots in a
40-minute-long procession, honking and shouting.

Forschim said the new reform leadership of the UAW was “doing an
excellent job. They’ve communicated with us so much more. They're
not selling us on less. The old leaders, they kept it all close to
their chest, because they were looking out for themselves, not the
membership. That's probably why they’re in jail.”

HARD CORE, OLD SCHOOL

The Wentzville, Missouri, local has proudly held onto a culture of
“hardcore, old-school unionism,” as one older worker put it. In
the 1980s, alongside other plants across Missouri, members here were a
driving force for the New Directions reform caucus, which pushed for a
democratic union and shop floor actions against concessions.

The local has successfully stood up to outsourcing of parts-handling
jobs to non-union or lower-tier workers. With coordinated
refusals, workers held onto the right to do one job
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instead of being forced to rotate among three. Job rotation and
outsourcing have become widespread concessions at many GM plants.

Tommy Spraggins has 38 years in as a production worker at Wentzville.
He cheerfully told others on the picket line Friday morning how he
planned “a vote no if the raise right off the bat is only 10
percent. That’s just $3 an hour.”

“The GM CEO, she got 36 percent in raises since our last contract,
making $26 million,” Spraggis said. “Like Fain said, they’re
price-gouging the American public for billions of profits. They
don’t earn that, sitting around eating bonbons.”

[ ]
[[link removed]]

“And they don’t get our swollen knees!” chimed in Krissy
Spencer, who has assembled trim and van bodies at the plant for 12
years.

Job security is a hot topic at Wentzville. GM has said it will remove
its profitable full-size van from the plant by 2026. Workers on the
line discussed rumors that a current body-shop expansion would bring
in an electric version of that van.

Ron Rottger, who has 38 years in, said the plant would welcome
electric vehicle (EV) work, but not without concerns. “For
Stellantis, EVs have been an excuse to close a lot of plants, like
Belvidere. There might not be as many jobs like ours. That’s why
we've got to organize the battery plants, like Ultium did.”

The threat of moving factory jobs to Mexico came up, but so did
solidarity with Mexican workers. When a GMC Terrain SUV drove by the
morning picket, one worker noted that it’s built in Mexico.

Jennifer Ryan, with eight years at the plant, jumped in to say, “Did
you see that video the Mexican workers made supporting us? They’ve
got a new union and it’s awesome.” The other worker, who had
pointed out the Terrain, agreed with gusto. Ryan said, “They
sometimes make just $40 a week down there, working like we do.
That’s gotta change too.”

As the day shift warmed up, workers shared stories of their 40-day
strike in 2019, and resolved to keep it up as long as necessary this
time. A UPS truck drove by honking in support. Spraggins said, “To
win back pensions and health care [for retirees], this is how we do
it, right here.”

FORD MICHIGAN ASSEMBLY

Workers at Ford’s Bronco and Ranger plant west of Detroit were
stunned when they heard the news at 10 p.m. Thursday. “People are
awestruck because we’re really striking,” said Lee Maybanks, eyes
wide. “I’ve never been through anything like this before.” Ford
has seen no strike at any of its plants since 1978.

Management sent workers home at 11, not waiting for the midnight
strike deadline. After midnight, pickets quickly fanned out to cover
the plant’s many gates, while others massed across the street,
joined by chanting supporters and a few workers from other plants.
Horn-honking was incessant from heavy traffic on Michigan Avenue.
Occasionally the cry rang out “No Deals, No Wheels!”

The arrival of UAW President Shawn Fain occasioned a media scrum—the
man could barely carry out his intention to walk the line. “It’s
Beatlemania over here,” said one UAW staffer. Fain tried to
encourage reporters to listen to rank-and-file members.

Maybanks’s grandfather worked at the plant. He said that, with less
than two years in, his issue is proper pay, because inflation is high.

Millwright Dave Briseno is at the top of the pay scale, with a skilled
job and 24 years in, but he still thinks pensions for the second-tier
workers are a top issue. “A pension is a big deal,” Briseno said.
“In the past people came here for a career. The new guys don’t see
it that way: ‘I can get a job at Walmart.’

“It took the last two contracts to get these guys up to where they
are now, and there’s still tiers.”

Like most auto workers, Briseno remembers the sacrifices workers made
when the companies demanded concessions during the Great Recession.
“We worked with them,” he said. “Now they don’t want to work
with us. We are less than 7 percent of the cost of a vehicle. The $21
million [Ford CEO] Jim Farley gets—they don’t need that much
money. It’s ‘Let’s screw the little guy.’”

Briseno was not expecting the union to achieve all its ambitious
demands: “I don’t expect a 32-hour work week,” he said.
“That’s a Europe thing.”

A first-tier worker who didn’t give her full name hoped the strike
will get rid of tiers, “so people aren’t waiting six years, eight
years,” she said. “I topped out after three years. The legacy
[first-tier] workers never wanted this for them [subsequent hires].”

STELLANTIS IN OHIO

Meanwhile in Ohio, Toledo Assembly Complex workers from the first
shift gathered outside the plant’s Gate 12, under giants letters
spelling “World Class Manufacturing.” Workers clapped and yelled
in jubilation as more and more of their co-workers passed through the
turnstiles. At one point they started chanting “No More Tiers.”

Workers posed for photos to mark the occasion. One Black worker who
gave his name only as Danny was dressed up in a spiffy all-red outfit.

“We are making history today, baby,” he said. “I’m
representing my people. And I’m letting you know—this is how we
coming, and we are fighting for what’s right.”

Top of his list are equal wages and benefits for all workers. “The
economy is messed up,” Danny said. “I know people who are fighting
just to feed their families, pay their rent. I know women who are
trying to figure out if they’re gonna pay rent first or childcare.
They’re not getting paid equally. I know temporary workers who have
been here for six years, and they’re not permanent employees.”

Yesterday, Lauren McCallum said, a supervisor had walked up to her and
another union worker to say, “You guys don’t deserve 47 percent.
You don't work hard enough to get that.”

“‘I don't even want the 47 percent,’” she retorted. “‘I
would like a pension.’ And he said, ‘Oh, you’re not getting
that. Those times are long gone.’

“And I didn’t even get upset,” she said. “It's just like, take
our demands serious. We sacrifice from high to low. Maybe even if we
don’t get it all right now, we’ve got to get something to show
that the wheel is moving in the direction that we need it to go.

“The time is now. Do right by the people who do right by you.”

At Gate 14, emblazoned with the name of Stellantis’ predecessor
Chrysler, workers’ shadows were thrown into relief against the
silvery nameplate as workers gathered around the burn barrel chanting:
“No Justice, No Jeeps!”

Workers at this plant make the Jeep Wrangler, Wrangler 4XE, and Jeep
Gladiator.

Around 2 a.m., workers huddled around a burn barrel. The night was
getting chilly, but the honks from passing vehicles lifted the mood;
fists and picket signs were thrust high in the air. At one point a
worker who had transferred from the recently closed Belvidere plant in
Illinois was throwing paper in the burn barrel. Asked what it was, she
joked it was the expired contract.

Sysco Garza, a mechanic, suggested a solidarity convoy to draw media
attention to the strike. “Everybody that owns a Jeep should drive
around this whole complex,” he said.

“We've been on this downhill drive since roughly the 1970s,” said
Korbin Friend, a member of the reform caucus Unite All Workers for
Democracy, which campaigned for members’ right to directly elect top
officers and then backed Fain and the rest of the reform slate. He is
another transfer from the shuttered Belvidere plan, and now a picket
captain.

He recalls what a Belvidere co-worker shared with him about the
devastating impacts of plant closures. “Imagine if everyone you
worked with all of a sudden either gained 50 pounds or killed
themselves,” Friend remembers the 25-year veteran saying.
“That’s what happens in these communities when these companies
choose numbers in a spreadsheet over the American workers that build
the vehicles.”

_Keith Brower Brown [[link removed]] is
Labor Notes' Labor-Climate [email protected]
[[link removed]]_

_Luis Feliz Leon [[link removed]] is a
staff writer and organizer with Labor [email protected]
[[link removed]]_

_Jane Slaughter [[link removed]] is a
former editor of Labor Notes and co-author of Secrets of a Successful
Organizer._

_Labor Notes [[link removed]] is a media and organizing
project that has been the voice of union activists who want to put
the MOVEMENT back in the labor movement since 1979._

_Through our magazine, website, books, conferences, and workshops, we
promote organizing, aggressive strategies to fight concessions,
alliances with worker centers, and unions that are run by their
members._

_Labor Notes is also a network of rank-and-file members, local union
leaders, and labor activists who know the labor movement is worth
fighting for. We encourage connections between workers in different
unions, worker centers, communities, industries, and countries to
strengthen the movement—from the bottom up._

_That movement is needed because workers are being hit hard by their
employers. We have lower real wages, less job security, and smaller,
weaker unions than our mothers and fathers did._

_For the most part, our leaders are doing a poor job of navigating us
through the crisis. Some can’t get beyond business-as-usual; others
see the need to organize by the millions, but don't believe that
workers themselves need to have a say in their unions. Some unions
operate only to service their members’ bread and butter needs
instead of encouraging their involvement in a movement to fight the
employer offensive and transform our society._

_With 40 years of movement building
[[link removed]] behind
us, Labor Notes exists as a resource for leaders and union members who
want to combat these trends and chart a new course for the labor
movement._

* UAW
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* United Auto Workers
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* Strikes
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* Labor
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