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THE UAW STRIKE SAVED THEIR SHUTTERED PLANT, BUT THE FIGHT IS JUST
BEGINNING  
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Sarah Lazare
January 31, 2024
In These Times
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_ The revival of the Stellantis plant is a stunning reversal of
fortunes for Belvidere, Ill. But workers say they won’t rest until
they see the concrete being poured. _

Stellantis Assembly Plant in Belvidere, Illinois., Associated Press

 

BELVIDERE, ILL. — It’s been almost five months since JC
Bengtson, an autoworker for 24 years, lost his job. ​“I miss
working,” says the 55-year-old father of three daughters, all
adults. ​“Right now I am unemployed and waiting to
hear back.”

We are sitting in the union hall of United Auto Workers (UAW)
Local 1268, in Belvidere, Ill., not far from the sprawling Belvidere
Assembly Plant. Bengtson worked there for 10 years before he was
officially laid off in September 2023, right before his union went on
strike. The auto giant Stellantis announced in December 2022 that it
would permanently idle the facility that assembled the widely popular
Jeep Cherokee, and by February 2023, the majority of jobs at the
plant had disappeared. In all, the company put 1,350 people out of
work, including Bengtson, who was part of a later round
of layoffs. 

The closure was devastating to Belvidere, a small town
of 25,000 residents built around the Kishwaukee River in northern
Illinois. Several restaurants and a grocery store near the plant have
already closed, and workers, many of whom had families in the local
schools, had grown up in the town, or had moved there for their
positions, found themselves out of work, and staring at the
possibility of being uprooted. The company’s willingness to walk
away from a plant, and a town, where it had operated
since 1965 became a symbol of corporate callousness during the
UAW’s fall 2023 Stand-Up Strike
[[link removed]] against
the Big Three automakers — Ford, General Motors and Stellantis.
It was a source of outrage on picket lines and at rallies.

But then something stunning happened. UAW’s strike resulted in
a 2023 contract that says Stellantis must reopen the plant to
produce mid-sized trucks by 2027, though the language does not
specify how many jobs will be created. And there’s more: Stellantis
also committed to locating a parts distribution hub, as well as
a brand-new electric vehicle battery plant, in Belvidere. 

“We went from no future to a future on steroids,” Bengtson
says. ​“My hope is to get back in there. We are waiting on the
company to have a plan to bring us back.”

The strike had brought a closed auto plant roaring back to life, and
then some. Or at least that’s what the contract guarantees
on paper.

Bengtson is soft-spoken and careful with his words, quick to break
into a smile. He has a white beard speckled with gray and showed up
to our interview wearing a red UAW shirt. It seems everything in this
union hall is stamped with the union’s distinctive wheel logo,
including the large wooden table in the conference room where we sit
down to talk. 

He tells me the same thing as the local’s president, Matt Frantzen:
We are pleased, but we will only believe it when we see the dirt being
moved and the concrete being poured. The company is not being
forthcoming about what exactly the plan is, they both say, and the air
is one of cautious — or outright uneasy — hope. 

“It’s historic that an idle plant was brought back. Wow,”
Bengtson says. ​“Now the real work begins: getting them to
follow through.”

JC Bengtson observes an image of the Belvidere plant (left) and stands
in front of a UAW sign on a snowy day (right). Photos by Sarah Lazare

So far, Stellantis has called at least 165 employees back to work,
and the company says
[[link removed]] most
of them are ​“processing parts for distribution to dealers at the
warehouse located near the plant.” (Frantzen says this number has
now increased to 180.) Bengtson is a millwright, a skilled
tradesman tasked with fixing mechanical equipment at numerous steps in
the auto manufacturing process, from stamping to body to paint to
assembly, as well as building maintenance. ​“I repair anything
that moves,” he explains, noting that he is eager to get back
to work.

In the meantime, thanks to the 2023 contract won in the strike,
Bengtson gets health benefits and Supplemental Unemployment Benefit
(SUB) pay amounting to around 74% of his previous full-time salary.

According to Frantzen, around 815 members of the local are receiving
SUB pay and are expected to get placed into jobs eventually, on top of
the 180 he says are currently back to work in parts distribution.
(Not all of the people impacted by the plant closure are receiving SUB
pay, because some of them transferred, retired or accepted a buyout,
but those who transferred are eligible for jobs in Belvidere once
things get going.)

The dramatic turn of events in Belvidere was big news in the labor
world — and beyond. ​“Here’s why the UAW saving this
Illinois auto plant is a ​‘gigantic deal’,” read
a November 10, 2023 headline
[[link removed]] from
CNN. The reopening was championed by both Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker
and President Biden, who visited Belvidere on November 9, 2023.

The narrative cut against an anti-union talking point commonly wielded
by employers: If a workforce unionizes and goes on strike, plants
will be forced to close. 

“The fact [that] you have an international leadership using leverage
at the bargaining table to compel the employer to rescind a plant
closing decision is something we certainly have not seen in many
decades, if not unprecedented,” says Barry Eidlin, sociology
professor at McGill University and an expert on labor and
social movements.

The SUB pay, in particular, is promising, Eidlin says, because
it ​“dramatically increases the likelihood that they are going to
reopen. They are on the hook for paying these workers anyway. It keeps
people attached to the company while mitigating many of the
devastating economic and social impacts of the closure.”

Under the UAW’s new contract, workers have the right to strike the
whole company over plant closures, as well as products and
investments. So if the company does not invest what it committed, it
could have another work stoppage on its hands.

According to Eidlin, there is a need to guard against empty
promises. ​“Many contracts have language about preventing plant
closures and job security and promising new investments, and that’s
basically fluff. It’s routinely violated. It’s important to keep
in mind whether or not this is just more empty promises or something
qualitatively different. These workers clearly understand that.”

UAW members march through downtown Detroit as they strike the Big
Three automakers on September 15, 2023.PHOTO BY BILL PUGLIANO VIA
GETTY IMAGES

When asked about concerns that the company is not being forthcoming
about its reopening plan, Stellantis spokesperson Jodi Tinson
says, ​“We are tracking to those commitments outlined in
the 2023 contract and regularly review the status with the UAW. We
will provide additional details about our plans at the
appropriate time.”

For Bengtson, the SUB pay still amounts to a significant pay cut,
since he often worked more than 40 hours a week. ​“I want to
make sure people understand we are not living high on the hog,” he
says. ​“The intent is to maintain a standard of living, pay for
groceries and help retain the workforce.”

Frantzen says the Belvidere gains in the contract also come with
possible downsides for workers in other locations. The parts
distribution hub, slated to be in business in 2024, will consolidate
similar hubs in Marysville, Mich., Chicago and Milwaukee. ​“Some
other locations may be closing down, and some of those individuals may
be coming here to work at that parts depot,” he says, sitting in his
office, where a poster shows the legendary labor activist and
songwriter Joe Hill alongside Jack London’s definition of a scab
[[link removed]]. ​“There will
ultimately be more jobs, but these people are in the same boat we were
in where they may have to move.”

And then there is the issue of a just transition. Under the
leadership of UAW president Shawn Fain, who won the union’s
presidency as a reform challenger in March 2023, the union has
pressed for jobs in green manufacturing, including electric vehicles,
to be good union jobs, and for autoworkers who lose their jobs to be
taken care of. The idea is that, in any shift away from a fossil fuel
economy, no worker should be left behind. Fain has not shied away
from calling for
[[link removed]] a just
transition to ensure labor ​“won’t be left behind,” using
some of the same language that is embraced by climate activists
seeking to mitigate the harms of climate change. This has provided an
opening to build relationships between these movements.

Numerous climate activists rallied behind
[[link removed]] the
striking workers last fall, and heralded just transition gains in the
Big Three contracts, particularly at GM and Stellantis, where the
companies agreed to include workers at electric vehicle plants where
they have joint ventures with other companies to be included in the
UAW master agreement. The companies had previously refused, based on
the contested
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that joint ventures with foreign companies constitute separate
legal entities. 

Jeep vehicles arrive via a car carrier trailer at the Stellantis plant
in Belvidere, Ill., on November 30, 2023.PHOTO BY KAYLA WOLF FOR THE
WASHINGTON POST VIA GETTY IMAGES

In a UAW summary of the deal, the union describes the contractual
language stipulating a new electric vehicle battery plant in
Belvidere by 2028 as part of ​“winning a just transition.”
The summary states, ​“Eight months ago, Belvidere was flat on its
back. The last worker had just walked out of our plant, and the
company had no plans to reopen it. Now, not only will we have an
assembly plant in Belvidere, we have won a commitment from Stellantis
to locate a new battery plant there.”

But this does not mean all UAW members are giddy about the shift to
electric vehicles. ​“I’m not sure 100% of the membership has
bought into electric vehicles,” Frantzen says. ​“But if that is
how we are getting help from the federal and state government, we’ve
gotta do what we’ve gotta do.” The Biden administration has given
billions of dollars in subsidies to auto manufacturers for producing
electric vehicles, and the state of Illinois also has an incentives
program
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Asked about his view of a just transition, Bengtson says the union
has to adapt to changes in the industry, which means making sure that
in any transition away from fossil fuels, labor standards are not
driven down.

Both Bengtson and Frantzen consider themselves supporters of
Fain. ​“None of this would have taken place if the new
administration had not gotten in,” Frantzen says of the developments
in Belvidere.

UAW’s contract with Stellantis was ratified in November 2023, with
roughly 68% voting in favor
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In Belvidere, those numbers were higher: Local 1268 saw
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yes vote among production workers and an 88% yes vote among skilled
trades workers. Alongside the Belvidere provisions, the
contract increased
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wages around 67% and top wages around 33%, got back
a cost-of-living allowance and increased contributions to 401(k)s.
(While pensions were not restored for everyone, they were improved for
those hired before 2007.) The contract, which
represents 26,000 workers, also made strides toward reducing wage
tiers, though they were not eliminated.

Still, Bengtson has trust issues with the company, which are informed
by his experience at General Motors earlier in his career. That was
when he was laid off from the Janesville Assembly Plant in Wisconsin
when it largely idled in 2008. ​“They left that factory standing
for years, and it gave people a lot of false hope in that
community,” he says.

Eidlin, the sociology professor, says that, in the case of Belvidere,
the latest contract ​“challenges the idea that investment
decisions are purely a matter of management prerogative. Workers and
their communities actually do have a say in how these investment
decisions are made, because they are the ones that are making the
profits. We can’t and shouldn’t just leave all the fundamental
decisions about how resources are allocated in society
to employers.”

While out of work, Bengtson, who lives in Belvidere Township, has been
volunteering once a month with his wife at the union hall to deliver
food to community members in need, in partnership with a local food
bank. And during the Stand-Up strike, he traveled to Naperville, Ill.,
to walk the picket lines. There he witnessed how autoworkers are being
uprooted to stay in their field. ​“The strike captain there was
still living in Roscoe,” he says, referring to a village
about 90 miles away from Naperville. ​“He had to commute one
and a half hours to work.”

For now, workers like Bengtson who are still out of work are stuck in
a state of limbo. ​“People were excited about the agreement,”
says Frantzen. ​“We went from not knowing what the future will be
to realizing we will stay here.”

“This kind of extension is unprecedented,” he adds. ​“Now we
are waiting on calls from the corporation. Is there work coming? How
many more do you need this week?”

_SARAH LAZARE is the editor of Workday Magazine and a contributing
editor for In These Times. She tweets at @sarahlazare._

_Reprinted with permission from In These Times
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All rights reserved. _

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* plant closings
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* Stellantis
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* UAW
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* Workers Fightback
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