Bill Bumpus Somerville MA - An injury to one is an injury to all

With 18,000 United Auto Workers members on strike at three Big 3 assembly plants and 38 parts distribution centers around the country, Labor Notes held a free national Zoom call on September 23, 2023, to hear reports from the rank-and-file members massing on picket lines and taking creative actions to win their bold demands.

It was late summer 2017 at the Overtyme Bar and Grill, a hotspot off a busy highway in Macon, Georgia, and Kumho Tire plant worker Mario Smith had important questions for local United Steelworkers (USW) president Alex Perkins: he wanted to know how he could bring a union to the one-year-old factory.

What can workers seeking to reinvigorate their unions learn from the new spirit in the United Auto Workers?

The Auto Workers announced encouraging progress in their negotiations with Ford and General Motors September 22, including an end to one of the many concessionary tiers in the union’s contract.

This is a developing story and is being updated.

Auto workers at the Big 3 expanded their strike last Friday to a key vulnerability: parts distribution centers that supply dealerships with everything from water pumps to brake drums and spark plugs to replacement bumpers.

On Tuesday morning, General Motors began bringing in temps hired for $14 an hour to attempt to keep some of the parts and accessories flowing.

En agosto de 2022, los trabajadores automotrices de VU Manufacturing ganaron una elección histórica para obtener el reconocimiento de un nuevo sindicato independiente, La Liga Sindical Obrera Mexicana. Un año más tarde, después de negarse a negociar un nuevo contrato, la compañía ha cerrado, dejando a 400 trabajadores sin trabajo y a 70 trabajadores sin su liquidación legalmente obligatoria.

The clock has ticked and tocked for two of the Big 3 automakers. At noon 5,000 more members of the Auto Workers (UAW) at 38 parts distribution centers for Stellantis and General Motors walked off the job. The facilities are spread across 20 states.

Bargaining with the Detroit 3 auto corporations is happening in Canada and the United States at the same time this year—the first time that bargaining has aligned since the disastrous bankruptcy negotiations and forced concessions of 2009. Unifor just reached a tentative agreement with Ford earlier this week, while the United Auto Workers’ strike against selected Ford, Stellantis and General Motors plants is ongoing.

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In August 2022, auto parts workers at VU Manufacturing won a landmark election to gain recognition for a new independent union, the Mexican Workers’ League (La Liga). A year later, after refusing to negotiate a new contract, the company has shut down, leaving 400 workers jobless—and 71 workers without their legally-mandated severance pay.

The death of UPS driver Chris Begley, 57, who collapsed in August while making a delivery in 103-degree Texas heat, was no isolated incident.

Monitoring co-workers for signs of heat exhaustion has become a routine feature of the job, says fellow driver Seth Pacic, a shop steward in Begley’s union, Teamsters Local 767.

Pacic has learned to discern over the phone when a co-worker needs to find air conditioning ASAP—and when they’re deteriorating so badly that he should call paramedics and brave management’s wrath.

Only 13,000 of 146,000 auto workers at the Big 3 companies are on strike, so far. But others still on the job are turning up the heat by refusing voluntary overtime.

At all three companies—Ford, General Motors, and Stellantis—Auto Workers (UAW) members have told Labor Notes about overtime refusals. Many Big 3 plants are hugely dependent on overtime to make up for understaffing.

It’s rare that a union grievance settlement becomes a U.S. presidential campaign issue. But thanks to the American Federation of Government Employees’ successful defense of workers unfairly dismissed by the Department of Veterans Affairs, Donald Trump is now running for the White House on a platform that includes firing “every corrupt VA bureaucrat who Joe Biden has outrageously refused to remove from the job or put back in the job.”

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.

Tick, tock. At midnight the clock ran out, and auto workers massed on picket lines.

The first-ever simultaneous strike at the Big 3 automakers—General Motors, Ford, Stellantis—started September 15 with 13,000 workers walking out of three assembly plants in Michigan, Ohio, and Missouri. There are 146,000 Auto Workers (UAW) members at the Big 3.

The UAW is calling its strategy the “stand-up strike,” a nod to the Flint sit-down strike of 1936-1937 that helped establish the union.

September 14: This article has been updated to identify the plants where workers will strike on day one.

The Auto Workers (UAW) strike, which the union is dubbing the "Stand Up Strike," could be a turning point for the U.S. labor movement—and all of us across the movement can lend a hand to help the strikers win.

Cross-union solidarity can turn up the heat on the Big 3 to end tiers and make green jobs good jobs. It can also boost strikers’ morale and build connections that endure for years to come.

Management everywhere relies on workers “going the extra mile.” We cut corners, we skip breaks, and we look the other way on common violations of the contract, work rules, or even safety.

But it’s also possible, when the time is right, to just stop doing the boss these favors. After all, how often does management do workers a favor?

Conventional wisdom tells us we would rather not strike if we can avoid it. Labor Notes’ Secrets of a Successful Organizer says to start small and build escalating campaigns of bigger and riskier actions. This is not the attitude, however, at Stellantis’s stamping plant in Sterling Heights, Michigan.

Two days before their contract expires at midnight Thursday, the Auto Workers (UAW) are poised to strike the Big 3 automakers—General Motors, Ford, and Stellantis—to recoup concessions made over the past two decades, end tiers, boost wages, and fight for a shorter workweek and other quality-of-life demands.

The automakers General Motors, Ford, and Stellantis are hurtling towards a showdown with United Auto Workers (UAW) as contract talks approach the September 14 strike deadline.

As the Big 3 automakers scramble to make contingency plans, they are shining a spotlight on one specific part of the supply chain: the parts distribution centers that supply after-sales spare parts and accessories to dealerships.

Earlier this year, on the Ford stamping line in Buffalo, sewage started pouring onto the floor. Careless managers had shut down a pump to install new equipment and caused a deluge.

The workers didn't work meekly through the dizzying stench. They shut down their line, fast. And they did it with so much unity that their manager decided not to fight back.

That collective action didn't come out of nowhere. Over the last few years, Auto Workers at Local 897 have built a fighting safety culture.