When the United Auto Workers agreed to major contract concessions in 2009, Christy Barrymore was in full support. Working at a Ford Motor Company parts plant in Saline, Mich., at the time, she saw the sacrifices as necessary to save an iconic U.S. industry from collapse in the Great Recession. She doesn’t remember a single co-worker complaining.
“They’ve been profitable forever, and we still haven’t gotten back what we gave up,” Ms. Barrymore said on the picket line outside Ford’s truck assembly plant in the Detroit suburb of Wayne, where she went to work after the Saline plant was sold.Striking UAW members Mario Williams and Christy Barrymore. Ms. Barrymore works at an assembly plant in the Detroit suburb of Wayne, where she went after the Saline plant was sold.
Mr. Morales makes US$16.67 an hour installing bumpers on the factory’s chassis line. It’s not enough for someone aspiring to a middle-class life. “I just want to buy a house and buy a car and pay my bills and go on vacation,” he said. “I want the American dream.”Isai Morales says his current wage is not enough for someone aspiring to a middle-class life. 'I just want to buy a house and buy a car and pay my bills and go on vacation,' he says.
Unlike previous contract talks, in which the UAW negotiated with one company at a time, Mr. Fain has launched the union’s first-ever simultaneous strike against all three. Since the strike began three weeks ago, he has gradually turned up the pressure, expanding the number of plants hit by walkouts from three to 43.
She and Mr. Fain have been in regular contact over the past month as she also negotiates with the Big Three’s Canadian units. Unifor, which is sticking to the traditional bargaining approach of working on each contract sequentially, concluded athat includes double-digit pay raises and cuts in half the length of time it takes to move up from the bottom wage tier. It also provides pay assistance to workers who are temporarily laid off while plants retool to build electric vehicles.
Julie Geierman, who works in the Wayne factory’s paint shop, expresses a common concern about the electric vehicle transition: that the Big Three will primarily contract with non-union battery plants in a bid to keep labour costs in line with those at stridently anti-union Tesla. “We’re not going to stand for the battery plants making less money,” she said.
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