Tony Dejak/Associated Press
Bob Pevec, right, a 20-year GM employee, pickets outside the General Motors plant in Parma, Ohio, Monday, September 23, 2019.
In Parma, Ohio, a dozen blue-clad UAW members from the Ford plant march down the street with blue “UAW on Strike” signs in their hands, joining their fellow union members on the picket lines outside a General Motors plant. They are greeted by a three-year-old girl, the daughter of General Motors strikers.
“Can you say solidarity?” asks one Ford worker, as the little girl shouts back, “Solidarity!”
“We are all one big family,” says UAW Local 1005 Chairman Al Tiller, as he picks up the little girl. “We got people, what does General Motors have?”
Out on the GM picket lines this week, a new sense of identity emerged, as the UAW revives its tradition of strike militancy.
“I have met more people this week [on strike] and made so many new friends that I am just gonna have to find them in there when we go back to work,” says Charlie McMallian, an autoworker at GM’s Corvette plant in Bowling Green, Kentucky.
Not only do traditional UAW members feel fired up by the strike, but so do temporary workers, whose usage GM has dramatically expanded in recent years. The union has focused on getting regular full-time status for temporary workers, who can work for years without being made permanent. This has become a central focus of the strike.
“It really made me feel like I am more a part of my union, seeing so many in the union stand up for me,” says 38-year-old Joshua Blanton, a temporary worker at GM’s Corvette plant. “The people I am standing with here, this is family.”
The strike, entering its second week, is the longest nationwide strike the UAW has had at General Motors since 1970, when workers struck for 67 days. Many UAW activists feel that the strike could help revive the union, which has struggled in recent years.
The UAW lost two major high-profile elections in the South in recent years, at Volkswagen in Chattanooga, Tennessee, in June of 2019, and at Nissan in Canton, Mississippi, in August of 2017. Worse, the UAW has been embroiled in a corruption scandal that has seen five top UAW officials convicted for accepting bribes from employers in exchange for concessions at the bargaining table.
The strike at General Motors and the popular support it has received are likely to have huge ripple effects that will reverberate for years to come. Already, workers in the South say that the UAW strike has helped revive struggling fortunes there.
“Seeing the UAW workers fight back against GM, it opens their eyes a little bit because they don’t realize the power you have as labor if you withhold labor,” says Billy Quigg, a union leader at the Volkswagen plant in Chattanooga, where the union was defeated by just 29 votes in June.
Quigg says that seeing the union fight is helping to get workers who were previously ambivalent interested in the UAW’s work.
“They always thought when you heard about it, it was this myth or things people talked about to try to get people to sign on [to the union],” says Quigg. “They hadn’t actually seen it in action, and now they are seeing it in action and their eyes are open—likely they haven’t seen it before.”
At Nissan’s plant in Canton, Mississippi, where a union drive was defeated by a 2-to-1 margin in 2017, management is using large electronic billboards streaming anti-union messages throughout the facility to bash the UAW. However, workers at the plant say it’s backfiring, as workers are getting more interested in what the union could do for them.
“A victory at General Motors could really open the door for us to organize,” says pro-UAW Nissan worker Robert Hathorn.
Sources with the UAW indicate that General Motors and the UAW are still far apart at the bargaining table, but making steady progress on a number of issues. Already, GM has reduced their demand for workers to pay 15 percent of their health care premium down to a mere 3 percent. The UAW, however, is focused on getting commitments on providing a path to permanent employment and ensuring that new products are made in the United States.
Multiple union leaders interviewed by the Prospect expect that the strike will likely last another week or two. Before ending the strike, the UAW would first have to get the contract approved by its membership, a task that may prove tough, as many rank-and-file members are upset with the UAW over the corruption scandal, and even angrier at General Motors.
GM’s decision to cut off health insurance for striking workers, without sufficient warning so that the union could seamlessly transition to COBRA, has deepened the resolve of the UAW to keep on fighting the company until they win.
“I think everybody realized at that point just how serious this has gotten,” says UAW Local 1853 Chairman Mike Herron as we stood outside GM’s plant gates in Spring Hill, Tennessee.
“It has been most extraordinary in terms of the education process that has gone on, I think it’s been eye opening for our workers. You have seen what the company would do without the union and you got a good indication of that with the benefits being cut off,” says Herron. “And people are ready to fight on.”
As we speak, a white SUV pulls over, as a middle-aged African American man yells words of encouragement at the strikers.
“Hang in there, hang in there now!” says the man. “Something’s gonna give sooner or later, something has got to give! Y’all hang in there—something gonna give, something gonna give!”
Out on the picket lines, workers say they are prepared to go the distance against the company.
“People are in for the long haul, people are in for the fight” says 41-year GM worker Lynn Howard-Watson of Parma, Ohio. “We may be out here for [a month], we don’t know, but we are fighting for everybody, every teacher union, every union there is because if we don’t stand strong now, everybody fails.”
