Workers at GM, Ford, and Chrysler ready to strike in contract fight
Autoworkers across the US are voting to authorize a strike action when the current four-year labor agreements covering 155,000 General Motors, Ford and Fiat Chrysler workers in the US expires a little over three weeks from now, at midnight on September 14. Fiat Chrysler workers at Sterling Heights Assembly Plant (SHAP) in suburban Detroit and the Jeep assembly plant in Belvidere, Illinois were among the first to vote Thursday, with voting continuing next week and the tallies expected by August 29.
At the factory gates Thursday afternoon, Fiat Chrysler workers were anxious to talk to reporters from the World Socialist Web Site Autoworker Newsletter about the issues they want addressed in the new contracts. Many spoke of eliminating the hated two-tier wage system, which starts newly-hired full-time workers at half the pay of so-called legacy workers, i.e. those hired before 2007. These second-tier or so-called in-progression workers must work eight years to reach top pay and wait years before receiving basic medical coverage like dental and optical insurance.
“We got to get rid of the tiers,” was a common refrain. Others said, “We need more money,” and denounced claims by the auto companies that they could not afford raises when they were making record profits and paying their CEOs millions. “We need to get everything we gave up back and then some,” said a worker as she walked into the plant.
Many workers said they were ready to strike if the auto companies attempted to impose higher out-of-pocket health care expenses on them or cut their benefits by putting them under a plan run by the United Auto Workers union. The conspiracy by the auto companies and the union to expand the United Auto Workers Retiree Medical Benefits Trust to cover current employees, was a major factor in the 2-to-1 defeat of the UAW-FCA contract in 2015.
Read more: https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2019/08/23/uaws-a23.html
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