One Year After Big 3 Strike, Some Unionized Auto Workers Face Uncertain Future

TOLEDO, Ohio — For months last year, United Auto Workers President Shawn Fain warned the Big Three automakers that Sept. 14 was not a suggestion, but a deadline.

After failing to secure new contracts before midnight, he kept his word and called on workers at three major assembly plants to walk off the job.

Today, a year later, there is no doubt that workers at Ford, General Motors and Stellantis, formerly Chrysler, are making more money. For some, a lot more.

At the same time, particularly at Stellantis, workers say they face a highly uncertain future, with little confidence that their new record contracts, won after a painful six-week strike, will keep them in their jobs.

“This is the lowest morale I’ve had in the 11 years I’ve been here,” said Jim Cooper, a team leader at Stellantis’ Toledo assembly complex, where the Jeep Wrangler and Jeep Gladiator are built.

Falling car sales dampened contract gains

A sales decline this year at Stellantis, which was formed when Fiat Chrysler merged with French automaker Peugeot in 2021, has led to production slowdowns at U.S. facilities, layoffs of as many as 2,450 assembly workers outside Detroit next month, and a delay in plans to reopen a plant in Belvidere, Illinois.

In the first half of this year, Stellantis’ profits fell 48% from a year earlier, the company said this summer.

In August, the company confirmed rumors that it was shelving plans to start production of a mid-size truck in Belvidere in 2027.

“To ensure the competitiveness and sustainability of the company, which is necessary to preserve manufacturing jobs in the United States, it is essential that the business case for all investments be aligned with market conditions,” the company wrote in a statement. Stellantis declined NPR’s request for an interview.

Today, workers are wondering how committed the transatlantic automaker is to staying in the United States.

For years, Cooper said, veterans at his Toledo plant have warned that if wages rose too high, the company would move jobs to Mexico. A threat he has always ignored, given how profitable the Jeep plant has been for Stellantis.

But now?

“I could see it,” he said.

Higher pay but fewer hours

The strike and the agreements signed last year were supposed to be a turning point for autoworkers. After decades of concessions, autoworkers were finally getting what the UAW had long wanted: wage increases of 25 percent or more over the life of the contract, the return of cost-of-living adjustments and new job protections, including the right to strike over plant closings and, in some cases, unfulfilled investment promises.

The increases have indeed materialized. Since the strike, most workers’ hourly wages have increased by more than $5, including a cost-of-living adjustment. Some temporary workers who became full-time permanent employees under the new contract have seen their hourly wages nearly double.

But scheduled overtime, common in the auto industry, has been cut back significantly, reducing workers’ wages. Last year, Cooper said, he was regularly working 60-hour weeks to meet production demands. That practice has since disappeared.

Not only have overtime hours been much less for workers, but for the past three weeks, production in Toledo and elsewhere has been shut down for days at a time because too many cars sit in dealership lots.

“My checks are smaller than they were before the strike,” Cooper said.

Of course, working less has its advantages.

“I don’t feel like a zombie in the afternoon. I can do things with the kids, go to scouts, do a little gardening,” he says.

“But losing in extra time is a big blow.”

Strike threat over broken promises

The total loss of American auto jobs would be an even greater blow, and it is something the UAW is working hard to prevent.

Last month, the union began a grievance process over the delay in Belvidere’s reopening. That process could eventually lead to a strike at one or more plants, though the union and Stellantis are arguing over whether a strike is legal under the current contract.

While the UAW won the right to strike over its failure to meet its product and investment commitments, Stellantis has put forward a contract escape clause that allows it to defer investments if market conditions change. The UAW argues that the company is at fault for failing to plan and fund its commitments.

“I want to be clear: Stellantis must deliver on the promises we made to America in our union contract,” Fain said in a fiery speech to the Democratic National Convention in Chicago last month. He pledged that the union would take “all necessary steps” to hold the company accountable.

Marick Masters, a professor emeritus at Wayne State University, says that behind the scenes, the two sides are likely negotiating to avoid another strike. But given the challenges facing automakers — not just slowing sales but the costly transition to electric vehicles — he says the UAW is in a difficult position.

“I find no provision in this memorandum of understanding that explicitly gives the union the right to strike” under current conditions, he said.

In Toledo, Cooper said that unlike last fall, he has little hope that a strike will be successful anyway.

“We’d probably be here burning barrels in the cold for two weeks, and then a judge would say, ‘Go back to work or you’ll be fired,'” he said.

Other union victories elsewhere

Elsewhere in the U.S. auto industry, there are more positive signs that last year’s strike is making a difference for workers — and for the UAW.

In a major victory for the union last fall, General Motors agreed to include workers at its electric vehicle battery joint venture Ultium Cells under the national collective bargaining agreement.

It’s already paying off for the 1,600 Ultium workers in Lordstown, Ohio, who ratified a new contract this summer that includes 30 percent raises over three years, and for another 1,000 Ultium workers in Spring Hill, Tennessee, who joined the UAW earlier this month.

“Workers organized without facing threats or intimidation and won their union once a majority of workers signed cards,” the UAW said in a statement, describing a process known as card-check recognition.

Life-changing pay raises come with some twists and turns

Even at Stellantis, pay increases have changed the lives of some workers.

Kevin Pinson worked at the Toledo Jeep plant as a temporary employee for six years, far longer than the one to two years he thought it would take to gain permanent status.

In negotiations last fall, the UAW got Stellantis to agree to reduce its heavy reliance on temps and convert several thousand of them to full-time positions. Because of his seniority at the plant, Pinson was among the first to be converted. His wages rose from about $19 an hour at the time of the strike to more than $35 an hour.

A father of two, Pinson says the raise gave him a cushion, something he desperately needed.

“Before the raise, I had to donate plasma to earn extra income, just to pay the bills and stuff,” he said. “My hours weren’t stable.”

But there was a catch. Stellantis had assigned a group of workers, chosen by the digits of their Social Security numbers, to new positions at a Detroit warehouse 90 minutes away. Despite his seniority, Pinson was one of them.

“They gave us a week’s notice,” Pinson said. “None of us knew where the store was. We’d never even heard of it.”

Suddenly, his workdays got considerably longer. He left home at 3 a.m. to start his shift at 5 a.m. Gas money ate into his raises. He went from filling up the tank once a week to filling it up every other day.

Then, in July, he was brought back to Toledo and assigned to the evening shift, working some nights until 2 a.m.

“I don’t know what the future holds for me,” he said. “There are so many rumors that we might be laid off until things start selling.”

Last fall, despite record raises and the promise of permanent status on the table, Pinson voted against the contract, doubting that Stellantis would live up to its end of the bargain.

Although his doubts persist, he is not too worried about his job – at least for now.

“We’re going to start producing the 2025 models soon, so at least we’ll have that to build,” he said.

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