Auto workers in Detroit share why they’re striking

DETROIT — Edward Fife has not received a raise in his 10 years at Ford's Dearborn Truck Plant.

Some of his coworkers are 28-year veterans who can only recall a $5 hike in their time at one of Detroit's "Big Three" automakers, he said. Many are living paycheck to paycheck, even if, like him, they have picked up second jobs.

"We just want to be treated fairly," said Fife, who was among the United Auto Workers and allies gathered for a rally last Friday as the union kicked off a strike affecting 13,000 workers at Ford, General Motors, and Stellantis. "We'll be out here trying to get better pay and as we do that it's going to be tougher."

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Now, nearly a week in, little progress has been made on negotiations. UAW President Shawn Fain threatened this week to expand the strike if there is not "serious progress" by noon ET Friday. Noting record profits of the auto industry in recent years, some of the UAW demands include 40 percent wage increases to match the pay increases of the Detroit Big Three CEOs; the elimination of tiered and temporary employment, where employees classified under both are paid less for doing the same job; the restoration of cost of living adjustments; pensions for all workers; increased pay and reestablished medical benefits for retirees; more time off; and other protections.

"This is not a new idea," Judy Wraight, a retired autoworker with 34 years seniority at Ford's River Rouge Complex in Dearborn and a member of UAW Local 600. With the exception of a request for a 32-hour work week for 40-hour pay, "everything the UAW is asking for was literally what we had before."

This month's strike is the first time the UAW has called for a strike against all of the Detroit Big Three automakers at once. The strike began with 13,000 workers walking out of three facilities: a Ford assembly plant in Wayne, Michigan, a General Motors factory in Wentzville, Missouri, and a Stellantis plant in Toledo, Ohio. Called the "Stand Up Strike," the strategy is to focus on select plants at a time, which allows members across the country to continue working and which gives the union space to escalate as negotiations continue. The name is a callback to the Flint sit-down strike, where UAW autoworkers protested unsafe working conditions and low wages at General Motors for three months in 1936 and 1937; it is considered one of the first successful labor strikes in American history.

Striking at every facility is still on the table, the union said.

Democratic Michigan Rep. Carrie Rheingans, whose 47th House District includes parts of Washtenaw and Jackson counties, was optimistic that the new style of strike would help both workers and the auto companies come to a resolution.

"The strike is a slow rolling whack-a-mole," Rheingans said at the rally. "It will force the Big Three [automakers] to the table to find out how to share their 40 percent record profits, 40 percent pay raises for their CEOs. How do you share that with the workers?"

WATCH: UAW strike stretches on amid warnings of more factory shutdowns

Counter offers from Ford, General Motors, and Stellantis – the parent company of Chrysler – have so far been rejected by union leaders, who say that they fall far short. Ford said in a statement last week, "Ford has bargained in good faith in an effort to avoid a strike, which could have wide-ranging consequences for our business and the economy." General Motors CEO Mary Barra disputed the 40 percent increase in CEO pay at a news conference last week, "I don't know where the 40 percent came from." Mark Reuss, president of General Motors, characterized some of the UAW rhetoric as "misinformation" in an opinion essay for the Detroit Free Press, and wrote that GM had delivered a "record offer" that "rightly rewards our team members, while positioning the company for success in the future."

Economists at the University of Michigan estimate that a long-term strike against all three automakers could potentially cause over 300,000 job losses in Michigan and 1.2 million job losses nationally, as the impacts of the strikes ripple through the automotive supply chain and the broader economy. There are 10 states with automotive facilities.

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The mood was festive at last week's "Stand up for our Communities against Corporate Greed" rally at the UAW-Ford National Programs Center, just down the street from the North American International Detroit Auto Show. With music pumping and almost everyone wearing red t-shirts, people were singing, chanting, and taking selfies with their friends and families to mark the occasion. Signs read "United for a Strong Contract," "COLA [Cost of Living Adjustments] and Fair Pay Now," "Justice for Retirees," "Record Profits Record Contracts," and "Saving the American Dream." A few people headed for the auto show's black tie Charity Preview, which raises money for children's charities in Southeastern Michigan, were dressed in red to show their support.

Fife was with his family, including his young daughter, "because the family is also a part of it."

"If I can't make the income to support my family, then," said Fife. "So that's why my family supports me in this."

What autoworkers say they want

The lack of raises and cost of living adjustments have been felt across the board, but has hit retirees especially hard.

"There's no cost of living on the pension. And we lost our cost of living in the plant," Wraight said. " So by the time I retired in 2012, I hadn't really had a base pay increase in forever."

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In addition to lack of raises, Terance Drake, a member of UAW Local 140 who works at Stellantis' Warren Truck Assembly Plant, is also concerned about the heavy work schedule.

"Conditions have been decent, but we don't have a lot of family time, a lot of home time," Drake said. Because his plant has been in critical status since July, union employees have been required to work mandatory overtime, up to seven days a week. A plant in critical status can run up to seven days a week for 90 days and require union employees to work more than nine hours of overtime. Union members say that this was an attempt to build up inventory before the current strike and that any staffing shortage was caused by layoffs last summer. Stellantis says the move is due to increased demand.

"People don't have no family life, no entertainment life, no leisure time with their families. We've been forced to work all these long hours, and there's basically nothing we can do about it." Drake added.

Both Fife and Drake say they have second jobs. Fife has a wall-mounting business where he hangs televisions and other objects in homes, "just to make ends meet," he said. Drake works as a photographer. "Some of the new hires," Drake said, "have a second [job]. I got a second job. I've been there 26 years and I have a second job."

"A lot of people take up different things that they can do to make extra money on the side," Drake added. "If you've got companies making these millions of dollars and they hire workers, there's no way somebody should have to have two or three jobs to support themselves."

Democratic Michigan Sen. Sue Shink, who represents parts of Washtenaw and Jackson counties, said that this echoes what she has heard from many of her constituents. "I have heard that my constituents are struggling financially, when their wages aren't keeping up with the cost of living, and they need a wage that they can live on," Shink told the PBS NewsHour. "Many of my constituents have to take second jobs to make ends meet."

In addition to lack of pay raises, autoworkers are also concerned about the employees who are hired as tiered or temporary employees and do the same work for lower pay and fewer benefits.

"We're trying to get rid of the tiered wage system," Drake said.

Under the tiered wage system, employees hired after 2007 are hired at a lower wage and do not move up to full salary until after several years, as well as fewer benefits, such as a 401(k) instead of a pension. Temporary workers also often work as many as seven days a week for lower wages and fewer benefits, and may never become regular employees.

"Everybody that comes through that door and works side by side with somebody at full pay should get the same money and the same benefits," he added.

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Wraight contrasts her experience with today's second tier employees, who start at $16 an hour and take eight years to reach full pay. In 1978, she advanced to full pay in 90 days and received backpay for the difference.

"That's why I'm here, to support everybody. But especially the new hires, the young people, what's called the second tier [that] do not have a pension when they retire. They do not have health care paid for when they retire," Wraight said. "They can stay there till kingdom [come]. They can stay there 50 years and the contract does not specify that for them."

Although some tiered employees have a 401(k) retirement savings account, Wraight said that "The 401(k) was never supposed to be a pension, ever. It's a supplement if you're lucky enough to save, which at $16 an hour, I'd be fascinated to find out how much they can save."

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A persistent concern from workers is the physical demands, injuries, and, in some cases, subsequent surgeries that come from physical labor on the job.

Fife contrasted the "very, very, very nice" vehicles and trucks workers build with the resulting injuries and surgeries that workers endure.

"Thirty-four years I was on that line and I still hurt from that line," Wraight said. "When I hired in, it was 72 cars an hour. So whatever operations you did, which at one point, I was supposed to put in seven different screws 72 times an hour, and they're different screws with different guns. And any time you move your arm, any time you're moving your body 72 times or more an hour, it starts wearing out."

Part of her job when she was in skilled trades was replacing the mechanical parts that wore out from the repetitive motion. "But in our case, we just hurt. So, pain pill, pain pill, pain pill," Wraight said. "And yet for some reason, the companies just let you get hurt."

Wraight described how many people developed carpal tunnel from their jobs, but still went to work wearing a brace or slept with the brace at night. "You shouldn't end up with carpal tunnel. Shouldn't end up with shoulder problems. You shouldn't end up with bad knees. But often they do, because it's very, very hard work," Wraight said. "In essence, people need to work fewer hours on these jobs."

Anticipating the hardships of the strike

Even in the first week of the strike, autoworkers were looking ahead to how the strike would impact them, their coworkers, and the auto companies.

Drake said he "won't say I'm financially set," but does consider himself financially responsible.

He was concerned for others more than himself. "Anybody [who] will lose a paycheck, week to week … that's going to struggle, because the low wages for some people, like some of the entry-level workers, it's just going to be hard on them" and their families.

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"Any time that any companies close down for a strike," Fife said, "Is going to affect a lot of other companies and it is going to affect the economy. We're not really trying to do that. What we want to do is just get fair pay for fair work."

Drake does not see an immediate consequence for car companies. "We went over 12 years with no raise. And so now it's time for the companies to pay up and they act like they don't want to pay up. And I just don't understand. Why don't you want to pay your workers? The workers that make these companies billions of dollars. We do anything and everything they ask of us and then it comes time to pay us and they don't want to pay."

Wraight carried a homemade sign that said, "low wages and benefits cause recession." She said she wanted to stress that paying workers was more important for the economy than paying the CEOs. "People when they make more money support the economy better. Rich people when they get the $20 million, they don't spend their money," Wraight said. Workers "spend their money on the couches and the milk. They're buying stuff. They're putting a roof on a house. But when you don't pay them, then the economy goes down and cars don't sell. Neither the gas nor the electric. Or people don't go very far because the gas is so high or their kids start having some kind of problem because they can't afford milk."

Sen. Shink was optimistic that a solution would be reached. "If the CEOs are worried about how it would impact the state, they know how to come to an agreement with the workers so that the companies will survive and the workers will survive. I'm not really worried. I hope that the two sides will come together to develop a contract that works."

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Democratic Michigan Sen. Stephanie Chang, who represents Detroit as well as parts of Oakland and Macomb counties, said "it takes a lot of courage to stand up for rights."

"We are in this moment right now where people stand up for working families in Michigan and people are overwhelmingly in support of labor," Chang said. "I think that what we know is that workers and automakers are going to work together to find the best possible contract … so I am hopeful they will find a resolution."

Looking forward

Wraight points to workers at automotive plants in Germany, who starting in the 1980s, worked 35 hours a week for 40 hours of pay. "They went down to seven work hours a day," Wraight said. "Like Sean Fain pointed out, the German workers work literally three months less than American workers a year."

If American auto workers also worked shorter weeks, Wraight said, that would require automakers to hire more workers, which would help with the transition to electric vehicles, which have fewer parts and require fewer people to build.

As the strike continues, Wraight talked about the power of people coming together in unions and warns of the danger of blaming the wrong group for the auto industry's problems, like in the 1980s, when the auto industry blamed Japanese automobiles for their problems and unions began to accept concessions.

"In '82 when I got laid off for five years because they said it was the Japanese. Talk about turning the head to the wrong person and fighting the turtles when you've got the rats in there," Wraight said. "That's literally what it is."

Instead, Wraight encourages people to join forces, whether that's striking or a run for office.

"Don't be an army of one. Try to join a grouping that is trying to change," Wraight said. "And run for office. If you're a person that actually thinks that it can be better, then be that person that runs. Get your name out. Have a real program of fighting for the grievances, fighting for economic equity."