The United Auto Workers union settled with General Motors on Monday, October 30. This ended the extraordinary Stand Up strike. The purpose of this article is to explain the final days of the strike. A future article on this site will draw a balance sheet and discuss future ramifications.
Stellantis: Major step forward at Belvidere, IL
The union reached a Tentative Agreement with Stellantis on Saturday. The broad terms of this agreement were the same as the earlier agreement with Ford. (A past article on this site goes through the details.) This was what the union wanted. However, there was a very important addition. The company agreed to reopen the Belvidere Assembly Plant in northern Illinois. Stellantis shuttered the plant in February, laying off 1,200 union members. This cast a bleak shadow over the whole of this small industrial town.
The union forced the company to agree to reopen the factory which will now produce a midsized truck. Furthermore, there will be over a thousand union jobs at a new battery plant that is going to be built in Belvidere. It’s very rare that unions are able to force companies to reopen closed factories. The Temporary Agreement (TA) on Belvidere represents a significant victory for the union.
GM: Needed Spring Hill strike to force agreement
While the union was making progress with Stellantis, things were not going so well with General Motors, the third of the Big Three. Therefore, the union decided to extend the Stand Up strike to the Spring Hill Manufacturing plant in Tennessee. This is GM’s most profitable plant in North America and has nearly 4,000 workers. Spring Hill is a major center in GM’s internal division of labor, production, and supply. Therefore, a strike there would have major effects on GM’s whole operation.
Spring Hill was struck on Saturday. It was the final push. GM could not face being closed while its rivals were running. So, GM settled with the union on Monday morning. The terms are broadly similar to those already agreed to at Ford and Stellantis. This agreement brings the 2023 strike to an end.
Union democracy
The next big issue is the ratification process. The union has a very democratic ratification process that was detailed in a previous article. Two points need to be stressed. One, the entirety of the contract changes are available to the union membership in a massive document posted online. This means that workers will have the time to study and discuss the changes before making an informed decision. Two, the union leadership has made clear time and time again the ranks are the highest authority in the union. It’s up to the membership to decide whether to approve or turn down the proposed contract. If the contract is turned down, then the union goes back into battle with the companies. The UAW’s approach on this issue is a real example of union democracy in action and an example to be emulated by the rest of the working class movement.
“The companies are the enemy”
UAW President Shawn Fain has made lengthy video presentations explaining every step of the strike. What’s striking (pun intended!) in these speeches is his use of the ideas of class struggle and conflict. He has repeatedly stressed that the strike is a part of a class war between unions and management, between workers and bosses. Fain expressed his hope that the union’s victory will be, “a turning point in the class war that’s been raging in this country for the past 40 years.” The contracts are consciously timed to expire on April 30, 2028. This means that the next strike could be on May Day, the international day of workers solidarity. All this is new ground in the American labor movement.
Everything that needs to be said was summed up by a recent Associated Press article. Tom Krisher wrote, “Fain, the first UAW president directly elected by members in the union’s 88-year history, campaigned against the union establishment by telling workers the companies are the enemy and the UAW would be at war with them.” The companies are the enemy and the unions should be at war with them. In that simple statement lies the entire future of the working-class movement.
Adam Shils is a member of the International Socialism Project in Chicago.
