Stone and his co-workers, who work at an auto parts depot in Orlando, still describe their employer as Chrysler. Their last strike in 2007, similarly over the failure of his employer to reach an agreement with his union, lasted about six hours. Not even long enough for the second shift of workers that day to join in, longtime workers told Orlando Weekly on the picket line.
Today, Stone — a union worker of 26 years — and nearly 80 of his co-workers at Stellantis’ parts distribution center in Orlando are in their third week of a historic strike, holding the line for themselves, their families, and current and future generations of auto workers to come.
Auto workers at Stellantis’ Orlando parts distribution center, organized with the United Auto Workers union, walked off the job on Sept. 22 with 5,000 of their fellow union members at auto parts facilities owned by Stellantis and General Motors in 20 states.
A week before that, over 13,000 employees of Stellantis, General Motors and Ford — the so-called Big Three automakers — walked out at assembly plants in the U.S. Midwest, launching a strike. It marks the first time the union has struck all three automakers at once.
Today, about 25,000 auto workers of the Big Three are on strike in their fight for a fair contract, after their union’s last agreement with the companies expired Sept. 14. The union is executing a coordinated strike strategy where the strike grows over time, if and when the auto companies don’t meet the union’s demands for a new contract.
All in all, the United Auto Workers represents 146,000 employees of the Big Three across the United States, but the union says this staggered strategy — what they call the Stand Up Strike, in reference to the union’s militant sit-down strikes of the 1930s — gives them leverage.
Since it launched, union leadership has called on more workers to stand up and join the strike, as needed, nearly every Friday so far, to remind the companies what they have to lose: their bottom line.
“It’s not about theatrics. It’s about power — the power we have as working-class people,” said UAW president Shawn Fain.
tweet this
“We have designed this strategy to increase pressure on the companies — not to hurt them for its own sake, but to move them,” said UAW president Fain, a 54-year-old electrician and 29-year UAW member from Indiana, in a live-streamed update Friday.
“We are winning. We are making progress,” he added, wearing an “Eat the Rich” T-shirt for the occasion. “And we are headed in the right direction.”
Among other things, the union is pushing for the elimination of divisive wage tiers, job security, an easier pathway to permanent jobs for temps, double-digit raises to match the CEOs’, and the reversal of concessions workers agreed during the 2008 financial crisis for their employers’ survival, such as defined pension plans and cost-of-living adjustments tied to inflation.
Just minutes before additional strike locations were announced Friday, Sept. 29, Stellantis — which sells cars under Jeep, Ram, Dodge and Chrysler brands — reportedly agreed to several concessions, according to the UAW, and was spared from that week’s strike expansion.
Both Stellantis and Ford have committed to restoring COLA, with GM “not far behind,” per Fain. Stellantis has also agreed to 20% pay raises over four years, a minimum pay rate of $20 an hour for temps, the right to honor picket lines, and the right to strike over plant closures.
Several workers in Orlando told Orlando Weekly they transferred to the parts depot in Florida after plant closures or buyouts in states like Illinois and Indiana.
Importantly, General Motors last Friday also agreed to place battery manufacturing for electric vehicles under its main agreement with the UAW — a concession that’s been heralded as a major victory.
The companies, however, are still refusing to budge on other concessions, according to Fain, such as post-retirement healthcare and pensions.
“For those members who still have a pension, we know you've gone far too long without an increase and we're pushing hard to change it,” Fain shared Friday. “For those members who've never got a pension or post-retirement healthcare, we're fighting like hell for real retirement security.”
Fain was elected UAW president just earlier this year after decades of corrupt leadership that accepted concessions beneficial to automakers, at the expense of rank-and-file workers.
Stone, a Chrysler worker of 26 years, is originally from Indiana himself, like Fain. After a Chrysler plant he worked at in New Castle, Indiana, was bought out in 2003, he and about 20 of his co-workers transferred to the parts depot in Florida.
“Could have been a worse place,” he admitted, referring to his home of two decades now. “I got lucky,” he smiled wryly.
“No,” one of his co-workers, Dwight Brubaker — also a longtime Chrysler employee, and secretary of UAW Local 1649 — immediately interjected. “We got lucky.” Both men chuckled, placing their hands on each others' shoulders good-naturedly.
A fourth-generation UAW member, Stone and co-worker Brubaker told Orlando Weekly that Fain’s leadership this time around — framing the Big Three CEOs as the “billionaire class,” fighting to restore concessions made over a decade ago, is key to what has made this round of negotiations and their strike historic.
“Our past leadership wasn’t …” Stone trailed off, gathering his thoughts. “I don’t believe they believed in us as much as he does.”
‘It’s critical we show our solidarity’
The Big Three work stoppage has materialized as a historic strike buoyed by public support.
A majority of the American public support the auto workers in their fight, according to recent polling. And last month, President Joe Biden joined a UAW picket line in Michigan, becoming the first sitting president in U.S. history to do so.
Even in “right to work” Florida, where just 5.6% of workers are represented by unions, auto workers in Orlando aren’t alone on the picket line.
A number of union affiliates within the Central Florida labor council, as well as other community organizations and politicians, have shown up to the picket line in solidarity with their fight
From teachers to Disney World workers, fast-food workers, nurses and UPS workers — who recently averted a major strike of their own — people from various sectors of the economy, and different walks of life, have shown up to say: We’re with you.
“Record profits at any company must result in record contracts for the workers who make those profits possible,” said Teamsters president Sean O’Brien.
tweet this
“There are people driving up and down the road that don’t really know what a union is,” admitted Stone, one of the auto workers, somewhat sheepishly. “But they know it’s about making lives better and ending corporate greed.”
The significance of the support they have received in the “anti-union” South, from passerby and organized labor alike, isn’t lost on anybody.
“I think it's important that when auto workers say ‘hey, that's enough boss, we deserve more,’ that they feel supported by the hospitality worker or the nurse,” said Eric Clinton, president of Unite Here Local 362, which represents thousands of workers at Disney World, and about 150 food service workers at Orlando International Airport.
“When the nurse, or the hospitality worker, or the school teacher asks for more, then we hope that all the workers will be there together,” Clinton, who also heads the Central Florida AFL-CIO labor council, told Orlando Weekly.
Friday morning, members of Unite Here also joined Orange County teachers as they prepared to meet school district representatives with their own union at the bargaining table to hammer out their own contract. After the district had previously declared impasse, the union shared they managed to make headway on teachers' salaries, a major sticking point.
“Our strength comes in numbers and our numbers come from solidarity,” Clinton, a Disney World employee himself, added. “That's the labor movement. It's critical that we show that solidarity.”
The Teamsters union, which represents local UPS workers and Disney World employees, has also vowed not to cross the UAW picket line. “Just as the Teamsters saw at UPS, record profits at any company must result in record contracts for the workers who make those profits possible,” Teamsters president Sean O’Brien shared in a statement last month.
Walt Howard, who heads Teamsters Local 385 in Orlando, confirmed this. “Teamsters do not cross picket lines,” he told Orlando Weekly. That means no delivering or picking up “struck goods.”
Like the Big Three auto workers, Teamsters also fought for — and won — their demand to eliminate a tiered wage system that can sow division between younger and older generations of workers by devaluing the labor of newer hires.
“Our core values are our unity and workers’ respect, not only for fellow Teamsters, but for all trade unionists,” Howard of Local 385 shared. “And so we support them 110%.”
Brubaker, a second-generation member of UAW Local 1649 in Orlando, confirmed that local UPS Teamsters have refused to pick up or unload “struck goods” to deliver to dealerships.
“I was told that they, the company, knew that the Teamsters wouldn’t cross our line, so they sent Amazon,” Brubaker told Orlando Weekly.
Union TV and film actors in Florida, who are currently on strike themselves, have also joined them on the picket line, per Brubaker. “They’re great,” he said. “They’re energetic.”
Although the Orlando group is the only group of Big Three employees currently on strike in Florida, they're not the only only members of the UAW striking in the Sunshine State. Four thousand union workers in Maryland, Pennsylvania, and Jacksonville, Florida, employed by Volvo parent company Mack Trucks also walked off the job Monday morning after 73% of workers voted down a tentative agreement reached between their employer and the United Auto Workers.
Striking isn’t an easy decision. When asked if they’d be willing to walk off the job if necessary to achieve their goals in a contract, 97% of voting UAW members of the Big Three in the United States said yes.
But it’s no walk in the park. Auto workers out on strike get $500 weekly in strike pay (paid by the union, from the members’ dues), and many have families to support back home.
Kalilah Austin, a worker of 12 years and mother of two, told Orlando Weekly last month that it’s scary and frankly, “troubling” to be out on strike just two years after she transferred to Florida from Belvidere, Illinois, following an assembly plant closure back home.
“We don’t want to strike, but we want to make a point,” said Austin, who’s reached the top of the wage scale, but worries about Stellantis’ temp workers.
Temp workers employed by the Big Three generally have to labor for years before they’re offered a permanent job — which comes with better wages and benefits.
“It's not about greed,” Austin said. After years of giving to the auto companies without getting, “It's about getting what we deserve.”
“Do we want to strike? No,” said Wanda Carithers, a worker of 26 years, on that first day they walked off the job. “We wish they would reach an agreement, but we do what we have to do.”
The Big Three auto companies, unused to union leadership’s public bargaining updates and non-concessionary approach, have trashed the union’s handling of the strike, blasting it as “theatrics.”
Union president Shawn Fain has rebuked this characterization. “The CEOs are trying to trivialize our strike,” Fain shared Friday. “It’s not about theatrics. It’s about power — the power we have as working-class people.”
Subscribe to Orlando Weekly newsletters.Follow us: Apple News | Google News | NewsBreak | Reddit | Instagram | Facebook | Twitter | or sign up for our RSS Feed
