Midwest

UAW’s “Element of Surprise” Strike Appears to Be Working

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This article is a joint publication of Workday Magazine and In These Times. Workers walked off their shifts on September 14 at midnight to cheering crowds, as the United Auto Workers launched its first simultaneous strike against the ​“Big Three” automakers — Ford, General Motors and Stellantis. The initial work stoppages were not company-wide, but instead targeted at three locations: GM’s Wentzville Assembly in Missouri, Stellantis’ Toledo Assembly Complex in Ohio, and Ford’s Michigan Assembly Plant in Wayne, Mich., just outside Detroit. The plants employ some 12,700 of the roughly 150,000 UAW members who work for the Big Three. The strike strategy, developed under the leadership of reform challenger Shawn Fain, was defined by its element of surprise.

Midwest

Exhausted, Injured and Angry: Autoworkers Are Ready to Strike

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This article is a joint publication of Workday Magazine and In These Times. CHICAGO – Wearing a red United Auto Workers (UAW) t-shirt, Anastasia Gibson, 48, is warm and polite, quick to flash a broad smile. But her anger rises when she talks about her sacrifices to Ford, which made $10.4 billion in profits in 2022. Gibson works 10-hour shifts and injured her back on the job in 2021. ​“They don’t value anything we do. They want us to get as many cars off the line as we can.” 

Such anger was palpable among the roughly 200 workers who gathered alongside Gibson in the late afternoon of September 6 outside the UAW Local 551 union hall in far southeastern Chicago, not far from the Indiana border.