WENTZVILLE — This week, as autumn weather arrived and overnight temperatures dipped, the United Auto Workers brought fire pits out to the picket lines at the General Motors plant in Wentzville.
Friday will mark four weeks since the union launched its unprecedented strike against the Big Three automakers, GM, Ford and Stellantis. Some workers here said they expected it may be resolved soon — perhaps within another two or three weeks — but many were preparing for the possibility that it may stretch on longer.
Several workers said they had saved up in the months before the labor agreement expired — one said that is common practice, in contract years.
Patrick Harvey, 45, a worker from ºüÀêÊÓƵ, said he has stocked up on Ramen noodles. He’s thinking about holding a garage sale.
“I’m in it for the long haul,†Harvey said. In 2019, the UAW’s strike against GM went on for nearly six weeks.
The UAW has taken an aggressive tone in talks and set audacious goals in this round of contract negotiations with the automakers. Throughout the strike, the UAW has used Friday livestream events as a venue to announce whether more workers would strike or whether the auto companies had made new offers that would spare them additional walkouts.
Then this week, on Wednesday evening, the UAW unexpectedly called on 8,700 Ford workers to strike at the company’s plant in Louisville, Kentucky.
Reached for comment this week, GM reiterated that the company is bargaining in good faith and working to find solutions to the remaining issues.
The Wentzville plant employs 4,100 people — 3,700 of them represented by the UAW — and makes the popular Chevrolet Colorado and GMC Canyon. As they picketed outside the sprawling GM assembly plant this week, some workers said they are motivated to stay out to make gains for retirees. Others said they want to see temporary workers secure a faster path to permanent status.
Harvey listed both of those issues among his priorities — along with workers’ overall quality of life. But like many in Wentzville, he also sees the strike as part of a larger effort to raise wages for workers across industries.
“What we’re doing here is going to benefit all employees who work in America,†Harvey said. “We are out here for all American workers.â€
Tracy Huth, 57, of Montgomery City, held a similar view. He has worked at the plant for nearly a decade, and on Tuesday he wore a red T-shirt that said, “I don’t want to strike, but I will.â€
“It seems like all over the U.S., labor is just tired of it,†Huth said.
Adding to the uncertainty around the strike this year, the UAW has broken with the “pattern bargaining strategy†it followed in past contracts, where it focused on negotiations with one of the three automakers at a time and used its deal as a template for the other two companies. This time, the union is striking at all three companies but only at specific plants.
“This is new for everybody,†said Anita Haynes, a 57-year-old GM worker from Madison, Illinois.
When the union held its weekly strike update last week, UAW President Shawn Fain said he had been poised to call a strike at GM’s lucrative plant in Arlington, Texas, which makes SUVs like the Chevrolet Tahoe and the Cadillac Escalade.
But just before the scheduled announcement, he said, GM had agreed to put its electric battery manufacturing under the union’s national master agreement, which would allow workers at those plants to be covered by union contracts. The union rewarded GM for the move and did not call on any more plants to strike.
A strike at the Arlington plant would have been a deep wound for the company, said David Whiston, a U.S. auto industry stock analyst with Morningstar. He thinks the battery plant agreement may have bought the company more time, but the union could still call on workers to walk out there. Full-size SUVs like the ones made at the Arlington plant, he said, are “the top of the profit mountain.â€
“Maybe it’s cynical, but I think that bought GM another week on Arlington,†Whiston said.
The Wentzville assembly plant was one of the first plants to strike after the previous labor contract expired Sept. 14., along with a Stellantis plant in Toledo, Ohio, and a Ford plant in Wayne, Michigan.
In the weeks since, the UAW has called on other plants to join, depending on progress in negotiations. GM has also idled about 2,300 more workers across five states at plants that supply or receive parts from the sites that are on strike, including the company’s Fairfax plant in Kansas City, Kansas. Reuters last week that the GM had estimated the cost of the strike was $200 million during the third quarter.
Workers in Wentzville lauded the Friday announcement about the battery plants. The issue is part of a top concern among the union and its members during this round of negotiations: the industry’s shift toward electric vehicles. GM has pledged to sell only electric passenger vehicles by 2035.
Donald Sherman, who works in final process at the facility, said the battery plants should have been in the agreement from the beginning.
“That should have been taken for granted,†he said. “That’s our future.â€
The UAW will hold another strike update Friday, at 9 a.m. Central time.
Photos: United Auto Workers union members strike at General Motors plant in Wentzville
General Motors workers appeared to approve the company's new labor agreement with the United Auto Workers, by a far thinner margin than expected.
Ricky Kunza walks the strike line in the rain along with fellow United Auto Workers union members on Wednesday, Oct. 11, 2023, outside the General Motors plant in Wentzville. UAW union members have been striking since Sept. 15 as the union continues to negotiate a contract.
Members of UAW Local 2250 man the picket lines as a fellow union member grills bratwurst for his team while the strike against General Motors continues outside the assembly plant in Wentzville on Friday, Oct. 6, 2023.