Workers at the auto components factory in Saline, Michigan, owned with the aid of the massive French conglomerate Faurecia, have been despatched lower back to paintings through the United Auto Workers union final Friday morning after the UAW sabotaged their strike, that can have fast caused a scarcity of important components for Ford and other automakers.
AFTER THE SIMPLEST NINE HOURS, the UAW ended the walkout, claiming that it had all at once settled with control after months and months of stalled contract talks. Workers have been given no information approximately the phrases of the deal—if one even exists—and have been told that they’ll find out about the agreement and vote on it someday this week.
Approximately 1,900 workers exertions on the manufacturing unit, which Ford owned before it spun off its parts manufacturing to a brand new corporate entity, Visteon, which quickly declared a financial disaster for you to rob workers of their tough-earned pensions and wages. Faurecia took over management of the plant in 2012, although the property remains owned by Ford.
In May, ninety-seven percent of Faurecia workers voted in favor of strike motion to recoup many years of lost wages and the destruction of protection situations and medical advantages. The UAW gave up at each stage of the company shell sport of converting control.
For the remaining 4 a long time, the UAW has blocked any critical moves—the final national vehicle strike turned into at Ford in 1976—and the final car elements strikes at Nexteer (2015), and Lear (2014) had been close down after an afternoon. This isn’t always because the UAW has sought to convince employees that they’re vulnerable. In reality, with “Just-in-Time” manufacturing, which is predicated at the regular shipping of parts, in preference to the use of up huge elements of meeting flowers for stockpiling components—a strike at an important manufacturing facility like Faurecia could quickly have caused the dearth of parts for highly worthwhile motors, such as Ford’s F-a hundred and fifty pickup vans.
The closing element the UAW desires but is a successful strike, which demonstrates the monstrous social strength of employees. This would encourage comparable action with the aid of a larger variety of autoworkers at Ford, GM, and Fiat Chrysler, whose contracts are expiring in mid-September. With the collusion of the UAW, the auto businesses are the use of the hazard of extra plant closings and layoffs to extract a new round of devastating concessions, which include increasing the quantity of low-paid agreement employees and enforcing crushing out-of-pocket fees for fitness care coverage.
The WSWS Autoworker Newsletter has stated some of the times at the awful conditions faced using employees in the Saline plant, and workers continually say those situations have become worse. “In one part of the warehouse, if it rains, they’re working within the rain,” said a young employee who was later hired in. “If you spot liquid on the floor, you don’t know if it’s water or gas or a few other chemicals. It will be anything.”
Another brought, “The roof leaks. If I get water on my head even as I’m running, I don’t recognize where that water’s been or what’s in it.
“A lot of people don’t know it, but there has been a fireplace in [the plant] final week,” he endured, “…so large they’d to call the Salina Fire Department to place it out.”
These situations, mixed with subsistence wages and grueling hours, enraged Faurecia workers and provoked the strike.
“In my head, we have been placing for better wages and higher healthcare. But maybe that was me,” this employee continued. He is careworn that any issues that the people had been hanging for had been only “rumors and hearsay” at the wood line. “There becomes no leadership,” he said.
“I trust that we’ve more strength than they do if we stick together. Yesterday, we stopped the F-one hundred fifty Ford production. We ought to stick collectively and combat for what we need,” he persisted. “We don’t recognize what is inside the settlement. That is the crazy component about it. Everybody is talking about it, and we do now not have any expertise in what’s in it.”
His colleague went on to touch upon the wretched individual of the union. “We had a strike for someday. We came again yesterday. We did not have a meeting or anything. The manager said that the UAW might come round; however, don’t stop production. That’s all he said. As a long way as him announcing something about the contract, he didn’t say something approximately it.”
