More than 3,000 employees at the General Motors plant in Spring Hill didn’t show up for work Monday as part of the company’s first nationwide strike since 2007. Union members have a list of demands, including better protections for temporary workers, which make up about 10% of the Spring Hill workforce.
The contract dispute comes amid growing uncertainty about the future of the U.S. auto industry.
Assembly line worker Lacey Hoover has seen firsthand the ups and downs of car manufacturing in her seven years with General Motors. As the sun blazes in a cloudless sky around noon, she hoists a blue and white picket sign on the edge of Highway 31 and waves at cars zooming by.
Even as a full-time worker, Hoover says, it’s hard not to worry about the possibility of losing her job.
“I think everybody is at this point,” she says. “I have a husband and three children that I need to provide for, and it scares me a lot to, you know, not know from day to day whether I will be able to provide for them at home.”
Hoover says she’s especially concerned about the plant’s temporary employees.
“We’ve had people that have worked here for four to five years as temporary employees, and we think they deserve [what] us full-time hourly employees deserve,” Hoover says. “They deserve the pay that we are making. They deserve the benefits that we have.”
The strike comes just months after GM announced it would close five plants in North America by the end of this year. Local union President Tim Stannard says several hundred employees from those shuttered plants have already relocated to Spring Hill.
The Middle Tennessee plant hired 1,500 people in 2016 to produce a new Cadillac SUV. But, like other GM sites, it hasn’t been immune to layoffs. Tanya Sapp lost her job in August, just weeks before her anniversary with the company. She hopes the United Auto Workers union will help her and other laid off employees get their jobs back.
“It hurt,” Sapp says as passing cars honk in solidarity. “But, you know, that’s how it goes. So I just know that the UAW has got our back, and they’re fighting for us.”
Though Sapp only started working for GM last September, she’s no stranger to the company or its labor union. Sapp was raised on a GM employee’s salary. Her dad has worked for plants in Alabama and Tennessee for 35 years.
Now, Sapp wants her three-year-old daughter to reap the same benefits she did. That’s why they both came to the picket line Monday, dressed in red T-shirts to match the rest of the protesters.
“I want to bring her up the way I was brought up, showing that we do support the UAW and we want to fight for what we need,” Sapp says. “I know she’s young, but you can never start too early.”
The UAW, which represents nearly 50,000 GM employees across the country, decided to strike after collective bargaining talks expired over the weekend. In addition to a path to full-time work for temporary employees, the union is also calling for better wages and health care coverage for all workers.
The union wants GM to share its profits with workers. The automaker reported an income of
$8.1 billion last year.
In a statement, the company said: “Our goal remains to reach an agreement that builds a stronger future for our employees and our business.”
For now, Sapp is feeling optimistic.
“I do plan on coming back, hopefully,” she says. “We shall see what happens.”
Samantha Max is a Report for America corps member.
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