Mansfield autoworkers’ road to solidarity, Motor City, MA – Ben Balint-Kurti

by Ben Balint-Kurti, B’23.5, guest writer

On September 14, the President of the United Automobile Workers (UAW), Shawn Fain, made an unprecedented announcement: when the UAW’s contract expired at midnight, workers would strike at one plant of each of the Big Three automakers—General Motors, Ford, and Stellantis (formerly Chrysler). It would be the first time in history that workers at all three companies walked off the job at once.

The next day, a sunny one at the Stellantis-subsidiary parts distribution center in Mansfield, Massachusetts, the UAW Local 422 union held a “practice picket.” Even though its members were not yet among the 13,000 Big Three workers already on strike, the entrance to the distribution center at 550 Forbes Blvd. was blocked by about 40 Stellantis employees and other supporters demonstrating their readiness, if called upon.They wore bright red UAW-branded T-shirts, held signs with messages like “FAIR PAY NOW”, and walked in a circle chanting “we are the union, the mighty, mighty union” to the tune of the Frosted Flakes song.

A week later, the call came. On September 22, the UAW asked the Stellantis employees in Mansfield, a town about 20 miles north of Providence, to go on strike. By early October, they were approaching two weeks off the job. Along with a familiar chanting circle, a 20-foot tall “Scabby the Rat” inflatable now stood over cars passing on Forbes Boulevard. Pearl Jam’s “Even Flow” played from portable speakers under tents, where picketers took relief from the sun. Police officers leaned against their Dodge Charger police cruisers—manufactured by Stellantis—surveilling the scene in fluorescent yellow vests from across the street. Days before, a member of the Local had been arrested for blocking a truck from entering the facility. 

Like the rest of the UAW, Local 422 is fighting for a significant raise, a return of regular cost-of-living pay increases which were eliminated during the Great Recession, and the end of so-called “tiers,” which led to different levels of pay and benefits for workers based on when they were hired.

But members of Local 422 in Mansfield, occupying a peripheral role in the national union, have a different perspective than the one visible in most coverage of the UAW strike. While the vast majority of Big Three employees work in manufacturing plants, UAW members in Mansfield exclusively distribute parts to local dealerships. Additionally, while the bulk of Big Three manufacturing employees work in midwestern states like Michigan and Ohio, Mansfield is one of 38 distribution centers that are on strike in other locations across the country.

“This can pose challenges when it comes to communicating problems specific to the parts division to the national union’s bargaining team”, said Patrick Lozeau, the Local’s financial secretary. Citing the fact that of the nearly 40,000 Stellantis workers in the UAW, only 1,200 are in the parts division, Lozeau said “it’s tough, because a lot of things end up getting pushed through in the contract and we don’t have much of a say in it.” For instance, according to Lozeau, the “ancient,” inefficient equipment Local 422 members use on the job have not yet received the updates promised in the previous contract negotiated in 2019, and newly hired workers in the parts division have a top pay $7 less than older workers, which is not the case in other divisions.

For Local 422, then, there are benefits and drawbacks of belonging to a union with a broad membership: members of the Local can combine their leverage—i.e., the ability to decrease the profits of their employer if they don’t get their demands—with that of tens of thousands of manufacturing workers across the country. Striking would be significantly less effective if the union only represented workers in a certain division. But on the other hand, conflicts can arise when manufacturing workers’ interests differ from those of workers in other divisions. There is hope, though, that the disappointments Local 422 has seen in the past will be made up for in the new contract. 

A priority for Local 422 is equality between workers within the Mansfield facility. People at the distribution center hired after 2011, so-called “Tier-2 workers,” do not have guaranteed pensions. And those hired after 2015, referred to as “Tier-2-and-a-half,” earn about 75 percent as much as other workers. Finally, those hired as “temporary workers”—even though some have worked at the plant for years—do not receive health-care benefits like others. Even though Tier-1 workers would not personally benefit from the hierarchy’s elimination, workers of all tiers who spoke with the Indy repeatedly criticized the tier system. “We want it so everybody, once they retire, can live comfortably, and have a pension… It’s not fair that we’re paying into their retirement, but no one’s paying into ours,” said Paul Gado, a “Tier-2-and-a-half” employee who grew up in Mansfield and has worked at the center for five years.

Tiers cause animosity

Stellantis instituted tiers back in 2008 amid the economic consequences of the Great Recession, a decision that has caused some inter-union strife that threatened to weaken solidarity within the Local. As Lozeau told the Indy, “what’s a union supposed to stand for? Unity. We don’t have that right now with the two-plus tiers that we have.” Justin Blanchard, shop chair for Local 422, said that tiers are “the single biggest thing that has hindered our union and any progress…there’s always been that animosity. The younger guys kind of blame the older guys for why they’re at a lower tier.” But rather than play into the corporation’s hands and continue to foster animosity between tiers, Local 422 has united behind their goal of putting every worker on a level playing field. “I’m so happy because it’s the first time in years that the newer guys have really started to embrace the union,” Blanchard said.  

Workers of all tiers face the same risks in the workplace. Some Local 422 members had disturbing stories of the dangers of working at the distribution center. Carter Shaw fractured his knee loading a trailer mere months after he started working at the Mansfield distribution center. But the injury itself was only the first in a series of damages, bodily and financial. Because he had not yet worked for a 90-day probationary period, his compensation claim was originally denied. The knee injury kept him from being able to work and earn a paycheck for a year-and-a-half. Being unable to work also meant that he missed out on some of the benefits workers receive as a percentage of the company’s profits: “if you get hurt on the job, you don’t get those profit-sharing checks that they always brag about.” In light of how vulnerable all Big Three employees are, the capacity to work together, to rally around similar issues, and to demonstrate solidarity becomes all the more important. 

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Solidarity and Disruption: The History of the UAW

Local 422’s involvement as a New England distribution plant in the national strike, as well as its emphasis on solidarity between long-tenured and newer employees, is in keeping with the reason the UAW was first created. Before the UAW’s founding in the 1930s, the American Federation of Labor (AFL) dominated the labor movement in the U.S, but exclusively organized  “skilled workers” in craft-specific unions and ignored workers who were put on factory assembly lines.

After pressure from this growing contingent of less-specialized workers, the AFL chartered the UAW to represent all workers that produced automobiles, regardless of specialty. The UAW’s trademark was the “sit-down” strike—in which workers, often against the wishes of their own union presidents, sat down on the job and refused to work, while also taking “physical possession” of machinery and thus preventing the hiring of replacement workers or “scabs.” Often holding secret meetings to keep members from being fired for participating, the UAW overcame company-sponsored spying, intimidation, and violence to organize GM, Chrysler, and eventually Ford. In the process, the UAW increased auto workers’ wages by as much as 300 percent, along with other benefits. By 1944, the UAW claimed over 1 million members.

For much of the rest of the 20th century and up to now, though, the UAW was significantly less confrontational against the Big Three. Several transformations had weakened the union’s leverage: as labor historian Jeremy Brecher argues, a “class compromise” between workers’ unions and management caused labor leaders to suppress strikes. In 1981, President Ronald Reagan tacitly declared open season on labor when his administration fired more than 11,000 striking air traffic controllers. Additionally, free trade policies and China opening up to foreign corporations made it possible for the Big Three to outsource labor abroad where wages were lower. In Mansfield, the facility that once employed over a hundred people now only employs about 45. 

Under these new constraints, the UAW had significantly less leverage than it used to. Furthermore, foreign competitors like Honda and Toyota caused American manufacturers’ profits to plummet, and before long the Big Three turned towards its payroll to make up the difference. Fearing the loss of their jobs during the Great Recession, the UAW made a series of concessions—including the implementation of the tiered hiring system and the removal of cost-of-living adjustments—whose effects are being seen most dramatically now after a period of high inflation. While it is hard to know whether these concessions could have been avoided without UAW members losing their jobs, they have not aged well: several Local 422 members the Indy spoke with saw it as a case of the UAW leadership “selling out” its future members and emphasized that they had voted against that contract. 

This March, though, Shawn Fain was elected UAW President after campaigning to stamp out corruption and to stop making concessions to automakers, marking a profound shift in rhetoric and vision after decades of UAW leaders trying to work cordially with employers. The current “Stand Up Strike” led by Fain consciously aims to reject the UAW’s recent practices and explicitly invokes the UAW’s historical trait of disobedience, which seems not to have disappeared but merely skipped a generation. This “break the rules” attitude is first evident in charismatic and incendiary social media posts and a frank approach in interviews and livestreams, in which Fain has accused Big Three CEOs of lying and tossed paper copies of their contract offers in trash cans. 

While replicating old strategies of solidarity and disruption, today’s UAW is also employing unprecedented tactics: rather than have everyone strike at once, leadership has been intentional and sparing, announcing which plants are to strike the day of: “The strategy is to create as much chaos as possible for the company, so they won’t see where things are coming,” said Brandon Mancilla, director of UAW Region 9A—comprising New England, New York, and Puerto Rico. The union has thus far refrained from striking at some of the Big Three’s most important plants, such as those that produce lucrative vehicles like the Ford F-150, instead strategically choosing particular plants like Mansfield. Keeping critical factories open means that the UAW keeps the threat to close them in play. Last week, for instance, 8,700 UAW members were told to strike at Ford’s most profitable plant, Kentucky Truck Plant in Louisville, immediately after Ford had opened a bargaining meeting with an unimproved offer. So far, this unorthodox strategy seems to be working. Victories touted by Fain include GM offering to add electric-battery-plant workers to the UAW contract and GM and Ford offering to reinstate cost-of-living-adjustments.       

The success of the UAW strike in Mansfield and beyond is part of a labor resurgence nation-wide, the most promising a majority of U.S. residents have seen in their lifetimes. After other recent labor wins—like the International Brotherhood of Teamsters securing significant gains in their contract negotiations with UPS this August—it seems clear that the unions can and will gain ground in the 21st century and that labor struggles, once seen as mostly a thing of the past, are alive and well. 

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Justice as Fairness

At 550 Forbes Blvd. in Mansfield, the message on the picket line kept coming back to one thing: fairness. This July, Stellantis reported that it made a record $12.1 billion in profit in just the first six months of 2023. CEO Carlos Tavares earned $24.8 million in salary in 2022, 365 times more than his average Stellantis employee. These vast profits come off the back of concessions made by UAW members in 2008 to try to keep Chrysler (now Stellantis) and others from going bankrupt. Since then, employees haven’t gotten the cost-of-living raises they had before, and Local 422 members say that the 6.54 percent average raises they have received haven’t nearly protected against a 20 percent increase in the cost of living since 2019. According to Paul Gado, “a lot of people look at us and they say, ‘Oh they’re union. They just want to make more money and have a four-day work week.’ It has nothing to do with that at all. It’s about being fair.”    

The unity being fostered in Local 422, between long-tenured Stellantis employees and newer ones, between those that grew up in Mansfield watching their father and uncle go to work for the same company, and those that have transferred from Texas and Illinois, and between those in parts distribution in Mansfield and their fellow UAW members across the nation, comes from something more than the desire to earn better wages or get a guaranteed pension. This is not to say that these material demands are unimportant. But the demand to unite and support workers of all stripes that led to the founding of the UAW in 1936—and spurred the union to pay for buses to take people to the March on Washington in 1963—demonstrates the same commitment that members of Local 422 have to build far-reaching solidarity.

As Paul Gado told the Indy, “I feel we’re out here for a reason, not just to fight for us, but for future employees that want to come in here and earn a livable wage.”  Time will tell whether they get all their demands. But whether or not they get the raise they deserve, it seems Local 422 in Mansfield will be better off having joined the UAW Stand-Up-Strike, if only because they are part of the most powerful labor movement that has been seen in decades.  

BEN BALINT-KURTI B’23.5 mostly rides his bike anyway.