UAW union just ordered 6,800 workers to strike a massive Ram truck facility

Channel 3000 News/CNN ^ | October 23, 2023 | CNN Staff

[Diana in Wisconsin]

The United Auto Workers union sent 6,800 Stellantis employees to the picket line Monday morning in a surprise, targeted strike at the company’s Ram truck facility.

The Sterling Heights Assembly Plant is Stellantis’ “largest plant and biggest moneymaker,” UAW said in a statement Monday. The plant, about a half-hour north of Detroit, in Sterling Heights, Michigan, produces the Ram 1500 pickup.

The union said the company, which makes vehicles under the Dodge, Ram, Jeep and Chrysler brands, has “the worst proposal on the table” in its negotiations on pay, converting temporary workers to full time and cost-of-living adjustments.

“Despite having the highest revenue, … the highest profit margins, and the most cash in reserve, Stellantis lags behind both Ford and General Motors in addressing the demands of their UAW workforce,” the UAW said.

The Ram pickup trucks are Stellantis’ best-selling vehicles in the US market. It sold 332,000 Ram pickups in the United States in the first nine months of this year. But it is not the only plant that builds the Ram 1500. They are also produced at a nonunion plant in Mexico, as well as another UAW-represented plant in Warren, Michigan. Stellantis does not disclose how many pickups come out of each plant, but Sterling Heights is the largest of the plants building the trucks.

This is the second “surprise” targeted strike in two weeks by the UAW. The first was at Ford on October 11, when the UAW went on strike at that automaker’s largest plant, the Kentucky Truck Plant in Louisville.

Stellantis formed in 2021 through the merger of Fiat Chrysler and European automaker PSA Group.

[GodAndCountryFirst]

Unions should be illegal. Period. No group of workers should be able to basically blackmail a corporation. Wages should be 100% determined by a global free market for labor.

I’ve said this before: Americans are spoiled. They expect their employers to pay them enough to buy a home and a car. That didn’t used to be the case. Ideally, your 40-hour job is just one of several income streams. Our great-great-grandparents took in laundry, peddled goods in carts and did odd jobs —ALL ON THEIR OWN TIME — to make ends meet. They didn’t expect everything to come from their employers.

Our forebears also lived in tenaments, or whatever they could pay for. They didn’t expect a house. And they didn’t complain.

This is why ALL manufacturerers should leave the country and not look back. NOBODY deserves $40 and benefits for doing factory work! And kids flipping burgers don’t deserve $15.

Also, people KNOW that the government won’t let them starve. So that alone kills 80% of their will to work. We need to return to the old ways. People now have too much money and time. It makes them feel entitled.