Hudson GM workers ‘just waiting to get the call’ to join Big 3 strike

UAW members picketed at GM’s Hudson facility in October 2019.

Autoworkers at General Motors’ parts-distribution facility in Hudson, Wis., are not on strike today, but union members say they are ready to walk if their international union directs them to the picket line.

“We’re on standby right now, just waiting to get the call,” United Autoworkers (UAW) Local 722 President Steve Frisque said. “If we have to go out, we’ll be ready to go.”

The UAW’s contracts at GM, Ford and Stellantis, covering about 146,000 workers, expired overnight, and the union responded by calling strikes at three of the automakers’ most profitable plants.

International union leaders succeeded in keeping the location of those strikes a secret, part of a new targeting strategy that the UAW hopes will maximize the impact of its strike fund. It means members of Local 722, who work in Hudson and at Ford’s parts facility in Menomonie, Wis., won’t know they’re going on strike until just before they walk off the job.

But if they do get the call, Frisque expects all 81 workers at the Hudson facility and all 42 in Menomonie to be on the picket line. Even though Wisconsin is a right-to-work state, Local 722 has full participation in its bargaining units.

“The thought of going on strike, it’s a little scary, but the older people are already taking the younger people under their wings so they know what it’s about,” Frisque said. “We’re unified and we’re ready to go out. We will walk that picket line for as long as it takes.”

Although the parts-distribution shops are small by comparison to Big 3 manufacturing facilities, the ripple effect of a potential strike in Hudson would extend to dealerships in 11 states.

“It would shut dealerships down,” Frisque said. “And unfortunately, it would hurt customers trying to get their cars fixed. But if it gets to the point where that’s what it takes to get GM to listen to us, then that’s what we might have to do.”

GM workers in Hudson went on strike four years ago over many of the same issues that have emerged as sticking points in current talks between the UAW and the Big 3, with union members seeking to claw back concessions made when automakers were on the brink of insolvency 15 years ago.

The contracts’ use of two-tiered wage scales is among those concessions autoworkers want scrapped. In Hudson, workers hired since 2007 are paid on a lower scale than so-called “legacy workers.”

The starting wage at the facility was $19 per hour in 2007, Frisque said. It’s $17 today.

“Working next to some guy in a union shop doing the same job and making two different wages – that’s not what the union was based on,” he said. “That’s what we’re trying to get rid of.”

Meanwhile, the Big 3 have netted $250 billion in profits over the last decade, and they are projected to add another $32 billion to their haul this year. CEO pay is up 40% over the same period.

“The idea was, when we gave those concession, that when GM became viable agan, started making money again, we’d get those things back,” Frisque said. “But we never have.”