WENTZVILLE, Mo.—Days after the United Auto Workers expanded the union’s strike against the U.S. automakers beyond plants in Missouri, Michigan and Ohio, workers on the picket lines outside the General Motors plant in Wentzville got a boost from a pair of members of Congress Sunday.

Rep. Cori Bush, D-St. Louis and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-Bronx rallied with union workers and their supporters at the Local 2250 hall near the GM campus, before joining workers outside the gates of the plant.

What You Need To Know

  • Workers at the Wentzville plant that builds mid-size trucks and full size vans like the Chevy Colorado and Express and the GMC Canyon and Savan, have been on strike since 11 p.m. Sept. 14, as the UAW looks for better pay and benefits and to get back concessions made as part efforts to save the automotive industry in 2008

  • The automakers say they will spend vast amounts of capital in the coming years to continue to build combustion-engine vehicles, while at the same time designing electric vehicles and building battery and assembly plants for the future, and can’t afford to be saddled with significantly higher labor costs

  • According to GM, the Wentzville plant had roughly 4,000 employees as of late June

  • Friday the UAW announced it would walk out of 38 more General Motors and Stellantis parts distribution centers. None are in Missouri, although the strike led GM to idle a factory in Kansas City, KS

Workers at the Wentzville plant that builds mid-size trucks and full size vans like the Chevy Colorado and Express and the GMC Canyon and Savan, have been on strike since 11 p.m. Sept. 14, as the UAW looks for better pay and benefits and to get back concessions made as part efforts to save the automotive industry in 2008. As of late June, the plant employed 4,114 workers.

“Your demands are not radical, they’re reasonable,” Bush whose district neighbors the 2nd Congressional district where the Wentzville plant stands, told the audience. “You shouldn’t have to strike for ‘em. Higher wages, paid time off, medical benefits for retirees and pensions are not radical demands. Those are benefits that every single worker deserves,” she said.

 

 

The companies have rebuffed the union’s demands as too expensive. They say they will spend vast amounts of capital in the coming years to continue to build combustion-engine vehicles, while at the same time designing electric vehicles and building battery and assembly plants for the future, and can’t afford to be saddled with significantly higher labor costs.

Ocasio-Cortez accused automotive executives of “insane levels of excess” at the expense of the industry’s workforce.

“When they say that prices have to go up to accommodate treating workers right we say that it’s their greed and excess that has to end,” she said, pointing to executive compensation. “When the Big 3 don’t want to take the value of their workers seriously then they have given workers no other option but to force them to value their labor with a stand up strike.”

 

 

 

Friday the UAW announced it would walk out of 38 more General Motors and Stellantis parts distribution centers. Another 5,600 workers joined the strike — meaning that about 13% of the union’s 146,000 members are now on the picket lines.

President Joe Biden plans to visit a picket line in Michigan Tuesday, and the stops Sunday by the members of Congress in Wentzville follow those made by several political candidates for offices ranging from Missouri Governor to the U.S. Senate. 

“It just shows that we are recognized and we are supported and that’s what we want. We want to be supported. We’re glad that our community, our representatives and everybody they want what we want and they’re going to help us fight for it,” said Matthew Bergman, a striking autoworker who has been at the Wentzville plant for roughly nine years.

“Morale’s super high. We’re ready to fight. We’re strong. We know what we want,” he said.