The Will Lehman campaign will hold a closing rally on Sunday, November 6 at 2:00 p.m. EDT. You can register to participate Sign up here. More information about the campaign is below WillForUAWPresident.org to find.
Auto workers in Indiana on Tuesday expressed their support for United Auto Workers (UAW) presidential candidate Will Lehman. They have reported extensively on their working conditions and experiences with the UAW bureaucracy. A campaign team visited the General Motors metal stamping plant in Marion and the Allison transmission complex in Indianapolis.
The small industrial towns of central Indiana (Muncie, Anderson, Kokomo) played a crucial role in the mass industrial strikes that led to the formation of the UAW in the 1930s. Militant battles took place here for several decades. Inspired by the Flint, Michigan sit-in of 1936-1937, workers occupied General Motors’ Delco Remy and Guide Lamp plants in Anderson, defying both GM’s Black Legion thugs and martial law and the occupation of the United States City by the National Guard.
For the past 40 years, however, the UAW has engaged in a brutal attack on jobs, living standards and working conditions in the region.
Lehman’s supporters spoke to GM workers at the Marion Stamping Plant, where 758 workers make metal parts for GM vehicles. As recently as 2014, the plant had 1,600 workers.
Once an industrial hub, like other Indiana automotive towns, Marion has been devastated by decades of downsizing and wage cuts. As early as 2017, one in four residents of Marion lived in poverty. Almost half (45 percent) of young people between the ages of 12 and 17 live below the poverty line.
Workers were thrilled to hear about Lehman’s campaign and his call to defend jobs and gains. A worker approached the campaigners and said, “I’ve been waiting for you to come. I voted for Will and followed his campaign. I saw his supporters were down in Spring Hill, Tennessee. The pay scales are ridiculous and they have to go.” He grabbed a stack of leaflets to distribute around the plant and stuck a poster on the bulletin board at the entrance.
A veteran worker with 24 years of auto industry experience described the Marion plant as a “melting pot” of workers who had come from other GM plants that had already closed and had seen mass layoffs there: “We have people here from Hamilton, Ohio ), Fort Wayne, Indiana, Bowling Green, Kentucky, Mansfield, Ohio, Janesville, Wisconsin, Grand Rapids, Michigan, and the GM Indianapolis Stamping Plant.”
He was there when General Motors spun off the Delphi parts division in 1999, which then filed for bankruptcy in 2007, destroying the wages, pensions and working conditions of 42,000 former GM employees. “When I was at Delphi, they cut our wages in half from $30 an hour to $15, and the UAW allowed that.”
The worker also spoke about the experiences of the GM stamping workers in Indianapolis, about 140 kilometers away. In 2011, GM closed its Indianapolis stamping plant, eliminating 650 jobs. The workers had previously rejected the UAW-backed request that the company accept a 50 percent pay cut in exchange for a buyer for the plant. Referring to the workers’ militant struggle, the veteran commented, “The guys here told me they kicked the UAW International officials out of the congregation because they asked them to take a pay cut.”
Another worker described the indifference of local UAW officials to conditions at the stamping plant. “You can’t even get them on the phone: they’re sleeping.”
A miller added, “The UAW does not oppose management. The members of the works council always say: ‘They’re allowed to do that’, and the company management simply does what it wants. They have merged skilled worker positions and cut jobs. Now they want to turn welders into press workers. We don’t know if that’s because of electric vehicles or why else. There’s a shortage of skilled workers because they outsourced everything and didn’t hire enough apprentices. The press workers are the only ones qualified to operate the presses, but now they want the line workers to do it. I told them I wasn’t going to do it and said, ‘You have to train some. Oh, I forgot, you guys don’t even know how to do that’.”
He went on to describe managerial safety breaches committed with the connivance of local union officials: “They want to be ‘low cost and efficient’ but they put us at risk by doing so. They say that if you’re trained to operate a small gantry crane, you’re qualified enough to operate a large bridge crane. Management has lost their minds. These cranes move molds that weigh 50 tons. If they move just a few inches in the wrong direction, they can kill or seriously injure someone. The company and the union say ‘safety first’, but that’s all nonsense. We don’t have a union here.”
In January 2021, a worker at the plant was crushed by a 3.5-ton piece of steel wall when it fell from a malfunctioning forklift.
Lehman supporters also spoke to workers at the Allison Transmission Plant in Indianapolis. In 2007, GM sold its Allison commercial and military transmission business to the Carlyle Group and Onex Corporation for approximately $5.6 billion. This included seven manufacturing facilities in Indianapolis employing 3,400 workers. They manufacture automatic transmissions for medium and heavy commercial vehicles. The plant also makes transmissions for tanks and other armored vehicles used by the US military.
One worker said he voted for Will because “we need a change.” He confirmed that the plant employs a large number of lower-wage workers, adding, “I know that he [Will] talks about eliminating the wage gap. And I think we should too. They hire workers for under $15 an hour. That’s crazy. This company has had record profits in recent years.” Responding to Will’s call for the workforce to remove decision-making power from the UAW officials, he said, “I agree. The UAW, I think, is a fraudulent gang.”
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Scott, a worker who has worked at the plant for more than four decades, described the changes he has witnessed: “The old workers are all settled, but the new ones don’t get pensions or good wages. None of us have had inflation compensation for years [COLA] receive. The union negotiated a six-year deal, and it’s expiring while we’re in recession. We have given up all our bargaining power. With a starting wage of $15, the company can’t even find job applicants. Amazon pays more.”
He continued, “GM sold us out in 2007. We haven’t had a pay rise in 15 years. At some point we will have to go on strike. We voted 97.2 percent to reject the last collective agreement, but they pushed through the agreement anyway. Now we are forced to work two Saturdays in a row, and for many, Sunday is their only day off. The aim of the union would actually be to protect us and represent our interests. But the higher officials in the union don’t give a damn. We are the ones making the product and generating the profits.”
Another worker said: “I voted for Will yesterday. The union gives too much power to the company. The company tells the union what to do. There is no complaints procedure. The complaints are just childish. I worked at Ford for 20 years and was a shop steward there. This union here is completely different. It is owned by the company. Ford shut down in 2011. Then came the GM stamping plant, the Chrysler foundry, Harvester and all the big plants. I am concerned about this work. I hope I can still work until I retire. But then there’s the next generation that I’d like to leave something to, but I don’t know how.”
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First, the worker expressed hope that chip shortages and rising tensions with China and Russia could prompt companies to “bring jobs back to the United States.”
However, he immediately gave in when Lehman supporters told him that Will was fighting for the international unity of all workers against the global corporations.
“I think that would be great. In this way we must all come to the same level. I mean we need that. We all have to stick together,” he said. “Whether we are in Mexico or Japan or wherever. If we all want to be car workers, we all have to stand together, we have to stand together in solidarity.”
The Will Lehman campaign will hold a closing rally on Sunday, November 6 at 2:00 p.m. EDT. You can register to participate Sign up here. More information about the campaign can be found at WillForUAWPresident.org.