49,000 Auto Workers Could Shut Down GM’s Plants at Midnight

A massive strike could cost the car maker $400 million a day.

General Motors employees demonstrate in Flint, Michigan.Jake May/AP

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.

At midnight, 49,000 members of the United Auto Workers union plan to go on strike at General Motors plants following the breakdown of contract talks. It will be the union’s first strike since a two-day shutdown in 2007 and could bring vehicle production at GM’s plants in the United States to a screeching halt. 

According to a statement released by the union on Sunday, the workers hope to secure “fair wages, affordable healthcare, a share of profits, job security, and a defined path to permanent seniority for temps.” (Full disclosure: Mother Jones’ employees, including myself, are members of the UAW.)

“We are standing up for our members and for the fundamental rights of working-class people of this nation,” Terry Dittes, the union’s vice president, told the Detroit Free Press. “Going into the bargaining season, our members have been very clear of what they will and will not accept in this contract.”

GM said the union’s decision to strike was “disappointing.” The company has good reason to be unhappy: A strike, the Associated Press reports, “would bring to a halt GM’s U.S. production, and would likely stop the company from making vehicles in Canada and Mexico as well.” It could lead to fewer options at car dealerships, “and it would make it impossible to build specially ordered cars and trucks.”

Kristin Dziczek, vice president of industry, labor, and economics at Ann Arbor’s Center for Automotive Research, told the Detroit Free Press a shutdown at this scale would cost GM about $400 million a day. “GM has enough inventory for a short strike of one or two weeks. After that, it starts to get painful.”

WE'LL BE BLUNT.

We have a considerable $390,000 gap in our online fundraising budget that we have to close by June 30. There is no wiggle room, we've already cut everything we can, and we urgently need more readers to pitch in—especially from this specific blurb you're reading right now.

We'll also be quite transparent and level-headed with you about this.

In "News Never Pays," our fearless CEO, Monika Bauerlein, connects the dots on several concerning media trends that, taken together, expose the fallacy behind the tragic state of journalism right now: That the marketplace will take care of providing the free and independent press citizens in a democracy need, and the Next New Thing to invest millions in will fix the problem. Bottom line: Journalism that serves the people needs the support of the people. That's the Next New Thing.

And it's what MoJo and our community of readers have been doing for 47 years now.

But staying afloat is harder than ever.

In "This Is Not a Crisis. It's The New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, why this moment is particularly urgent, and how we can best communicate that without screaming OMG PLEASE HELP over and over. We also touch on our history and how our nonprofit model makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there: Letting us go deep, focus on underreported beats, and bring unique perspectives to the day's news.

You're here for reporting like that, not fundraising, but one cannot exist without the other, and it's vitally important that we hit our intimidating $390,000 number in online donations by June 30.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. It's going to be a nail-biter, and we really need to see donations from this specific ask coming in strong if we're going to get there.

payment methods

WE'LL BE BLUNT.

We have a considerable $390,000 gap in our online fundraising budget that we have to close by June 30. There is no wiggle room, we've already cut everything we can, and we urgently need more readers to pitch in—especially from this specific blurb you're reading right now.

We'll also be quite transparent and level-headed with you about this.

In "News Never Pays," our fearless CEO, Monika Bauerlein, connects the dots on several concerning media trends that, taken together, expose the fallacy behind the tragic state of journalism right now: That the marketplace will take care of providing the free and independent press citizens in a democracy need, and the Next New Thing to invest millions in will fix the problem. Bottom line: Journalism that serves the people needs the support of the people. That's the Next New Thing.

And it's what MoJo and our community of readers have been doing for 47 years now.

But staying afloat is harder than ever.

In "This Is Not a Crisis. It's The New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, why this moment is particularly urgent, and how we can best communicate that without screaming OMG PLEASE HELP over and over. We also touch on our history and how our nonprofit model makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there: Letting us go deep, focus on underreported beats, and bring unique perspectives to the day's news.

You're here for reporting like that, not fundraising, but one cannot exist without the other, and it's vitally important that we hit our intimidating $390,000 number in online donations by June 30.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. It's going to be a nail-biter, and we really need to see donations from this specific ask coming in strong if we're going to get there.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate