Just under 5 miles north of this very room stands General Motors’ newly rebranded Factory Zero, where workers are currently assembling vehicles that represent the next generation of GM’s products. While there are hundreds of workers assembling these at a standard Big 3 master agreement wage, there are also hundreds of our new siblings assembling batteries and moving materials throughout the facility who were hired in making a lower wage than almost 20 years ago. I don’t have to tell you we’ve had some inflation since then.
This is happening all over the country and will continue for the foreseeable future while these companies transition to EVs. This may not affect anyone in this room, but I want you to ask yourself: do we accept this for our union family? Would we accept that our children start off making only this much? $18 an hour today would only equal $11 an hour back in 2003. $18 an hour was a life changing wage back then for a lot of our new hires, but it’s middle-of-the-road today. Even their profit sharing payouts are pathetic in comparison. While it was announced on the news that their GM coworkers were getting $12,750, they found out a little later that they were only going to get a quarter of that amount, just under $3,200.
The big three auto workers receive 1 dollar in profit sharing for every million dollars these companies are making in profits. Our siblings working on EV batteries are only getting 25 cents per million. Mind you, these are profits, the amount these companies have after they’ve already paid our wages and other benefits.
We wonder why young people aren’t flocking to union meetings, or buying our cars, but it’s pretty simple. Join me in adopting this motion to bring our siblings working on EVs to the standard we’ve set.
By Chris Viola