Lee Harris writes for the American Prospect:
One of the more notable outcomes of the tentative contract agreement between the United Auto Workers and the Big Three automakers, which earned workers 25 percent wage increases over four years, is the fate of a 5 million square-foot Stellantis plant in Belvidere, Illinois.
As recently as 2019, the plant employed 5,464 workers on three shifts building the Jeep Cherokee. But the Belvidere plant has been idle since February, when Stellantis laid off nearly all of the remaining 1,200 workers at the plant.
As a result of negotiations, the Belvidere plant will be reopened and even expanded, with Stellantis agreeing to produce a mid-sized truck there, as well as add an electric battery assembly line. “We’re bringing back both combustion vehicle and battery jobs to Belvidere,” UAW president Shawn Fain said in a Facebook Live presentation. […]
It is rare that a contract negotiation in any industrial manufacturing sector leads to the reopening of a shuttered plant. In addition, the UAW negotiated a clause that could stop such closures in the future, by giving the union the right to strike any of the Big Three companies across its facilities if a plant is closed.
Several longtime Belvidere workers, including [Matt] Frantzen, attributed the reopening to the democratic leadership and tactics of the Unite All Workers for Democracy reform slate led by Fain, who has reshaped the union since assuming office in March.
Frantzen, who has worked at the plant since 1994, was elected in May to lead the local on a long-shot campaign pitch to reopen the idled plant. Shortly after assuming the office, he got a call from Fain’s office, which at first he thought was a joke.
UAW leadership invited Frantzen to meet with U.S. President Joe Biden on an upcoming visit, and detail Belvidere’s needs. The experience was surreal, Frantzen told the Prospect. As he spoke to the president about the membership of Local 1268, he said, Biden’s staff took notes.
The previous leadership of the UAW, he added, would never have considered allowing that meeting to occur.
“In the situation Belvidere was in, I would have been the last person that would have been asked to go do something like this. It really was a black eye to the UAW. How do you go out and organize facilities, when right under your own umbrella, you’re idling and closing plants?” Frantzen said. “That’s one thing that’s refreshing about this new leadership. They want the reactions, the emotion, from the membership. They don’t have a problem with the good, the bad, and the ugly.”
Read more in the American Prospect.