LANSING, Mich. (WLNS) — As UAW workers at the GM Lansing Delta Township assembly plant join the nationwide autoworker strikes Friday, they say they always knew this was a possibility.
Still, they had no idea until Friday morning they would be walking off the job and onto the picket line.
The Delta Township GM campus is made up of both the assembly plant and the regional stamping site. Today, only the assembly plant workers are striking.
At noon, several cars drove out, honking horns, and soon the picket signs began to pop up at intersections around the plant.
Jennifer Snook has been working here for 15 years. She said her pay was cut by $9 per hour back in 2008. This strike is making her anxious, but she hopes to get back all the things she lost more than a decade ago.
“You know, I had butterflies in my stomach,” said UAW member Snook, who’s on strike this week in Lansing. “Pretty much everyone did on my team and on the line, you know? They were, like, ‘What’s next? What’s next? But we don’t want to strike, but we do what we have to do. I’m here, I’m here to support the middle class; this is what it’s about.”
Union leaders say this goes beyond the 2008 financial crisis, and that many contracts have yet to get members back to that level of pay and benefits.
We’ll have much more on what they say led up to these multiple strikes around the country.
