UAW members who build General Motors' popular full-size pickups at Fort Wayne Assembly in Fort Wayne, Indiana, have voted to authorize a strike because of six or seven managers at the plant working on the assembly line in union-designated jobs

GM wanted UAW Local 2209 Shop Chairman Rich LeTourneau to sign a letter agreeing to keep those 253 people designated as part-time temporary employees. But LeTourneau had been negotiating to make those people full-time temporary employees, if not permanent employees, saying there were openings for them.

 When LeTourneau refused to sign a letter extending their status as part-time temporary employees, GM said it was required to release those 253 workers, citing provisions in the national UAW-GM contract. The people were let go on Sept. 30

GM then moved 42 seniority people from their jobs on first shift to assembly line jobs on second and third shifts, to fill in part of the void from losing the part-time temporary workers, which LeTourneau said violated the local contract.

"They're 50-year and 60-year-old men and women, GM stuck them on the worst jobs in the plants," LeTourneau said.

Strike not wanted, but 'this is our work'

GM has since moved those people back to first shift, but not to the jobs or departments to which they were originally assigned and had earned through years of seniority, he said.

But his real gripe centers on the company now allowing plant managers to do line repairs and other union-designated jobs rather fill those jobs by hiring full-time temporary or permanent workers.

"The minute these temporary employees left the plant they put all these managers in jobs and they won't stop doing it. There's a manager doing repairs right now on my line," LeTourneau said Thursday morning. "They are getting paid to manage and do our repair work. They do the cherry-picking jobs too, the ones that don't hurt them."

"I want management off my jobs. That's what I want," LeTourneau told the Free Press on Thursday morning. "They're doing repairs, inspection, hot parts chasing. They're doing everything they can to keep the line running and those used to be our jobs."

According to GM's website, it employs 4,149 people at the plant where it builds more than 1,300 pickups a day.

https://www.freep.com/story/money/cars/general-motors/2024/10/31/uaw-strike-authorization-gm-pickup-plant-fort-wayne/75960528007/