WENTZVILLE — Workers at the General Motors plant in Wentzville have voted down what union officials have described as a record contract offer.
Still, nationally, votes to approve the contract had pulled ahead as of Wednesday evening.
Members at the United Auto Workers Local 2250 in Wentzville were among several plants to reject the agreement, with about 1,600 here voting against the contract, and 1,400 in favor.
"Some said, 'It's a great contract' — just not exactly what they wanted to see," said Katie Deatherage, president of Local 2250. "They think we can go back and get more."
Though local union chapters hold separate, staggered elections, GM workers vote to approve or reject contract offers as a national unit. If approved nationally, union-represented Wentzville employees would work under the new contract.
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Final results are expected as early as Thursday afternoon, when local chapters' results are officially due to the UAW. As of 6 p.m. Wednesday, the UAW vote tracker showed workers nationwide approving the contract so far, with 54% in favor and 46% opposed. But results from nine plants were still pending.
The strike has been one of the boldest union campaigns in recent years, idling tens of thousands of auto workers for weeks, winning double-digit wage increases, and carving, at one point, hundreds of millions of dollars each week out of GM revenues.
If ratified, the almost five-year-long contracts would give GM workers general wage increases of at least 25%, plus cost-of-living bumps.
Deatherage said she was not altogether surprised by the results of the vote at Wentzville. Some workers expressed that they wanted to see the wage increase up front, rather than spread out over the length of the contract, and pension and retiree health care are perennially topics of concern.
"Thankfully, they have a way to use their voice, and their vote, and they did so," she said.
Glenn Kage, political director and former president of UAW Local 2250, said that in his 40 years in labor unions, he has “never seen such a lucrative contract.” He said he had publicly supported the agreement, and voted in favor of it.
Kage said he suspected the deal may have faltered in Wentzville because workers’ expectations were so high going into negotiations. Some hoped to achieve every one of the big, audacious goals the UAW outlined at the outset of bargaining — but negotiations don’t work that way, Kage said, and no labor agreement is ever perfect.
The union employed a new strategy in this round of negotiations with the Big Three automakers — GM, Ford and Stellantis. For decades, when labor agreements approached their expirations, the UAW focused on talks with one company, and used that agreement as a template for the others, a so-called “pattern bargaining” strategy.
This time, the union went on strike at all three companies — but only at specific plants. The union called on more plants to join the strike as time went on, the cadence depending on progress with negotiations.
UAW President Shawn Fain called the new format a “stand-up strike,” an homage to the “sit-down strikes” of 1936 and 1937, when auto workers sat down at a GM plant in Flint, Michigan, and refused to leave.
The UAW’s approach seemed designed to keep the companies guessing, and foil any efforts to stockpile parts or otherwise plan ahead. Fain didn’t announce the first plants to walk out until two hours before the strike began, and in the days leading up, workers and experts alike were left guessing whether the UAW would target large, money-making plants like Wentzville, or execute a “bottleneck strike” by walking out at smaller plants that supply the larger ones.
Kage, who was president of the Wentzville union chapter during the strike in 2019, said he thinks the new strategy will change the way the UAW handles contracts with the Big Three automakers going forward.
The walkout this year drew unprecedented public support and attention, including visits in Michigan from President Biden and U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt. The Wentzville workers hosted a rally with U.S. Reps. Cori Bush, D-St. Louis, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y.
U.S. Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., also visited.
“We haven’t seen support like that as long as I can remember,” Kage said. “Overwhelming public support, overwhelming political support. This was a big deal.”
Around 4,100 people work at GM's assembly plant in Wentzville — one of the company's largest U.S. sites — 3,700 of them represented by UAW Local 2250.
UAW Local 2250 in Wentzville was on strike longer than any other union chapter in the sprawling walkout of UAW members at GM, Ford and Stellantis. Workers walked off the job and onto the picket lines the night of Sept. 14, when the labor agreement expired, and did not leave until GM reached a tentative deal on Oct. 30, days after similar deals with automakers Ford and Stellantis.
The plant resumed regular production shortly after the tentative deal was reached, and most workers were back on the job within a couple of days.
Workers at Ford and Stellantis are also voting on the companies’ tentative agreements this week, and those votes were on track to pass by wider margins, as of Wednesday evening.
As of 6 p.m., Stellantis hourly workers were at 72% approval, with 11 plants’ results still pending, and Ford hourly workers were at 66% approval, with 12 plants’ results pending. Should the contracts fail at one or two companies, but pass elsewhere, the UAW will face questions about how to return to the bargaining table on any rejected deals.
During the 2019 strike, the GM contract was approved by 57% of members nationwide. In Wentzville it passed by even wider margins, with approval from 64% of production workers and 70% of skilled trades workers. That contract included a commitment for a $1.5 billion investment in the plant, which was recently completed, to ready it to make the next generation of GM's midsize pickup trucks.
Passing motorists honk their horns in support of striking UAW union members walking the picket line outside of the Wentzville GM plant on Friday, Sept. 15, 2023. Video by David Carson, dcarson@post-dispatch.com
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