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GENERAL MOTORS WORKERS have put up with a lot over the past decade; the massive United Auto Workers (UAW) strike that kicked off late Sunday night has been a long time coming. The root cause of this week’s action predates the sweeping wave of labor actions of 2018—it really stretches back to 2007, when, following a 73,000-strong two-day strike, GM workers swallowed a number of brutal concessions on wages and other important issues and agreed to head back to the factory floor to ensure the survival of the company. A year later, the economy had crashed, and General Motors was free-falling into bankruptcy. The government bailed them out to the tune of about $50 billion, and yet layoffs have remained a regular occurrence since. In 2009, GM announced that 10,000 workers would lose their jobs; 2016 saw the company cut 2,000 workers in Michigan and Ohio. In 2018, despite banking $8.1 billion globally, GM announced plans to close down five U.S. facilities—including the iconic Lordstown plant in Canton, Ohio—and cut some 14,000 jobs by 2020.
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