The UAW said it will strike at 12:01 a.m. Monday after American Axle failed to offer what it called a fair contract before a midnight deadline.
UAW Local 2093 issued a news release late Sunday saying the union would launch a strike at the Three Rivers plant at 12:01 a.m. with workers walking out to picket. American Axle is a major General Motors Co. supplier.
Additional pickets, the union release said, would launch at 6 a.m. Monday at 1 Manufacturing Way in Three Rivers.
Earlier in May, workers authorized a strike if the company failed to meet their demands for higher wages, profit sharing, better healthcare and stronger retirements before the contract lapsed, Wood-TV 8 reported Sunday.
The union said workers at America Axle/Dauch in 2008 “took major sacrifices to save the facility form closure during the Great Recesssion.”
“Today, eighteen years later, workers are still yet to make up all that lost ground, with wages at American Axle currently topping out at $22 an hour after a five-year progression, with inflation-adjusted wages cut in half from their pre-2008 levels,” the union said.
It is the first strike by Local 2093 since 2008. That 89-day strike, union leadership and its membership say, was a watershed moment in the relationship between the union and AAM, wilcoxnewspapers.com reported Sunday, which added that representatives from American Axle and Dauch Corp. did not immediately respond to a request for comment Sunday.
.
This article originally appeared on The Detroit News: UAW set to launch strike against American Axle early Monday
Reporting by The Detroit News / The Detroit News
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
