UAW members strike at General Motors plant in Texas

(CN) —Around 5,000 employees of a General Motors plant in Texas left their posts on the assembly line and joined the picket line Tuesday, responding to a call by the United Auto Workers to amp up pressure on the company.

The factory in Arlington is GM’s largest in the U.S. and manufactures the Cadillac Escalade, Chevrolet Tahoe and GMC Yukon, three large SUVs that are some of the Detroit-based automaker’s most profitable vehicles.

Since the UAW started its strikes on Sept. 15 against GM, Ford and Stellantis at three plants, it has grown to around 46,000 workers at eight factories and more than 35 parts warehouses.

GM blasted the Arlington strike as “unnecessary and irresponsible" and said the work stoppages had cost it $800 million so far this year.

Its CEO Mary Barra said on an earnings call Tuesday the company would not give in to the UAW’s demands to improve on its offer to raise employees’ pay by 23% over four years, which would elevate the payrate of its veteran workers to $40.39 per hour, roughly $84,000, not including overtime and bonus pay.

“The current offer is the most significant that GM has ever proposed to the UAW,” Barra said Tuesday in a letter to investors.

“They’ve demanded a record contract — and that’s exactly what we’ve offered for weeks now: a historic contract with record wage increases, record job security and world-class health care.”

Ford, Stallentis and GM have blamed the walkouts for their recent layoffs of around 5,000 workers, though not at factories grappling with UAW strikes.

Barra warned sweetening the proposal would put GM and workers’ jobs at risk.

But her concerns were undermined by the company’s announcement it had made a net profit of $3.1 billion from July through September.

While those earnings are 7% less for GM than the same period last year, UAW President Shawn Fain said the company’s haul had surpassed Wall Street analysts’ expectations.

Ford and Stellantis have made similar offers to GM, and employment experts say the UAW should not expect to get much more.

GM has sold the most vehicles of any car company in the U.S. every year since 1931, except for 2021 when Toyota took the title, only for GM to reclaim it last year.

Despite that sustained success, the company lost billions of dollars and filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy after car sales tanked due to the 2008 U.S. financial crisis. It was struggling even before that low point, announcing plans in 2005 to close parts of 12 factories and lay off 30,000 people.

Some longtime GM workers say the company, which returned to profitability thanks in part to a massive post-Great Recession bailout from the federal government, owes them for concessions they agreed to in a labor contract GM and the UAW signed in October 2007.

That deal ended cost of living wage increases, stuck new hires with 401(k) plans instead of pensions, instituted a four-year wage freeze and a 3% cost-sharing mandate for health insurance.

UAW members who work for GM say those compromises along with inflation have left them struggling to pay their bills.

The walkout at GM’s Arlington plant comes one day after 6,800 UAW members walked out of a Stellantis factory in Sterling Heights, Michigan, shutting down the plant which produces Dodge Ram pickup trucks.

Follow @cam_langford