It’s lonely on the Lordstown picket line.
Just ask Robert Potts, who manned Gate 4 at General Motors’ 6 million square-foot plant, which ended production in March and whose fate is a cause for striking UAW members. Potts was alone Tuesday until fellow striker Frank Sarna joined him.
“It was just me and him the whole day,” said Potts. “We were so happy when a car drove up. They had food, too, and we were so hungry.”
While other GM plants have a dozen or more strikers at each gate around the clock, putting the total number of picketers into the hundreds, Lordstown struggles to get 10, two at each of its five gates.
Only 13 people worked at the idle Lordstown plant in Ohio when, on Sept. 16, the UAW went on a nationwide strike. With so few folks going on strike there, finding people to populate the picket lines has proved challenging.
“We’re in a unique situation because we’re running a strike with a depleted membership. A lot of people had to transfer to other plants,” said Tim O’Hara, president of Local 1112 in Lordstown. “But we’re getting it done.”
Many of the hundreds of transferred workers and retirees are helping picket because they’re determined to take a stand, even it’s solitary.
More: Key sticking point: GM and UAW at odds over what will be made in America
More: UAW officer leading talks with GM is from the assembly line and ready to fight
Still hopeful
Lordstown built its last Chevrolet Cruze compact car in March, then the plant idled.
It was one of four U.S. plants that GM said last November it would indefinitely idle. The others are Detroit-Hamtramck and transmission plants in Warren and Baltimore. Detroit-Hamtramck still runs at a reduced level after Chevy Volt production ended, but GM has scheduled it to end production early next year.
GM’s initial proposal to the UAW on Sept. 14 offered to build a battery cell manufacturing facility near the Lordstown plant. The automaker is in talks to sell the facility to Lordstown Motors, an entity backed by electric-truck maker Workhorse. That would create a few hundred jobs, likely paying about $17 an hour, much less than a permanent UAW autoworker.
It’s a far cry from the nearly 4,500 workers who populated the plant in 2017. In its heyday in the early 1990s, GM revamped the compact car in Lordstown and employed about 10,600 people there.
The union wants a new GM vehicle allocated to Lordstown and the chance for its workforce to return one day. So Lordstown union members picket.
“We want to make sure that GM and the public knows we’re still out there and we’re still hopeful that we get another product out of the strike,” said O’Hara.
Tent town
Lordstown’s Gate 4 sits off the nearly desolate Hallock-Young Road on the east side of the plant. Interstate 80 runs parallel to the road, set up high, where passing cars sometimes notice the two, maybe three, strikers.
“Cars would beep at us a lot, and that was amazing,” said Potts. “The traffic on that highway energized us.”
Otherwise, it is quiet and isolated. The massive, once-jammed parking lot is barren.
Contract maintenance people work at the plant and are escorted in and out by police, said Potts. The site haunts him.
“I do look at the empty place and I say, ‘I used to park there,’” Potts said. “But the lot would be so full you had to circle and circle to find a spot to park.”
Manning the picket lines overnight is desolate solitude for the few hearty souls who settle into a pup tent for shelter. Retired Lordstown worker Charles Denision is one of those who often spends the night in a tent on picket duty. Unlike Potts, who gets $50 a day in strike pay, Denision and other retirees are strictly volunteers.
One of those retirees is Darwin Cooper, 72, who volunteers to man the picket lines from 8 a.m.-noon at least one day a week and works at the Local 1112 union hall another day each week. Seeing his former workplace barren evokes a feeling of betrayal, he said. So he’s determined to help win product back to boost the community.
“Everybody’s heart is broken,” said Cooper, who retired in 2006. “I’m up at 5 a.m. every morning just like I was going to work. It’s a little chilly at 8 a.m., but it’s important that we be there. There’s only 13 people actively working here and on strike.”
Likewise, Lordstown retiree Jim Devlin, 69, is pitching in his support.
“I haven’t been on the picket line because I have a bad knee, but I come to the union hall for support and signing people in and taking over coffee,” said Devlin, who worked 39 years on the assembly line at Lordstown. He spends eight to 14 hours a day four days a week at the Local 1112 union hall now, he said.
“I see this as a bigger issue than just General Motors,” said Devlin. “If GM keeps hiring temporary workers it’s just going to get worse and bleed into other industries. It’s not just the autoworkers, it’s for all the workers. I’d like to see my grandkids have a future. That’s what’s made America, the middle class and the union.”
‘Salty’ striker
Potts, 47, was laid off from his job at Lordstown in January 2016.
He decided to attend college under the U.S Department of Labor’s Trade Adjustment Assistance Program, he said. In July, he graduated with an associate of applied business degree in paralegal studies. He was job-searching when the strike hit, but he knew he needed to step up.
“I’m union, solid and I believe in the cause. We need to stand up for each other,” said Potts. “I started there as a temporary employee and I’m still salty about it.”
GM hired Potts in 2013 as a temp. It was two years before he got a permanent job. During his time as a temp, his 88-year-old grandmother, whom he lived with and cared for, died. His sister, a full-time permanent worker at Lordstown, got time off for bereavement. As a temp, Potts did not.
“I had to work the line the day of the funeral. I still remember that,” said Potts. “I should have been there with my family. But they would not give me an excused day off. If I had taken the day off, I would have lost my job.”
The UAW has made temporary workers a top agenda item in negotiations. The workers earn far less than permanent workers, but often do similar jobs. They can remain classified as temps for the lower wages and lesser benefits for years with no pathway to become permanent.
A reunion of sorts
About 1,600 UAW members worked at Lordstown when GM made its announcement to discontinue building the Cruze. Most have been transferred to plants in other states, yet many return to Lordstown to help on the picket lines when they can.
One of those is Jon Alexander, 46, who is either on the Lordstown picket line or helping strikers there in some other way for eight to 12 hours a day most days, he said.
Alexander had worked at Lordstown since 2005. Earlier this year, he transferred to GM’s Bay City Powertrain in Michigan. When he’s on the job, he stays with a friend in Tawas City, about 90 minutes north of Bay City on Lake Huron.
But his two kids, of whom he shares custody, live in Youngstown, near Lordstown. That means every weekend he drives 6.5 hours home.
“I never imagined in a million years that I’d have to worry about my job at GM and Lordstown,” said Alexander. “It was a gut-wrenching situation. Like most people here, this was our dream, the white-picket fence, family oriented dream.”
Alexander hopes that by winter, he can afford to move out of his friend’s home and rent an apartment closer to Bay City. He said his base pay is about $60,000, but he pays $2,000 in alimony and child support each month. And, he spends $500 a week in gas because of all the driving.
“They made us GM gypsies,” said Alexander. “How far does (GM CEO) Mary Barra have to travel to see her kids? We have to travel over 600 miles to see our kids.”
For those reasons, Alexander and the other transfers who’ve returned to Lordstown to help man the picket lines are motivated. He and Charles Denision do whatever is needed.
“We’ll go split wood for two to three hours and get in the truck or car and go to the picket line,” said Alexander. “Then after we’re done with that, we’ll do a coffee run and hit all five gates. There have been days where, between me and him, we’ve done 20 hours on the gates.”
He said the hardest time to fill gates is midnight to 8 a.m. Alexander and Denision have done that shift 10 times. The experience is mostly depressing and anxiety-riddled for many, said Alexander.
But for him, it is a chance to reconnect to his past. It is therapy, he said.
“My shop chairman has been there and shares stories with me. The fire chief is there every day. He worked in the plant,” said Alexander. “We have that solidarity. We call each other each day to say do you need this or that? It’s therapy for most of us because we’re back together.”
Contact Jamie L. LaReau at 313-222-2149 or jlareau@freepress.com. Follow her on Twitter @jlareauan. Read more on General Motors and sign up for our autos newsletter.
Read or Share this story: https://www.freep.com/story/money/cars/general-motors/2019/10/12/gm-uaw-strike-lordstown-lonely-pickets/3934388002/