0:23
- ABC News
- September 27, 2019
GM back to paying for strikers' health insurance
Union leaders accuse them of "toying" with their families.
0:23
Earlier this week, it appeared the two sides were on track to reach a deal.
Union leaders have argued that GM workers deserved a bigger slice of the company's profits, which they say have totaled $35 billion in North America over the last three years. Union members are calling for fair wages, saying for every $1 a GM employee made, CEO Mary Barra made $281.
They are also fighting to keep their health insurance plan, which requires to pay about 4% of the costs, as well as an improved pension and assurances that GM -- the maker of Buick, Cadillac, GMC and Chevrolet -- will not close four plants in Maryland, Ohio and Michigan.
The strike comes nearly a year after GM announced it was laying off 15 percent of its salaried workers and shuttering five plants in North America.
For Keondris Howell, an assembly line worker at a GM plant in Flint, Michigan, he is striking because as a temp he said there “has not been a pathway from coming in as a child to becoming a full time employee” and as a temp, he doesn’t “get any benefits.”
“We do everything that everyone else does. We do everything that nobody else wants to do. We work more days a year because we don't have any vacation time. We don't get any benefits,” Howell told ABC News’ “Start Here” podcast.
Howell said that even when his son passed away four years ago, he had to go straight back to work even before he buried him because there “was no bereavement.”
“Before I even buried him I had to be back at work because I still got bills to pay, my family still had to eat,” he said.
ABC News' Alex Perez and Whitney Lloyd contributed reporting.
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