Nearly 1,000 UAW workers walked off the job at the Dauch Corp factory that makes axles for the Chevrolet Silverado and GMC Sierra, just as GM prepares to add a sixth production day at its assembly plant
Nearly 1,000 UAW workers struck at a Dauch Corp axle plant in Three Rivers, Michigan, threatening production of GM’s Silverado and Sierra pickup trucks. Workers’ wages were cut from $29/hour to $22/hour during the 2008 crisis and have barely recovered in 18 years.TL;DR
Nearly 1,000 unionised workers at a Dauch Corp plant in Three Rivers, Michigan, walked off the job at midnight on Sunday after the United Auto Workers declared an unfair labour practice strike over stalled contract negotiations. The factory makes axles for the Chevrolet Silverado and GMC Sierra pickup trucks, two of General Motors’ most profitable vehicles, and any prolonged disruption could ripple through GM’s truck supply chain within days.
The timing is particularly acute. GM’s Flint Assembly plant, which builds both pickups, is scheduled to add a sixth day of weekly production in June to meet demand. A parts shortage from Three Rivers would force the Flint plant to slow or halt operations just as GM is trying to accelerate output. The vulnerability mirrors what the technology industry experienced during Samsung’s chip factory strike threat, where a single supplier bottleneck could cascade through an entire production chain.
The central dispute is pay. Workers at the Three Rivers plant made up to $29 an hour before the 2008 financial crisis, when they accepted cuts to keep the factory open. Eighteen years later, the top rate has recovered to just $22 an hour after a five-year wage progression, a $4 increase over nearly two decades. The UAW is pushing for $30 an hour, which would still be a dollar less than the pre-crisis peak in nominal terms and significantly less in real terms after inflation.
UAW President Shawn Fain authorised the strike after Dauch Corp failed to present what the union considered a fair contract before the expiration deadline. Local news reported that workers had voted overwhelmingly to authorise strike action in May, with UAW Local 2093 members citing years of stagnant wages while the vehicles their parts support generate billions in revenue for GM.
“These workers made sacrifices to keep this plant open in 2008,” the UAW said in a statement. The question of how profits from high-demand products are shared with the workers who make them is not unique to the auto industry, but the gap between $22-an-hour axle workers and the price tags on the trucks those axles go into makes the disparity especially visible.
The Silverado and Sierra are critical to GM’s financial performance. Full-size pickup trucks generate some of the highest profit margins in the US auto industry, often exceeding $10,000 per vehicle. Any disruption to their production directly impacts GM’s bottom line and dealer inventory levels.
Dauch Corp, the successor to American Axle & Manufacturing, operates as a key supplier in GM’s truck platform. Unlike diversified suppliers that serve multiple automakers, the Three Rivers plant’s output is tightly coupled to GM’s truck programme, a concentration risk similar to what consumer electronics firms face when a single factory handles a critical component for a flagship product.
GM has not publicly commented on how long Flint Assembly could continue operating without axle shipments from Three Rivers. In the 2019 UAW strike against GM, the company lost approximately $3.6 billion in revenue over 40 days. A targeted supplier strike could inflict disproportionate damage relative to the number of workers involved.
The strike arrives two and a half years after the UAW’s landmark 2023 Stand Up Strike against all three Detroit automakers, which secured significant wage increases and cost-of-living adjustments for workers at GM, Ford, and Stellantis plants. But the gains from that contract did not extend to workers at supplier companies like Dauch Corp, who often perform physically demanding work for substantially lower wages than assembly-line employees at the automakers themselves.
The Fain-led UAW has been expanding its organising efforts beyond the traditional Big Three, targeting suppliers, EV battery plants, and non-union automakers. As the auto industry invests in new manufacturing models for electric vehicles, the question of whether supplier workers share in the industry’s profitability is becoming a recurring pressure point.
For GM, the immediate concern is practical: keeping Silverado and Sierra production running while a single-source axle supplier is shut down. For the UAW, the strike tests whether the leverage it demonstrated against the automakers in 2023 can extend to the supplier tier. Recent labour settlements in the technology sector suggest that the current environment favours workers in essential manufacturing roles, but Dauch Corp’s financial position as a smaller supplier may limit what it can offer compared to what a company of GM’s size could absorb.
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