UAW President Shawn Fain is blaming Stellantis for the death of a worker forced to leave its Belvidere, Ill. Plant and relocate to their Toledo, Ohio plant where he was killed on the job. The Auto Workers will fight, and if necessary, strike Stellantis if the company breaks its new union contract by not reopening and expanding the car plant at Belvidere, Ill., he promises.
Fain told former Belvidere workers, retirees, community members, and allies from all over central Illinois and elsewhere the strike would invoke one key win in the new pact: Allowing strikes over grievances and investment commitments—or lack of them.
Whatever happens with a possible strike it is already too late for a worker killed on the job at the Stellantis plant in Toledo, Ohio. Antonio Gaston, 53, died a horrible death on the job Wednesday afternoon at the Jeep factory there.
Gaston was never supposed to be in a situation where he could be killed at the Toledo plant. He and his family were ripped out of their normal life near the Belvidere, Illinois plant when Stellantis shut down operations there and he was transferred to Toledo.
The Toledo resident was working in the Stellantis Toledo Assembly Complex that builds Gladiator pickups on Wednesday afternoon when he was killed. The father of four, who had worked at Belvidere before being sent to the Toledo plant, had been doing his normal work, handling materials and deliveries to the assembly line where other workers used them to put together the vehicles.
UAW Local 12 said yesterday he was caught on something and that they were investigating, according to Local president Bruce Baumhower.
A GoFundMe set up to support Gaston’s family said he left behind his wife and four children. It had raised more than $16,000 by late Thursday afternoon.
Gaston had moved to Toledo after his home plant in Belvidere, Ill., was closed, UAW officials said, and more recently the rest of his family joined him. He had been with the company for about a dozen years.
“The memories we all have of ‘Tone’ are brightened by his permanent smile and joyous nature,” wrote Tru Parham, a Jeep union steward, on the fundraiser page. “We work to provide for our families and our fallen brother tragically didn’t make it home to his.”.
“The nicest guy”
“Everybody I talked to said he was the nicest (guy) they have ever worked with,” the union leader said. “That he just lifts your spirits because he’s just, no matter how bad you feel when you walked in the place from maybe a tough night or something, he brings a smile to everybody’s face.”
Matt Frantzen, the Local 1268 president representing the Belvidere Assembly Plant where Gaston previously was based, said during a rally in that Illinois city on Thursday that Gaston had “followed his job” to Local 12 and Toledo after it was cut in Belvidere.
The Belvidere plant, which most recently built the Jeep Cherokee, was shut down in early 2023. The union is pushing Stellantis to uphold its pledge to reopen the facility, which was the rally’s focus.
“(Gaston) was chasing his American dream to stay working, until this place got back up and going,” Frantzen said.
“You know, the fight we’re doing here, to try and reopen this, to get these people back home — all I thought about last night was, ‘This wouldn’t have happened if he was here,'” said the Illinois union official, tearing up.
Kevin Gotinsky, who oversees the UAW’s Stellantis department, also weighed in on the tragedy Thursday.
“These tragedies should not take place in our facilities,” he said. “They’re preventable. Nobody should ever lose their life going to work and not have the opportunity to go back to their families … We need to hold these companies accountable to any health and safety grievances, matters, and concerns.”
The pro-strike provision was specifically inserted in UAW’s contract with Stellantis, formerly FiatChrysler, precisely because the firm abruptly closed the profitable Belvidere plant just before contract talks began last year, Fain noted on August 22.
So the union filed a grievance on behalf of the Stellantis workers and their local. And eight other UAW Stellantis locals can do, too.
“Thousands of UAW members sacrificed on the picket line to win this contract, and we intend to enforce it, even if that means going back on strike,” the union said on its website. Filing the grievances would “make Stellantis keep their promise and protect good blue-collar American jobs.”
UAW achieved that win, and many more, by its Stand Up strike against the three Detroit automakers. Besides strikes over grievances and similar unilateral management moves, the union won takebacks of almost all the money members lost over the prior decade and a half.
Mandated the re-opening
It also won a specific provision mandating Stellantis reopen Belvidere, and manufacture electric vehicles and parts there, using UAW members wall-to-wall.
“I woke up today and I was mad as hell,” Fain told a packed house in the Illinois UAW Local 1268 hall. One reason was that Stellantis announced delays of one to three years in reopening parts of Belvidere. Those delays would take the ultimate reopening beyond the expiration date of the new pact, on May Day in three years.
That announcement, which Stellantis bosses blamed on “market conditions,” angered the workers, said Fain and other UAW leaders who spoke. “Keep the Promise!” is UAW’s theme. Management’s explanation “was complete B.S.,” said Fain.
If needed, to call Stellantis to account, he declared, its UAW members will strike, with the complete support of the union. “We’re dealing with a company resentful of our part.”
The grievance says Stellantis informed UAW “it will not launch the Belvidere Consolidated Mopar Mega Hub in 2024, it will not begin stamping operations for the Belvidere Mega Hub in 2025 and it will not begin production of a midsize truck in Belvidere in 2027.”
Stellantis’s “failure to plan for, fund and launch these programs constitute a violation of the U.S. Investment letter” in two specific contracts. “During 2023 national negotiations,” both “agreed to the investment plan for Belvidere to address job security concerns impacting bargaining unit members throughout the entire system. The company’s failure to honor its commitments in the U.S. Investment letter is a serious concern to all bargaining unit members.
“The union demands” Stellantis “rescind its decision to push back the above-referenced launches and immediately plan for and fund the Belvidere investments in order to comply with the agreed upon timeline for launching the Belvidere Mega Hub (2024), the Belvidere Stamping operation (2025) and Belvidere midsize truck production (2027).”
The fight over reopening Belvidere is not the first controversy swirling around the downstate Illinois plant. When the financier-caused Great Recession threw two of the Detroit-based auto firms—GM and FiatChrysler—into bankruptcy, imposing a two-tier wage system on the workers was one condition for federal loan guarantees for them.
And Belvidere was the first plant whose workers were forced into that split. It devastated the workers, the plant, and the city that depends on it. So the Belvidere workers actually had a triple win, or so they thought, in the new contract with Stellantis: Abolition of two tiers, reopening the plant, and expanding it to create electric vehicle parts, too.
Stellantis abruptly closed the profitable plant last year, with no reopening date at all, just before talks began with the UAW over a new pact.
Fain blamed Antonio Gaston’s unnecessary death on “greed, corporate greed” by Stellantis CEO Carlos Tavares. “Corporate greed is the problem,” Fain declared.
“Our goal is not to strike. Our goal is to bring jobs and products back to Belvidere that belong here. If we have to strike to do it, we will.”
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