Union members at BorgWarner enter second week of strike in the village of Lansing

Dozens of workers at the BorgWarner auto-parts manufacturer in Lansing are striking for a better contract. 

Officials with the Teamsters Local 317, who represent the 700 workers at the Lansing plant, say that they want the company to show workers due respect, following years of concessions made by workers during bargaining that yielded insufficient gains for the rank and file in the long term. 

The strike comes after the previous agreement lapsed on Sept. 8. Since then, the company and union negotiators have presented membership with two different temporary agreements. Twice, workers have soundly rejected the potential new contract. Both sides expect to return to the negotiating table as early as Tuesday, Sept. 17.

John Cometti, a business agent with Local 317, said that workers are hoping to secure better wages and better control over their paid time off and to restore other time-off benefits largely axed in the company’s latest proposal. He noted that workers are at a breaking point, especially because the company announced last year it would be looking to cut 300 jobs by 2026. 

The latest proposal from the company included raises of 6% during the first year, with increases of 5% every year for the next three. It also would have provided two $2,750 bonuses for employees: one at the time the contract was ratified and the other in December, closer to the holiday season. 

Cometti said the company also changed how vacation time would work. 

“Those types of situations, when you totally change a vacation chart and how it’s given,” he said. “They did have a formula and a document to show people how vacation time could be front-loaded that they offered to the membership, but to get a document in three days’ time and trying to understand something that complex isn’t going to happen.”

Cometti said that the company’s latest proposal also included a harsher attendance policy that further clamped down on tardiness, as well as policies that indicated the company wanted to assign overtime to specific employees.

That proposal was voted down by roughly 66% of the 597 voting workers.

Both parties have been negotiating a new collective bargaining agreement since July 23, said Michelle Collins, BorgWarner’s global director of marketing and public relations.

“BorgWarner has been working to reach a sustainable agreement that will improve the lives of our workforce,” Collins said in an email sent to Tompkins Weekly prior to the latest temporary agreement being voted down by membership. “BorgWarner has presented several proposals that provide substantial wage increases, additional paid time off, and other improvements to the Teamsters but the proposals have not been accepted. BorgWarner is seeking a fair and sustainable contract that continues to provide top-tier jobs for our employees.”

Collins said in that email that the key hurdles to reaching an agreement include wages, benefits, time off and overtime.

For Cometti, workers are seeking respect. 

“It’s the lack of respect and dignity that these people feel that they deserve,” Cometti said, commenting on workers’ decision to strike. 

Cometti said that workers in the auto industry, like those at BorgWarner, feel they have sacrificed potential improvements to their lives and left economic and worker welfare gains on the table for the well-being of the industry. He said that workers made concessions to companies in the auto industry in 2008, during the market crash that prompted the federal government to bail out industry giants. 

Workers, Cometti added, did that repeatedly throughout the years as the industry recovered. 

In return, Cometti said, the workers feel their wages have not kept up with rising costs of living that soared during a pandemic period where essential workers, like those at BorgWarner, toiled without disruption.

“The closure of two plants is what we have got to show for it and the loss of 300 jobs,” Cometti said. 

Cometti said that workers will continue to strike until a deal is done.

Lansing at Large appears every week in Tompkins Weekly. Send story ideas to editorial@vizellamedia.com. Contact Eddie Velazquez at edvel37@gmail.com or on X (formerly Twitter) @ezvelazquez.

In brief:

The Lansing Community Library will host “Nefertiti’s Sisters: Women in Ancient Egypt,” a slide-illustrated talk on women in ancient Egypt. Carol Hockett, Hintsa Family Manager of School and Family Programs at the Johnson Museum of Art, will be on hand for her presentation, depicted through sculpture, tomb paintings and reliefs. 

“We’ll cover daily life and religion, the afterlife, and mummification,” a post on the library’s website states. “From the goddess Isis to the roles of wife and mother, we’ll explore the many roles played by Egyptian women.”

The event is on Oct. 2 and starts at 7 p.m.