Auto Parts Workers at Julian Electric Lose Union Election, Vow to Keep Fighting

Workers at Julian Electric, an auto parts plant in Lockport, Illinois, lost their election to join the United Auto Workers (UAW) in a devastatingly close tie vote.

A large majority of the 350 mostly Latino workers had signed cards in the lead-up to the vote, but that edge evaporated in the face of a flagrant and sustained union-busting campaign. Even one day before the vote, organizers calculated the union had a lead of more than 70 supporters, but day-of, the vote went 170-170—and in the event of a tie, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) defers to the company.

This plant supplies parts for Ford, Navistar, and Caterpillar. Some are used for vehicles at Ford’s assembly plant 45 minutes away in Chicago, where about 5,000 workers are members of UAW Local 551.

‘IT’S A SIN TO GET PREGNANT HERE’

Workers say the employer’s campaign was rife with intimidation, including surveillance and retaliatory firings.

Anti-union flyers in the break room listed the usual union-busting talking points: “that they were going to charge us [dues], that we didn’t need the union to work together, that in all the years the company had operated they’d never needed a middle man, that we’re a family,” said quality control employee Alicia Martinez, in Spanish.

But Julian Electric did not feel like a family, she said, because the company routinely fired workers with little justification: “People would ask for time off [for emergencies], they would get it, and then get fired because they were out of vacation days.”

One colleague who underwent a needed surgery got fired for taking time off beyond her allotted days, despite offering proof of the procedure. Another co-worker was fired despite proof that she had been with her son in the emergency room.

“Family doesn’t treat you this way,” Martinez said. “If there’s an emergency, your family supports you.”

The company doesn’t offer sick days. “We can’t get sick, because if we do, we basically run out of vacation days and get fired,” said assembly worker Alma Rosa Díaz, in Spanish. “Sick or not, you have to go to work. Pregnant or not, you have to go to work. And it’s a sin to get pregnant here, because you’ll get fired.”

Two dozen workers and former employees marched on the boss in July to address the unjust firings. A former employee cradled a toddler in her arms as she confronted a manager: “Do you remember me? You fired me for being pregnant.” Cheers of “Si se puede” (“Yes we can”) drowned out the manager’s response as he moved the crowd towards the exit. “I had papers from the hospitals,” she added as he shut the door.

Alma Rosa Díaz’s daughter and cousins are union members already, and she has seen the difference it makes. “If we don’t fight for a better work environment, it’s always going to be the same thing, we’re always going to let them humiliate us,” she said.

PACKING THE ROOM

The fight at Julian Electric has been a long time coming. As early as 2017, workers began reaching out one by one to a local worker center, Arise Chicago. They organized workplace actions in 2020 and 2022, but the campaign really picked up steam last December. Line workers, surprised by lower-than-expected annual bonuses, gathered at the end of a shift to ask Human Resources for more information. Management deemed this insubordination and declared that if anyone wanted an explanation, they’d have to get appointments with H.R. one on one.

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A month later, H.R. began calling up line leaders and doling out firings and suspensions. The worker center filed retaliation charges with the NLRB, and suggested that the fired workers invite current employees to an Arise labor rights workshop. One hundred and fifty workers showed up.

Employees quickly developed working groups and committees across departments. As the organizing ramped up, so did the firings and suspensions, and though Arise continued to file charges with the NLRB, workers understood that the legal process could take months if not years to play out. Many came to see a union as the path to confronting workplace issues.

Arise put them in touch with UAW Local 551, which represents workers at the local Ford plant in South Chicago, and workers began signing union cards. After UAW Local 551 filed for an election, the company began a frantic hiring process in an effort to rack up “no” votes, one organizer said. As workers passed out flyers the day before the vote, the company’s owner stood next to them handing out his own, urging workers to vote against the union. “This man thinks he can break the law however he wants,” said Alma Martinez.

The union has filed unfair labor practice charges and is seeking remedies up to and including a bargaining order (asking the NLRB to order the company to recognize and bargain with the union, since the cards prove the union originally had majority support, and would have won if not for the employer's egregious law-breaking.) Although the charges Arise filed in January have yet to be heard, organizers hope that the UAW’s muscle may advance the process more quickly.

REST AND RETALIATION

Alma Martinez was an assembly worker at Julian Electric for nine months before she was fired in July in what she considers an act of retaliation. A co-worker had asked for time off for a medical procedure and was denied—so she skipped the procedure, but then got fired anyway.

Martinez and her co-workers gathered in protest. “[The manager] asked why we were here if it wasn’t our problem,” she said in Spanish. “I told her we were here because what future could we have when she fires us for any little thing?”

The next day, she and four others were fired.

“They told me it was because one day I asked for two hours off because I wasn’t feeling well,” Martinez said. “I was granted the time. I went and asked, and they said ‘Yes, go, it’s no problem, it’s fine.’ And when they fired me, they said it was because of my attendance—for asking for those two hours when I didn’t have any left.”

She says other workers have had the same experience—their time-off request is granted, but upon their return they are told, “You know what, we don’t have work for you anymore.”

Martinez thinks she was targeted because she played a visible role in the union drive. She had been handing out cards and putting together petitions against the workplace discipline policy, where many workers feel supervisors hand out disciplinary points unfairly to workers they dislike. “I never had a [disciplinary] warning,” she says.

Even firings have failed to dampen workers’ enthusiasm; several fired employees are still playing central roles in the campaign. “My vote doesn’t count any more, but I’ll continue to support the workers,” Alma Martinez said. “There is fear, but people have had the bravery to decide, ‘I want a change.’”