Chicago’s Local 701 Auto Mechanic Strike Explained.

“It boils down to them offering the raise as a carrot, but then here comes the stick.”

By: Leona Dunn

On August 3, 2021, the second day officially on strike journeyman say they hope they can beat the seven weeks it took to get a deal back in 2017. (Leona Dunn// @leonajdunn)

CHICAGO – Chicagoland Jiffy Lube Auto Technicians have kept busy with double the oil change request, since over 800 local car dealership mechanics left their post to pick up picket signs, the first week of August.

The Local 701 Auto Mechanic Union’s four-year contract with the New Car Dealership Committee (NCDC), representatives of a branch of Chicago Automobile Trade Association dealerships, was up on July 31st.

As backlogs of car service parts and services ramped up, negotiations did not seem to be moving as fast as the need for labor.

“If they would’ve kept the contracts similar and just paid us like two dollars more, then we wouldn’t even be out here,” auto technician Kendall E. said.

But the new contract the NCDC presented the Local 701 union was very different.

According to a statement released from the NCDC:

“NCDC dealers offered Local 701 a contract proposal that provides significant wage increases and other benefits for service techs, while addressing important improvements for the long-term success of dealers and techs alike.”

The NCDC then released their proposals along with fact sheets, and other resources throughout their website.

Meanwhile car repair request have steadily increased as car owners haven’t been able to purchase new cars due to equipment and supply chain disruptions caused by the global pandemic. And even though Chicagoans can get their car fluids topped off, it is going to take some months to get their actual repairs completed.

“This is ridiculous, my shop has already had my car for over a month waiting on the part it needs to get to the dealership, and now with the mechanics on strike, lord knows when the part gets there who’s going to put it on,” Oak Lawn resident, Alex Johnson said while getting her car rentals oil changed at a local Jiffy Lube station.

According to Local 701 union spokesman, Ronnie Gonzalez, there are three issues keeping the mechanics out of their shops and onto the sidewalk: a most favored clause, health insurance rates, and a base pay reduction clause.

“NCDC has proposed language called the ‘Most Favored Nations’ and basically that article is giving the power to the NCDC to cherry pick from other active contractual agreements. We believe that's undermining to the bargaining process, and that each agreement with every company through negotiations have their own set of circumstances, and the language, and terms and provisions inside of each agreement are, you know only relative to themselves, and we don't believe that any member or employer has the right to reach into other contracts to cherry pick provisions,” Gonzalez said. “If there are more favorable terms in another agreement, they are asking to have the ability to install, effective immediately, those terms into their contract. How do we negotiate, you know, a lower wage in a different contract or less vacation time? You know, and it just says any provision beneficial to the dealer or to the association. So that's problematic for us.”

The NCDC’s released a statement defending the provision.

It stated ‘A Most Favored Nation Clause is a commonly used tool in collective bargaining to protect both sides after a contract is ratified. The union has made our proposed language a huge issue. That’s ironic because the union created the situation where this language is needed. Four years ago, several dealers split off from the NCDC and illegally began negotiating with the union outside of the NCDC. The union made a deal with these dealers who defected and left the rest of the techs standing on the curb unable to collect a paycheck while the defector dealer technicians went back to work. An MFN clause prevents the union from treating NCDC technicians as second-class citizens today and into the future. The union has its members worried the MFN language might mean tech wages could get cut during the contract. But with our MFN language, the only entity that can put the wages of the technicians in jeopardy of being cut is the union.’

THE 2017 STRIKE

Local Tech Mechanic, Gene McNamara, has been working as a Journeyman for more than half of his life.

“As a general rule, the public seems to think these strikes are all about money.” McNamara said.

And during that life, he has only been on three strikes.

“The first one was back in 1994, and that was about money,” McNamara joked. “These last two have been less about money and more about principle.”

McNamara works at Happy Hyundai, in Oak Lawn, but McNamara and his team of technicians are not happy.

They haven’t been completely staidfied with their contracts for years, but they have been content.

The 2017 strike was mainly over a labor dispute about apprenticeship term limits, according to the men striking throughout Oak Lawn affected dealerships.

“An apprentice is someone who gets trained to be a journeyman they work an hourly rate, unlike a flat rate when they get hired as a journeyman- or what people would call a full-fledged car mechanic,” said Francisco, another Happy Hyundai employee. “The NCDC back in 2017 wanted an apprenticeship, which usually last about four years, to extend it to something crazy like 6 to 8 years. That’s not fair to techs because that would keep them at a low hourly rate longer, which would help dealerships with labor cost, but the ‘incentives’ they were trying to give us in return weren’t worth doing that to these hard workers, cause we all used to be apprentices too.”

Currently in the Chicagoland area, an apprenticeship lasts 60 months which equals out to five years.

Down at Kelley Nissan, an apprentice close to the end of his term, reminisced on that experience.

He asked not to be named, but said he just started when everyone decided to strike. He was trained at the Universal Technical Institute and didn’t learn anything about ‘budgeting for a strike’ but still picked up a picket sign because he knew they were fighting in part for him to have a fair term. This year, knowing the contract was going to expire he saved up to be able to maintain his family for a strike, but not for a long one.

“The last strike, I learned that we union members are definitely stronger together and in numbers, but I also learned that we have to find a lot of things to do during strike to keep ourselves occupied,” he said.

According to Local 701, currently the NCDC represents 56 dealers sprinkled throughout Northern Illinois and the Chicagoland area, but the organization used to represent more.

“After the strike in 2017, A large group of dealerships broke away from NCDC and created their own association, and we have negotiated with them and reached an agreement, those shops are all working right now. And that's the kind of the bar that we set for these negotiations now that there is already an agreement that a large number of dealers have agreed to. We don't feel that we're being unreasonable because why would there be so many dealers that have agreed to our terms if we were being unreasonable,” Gonzalez said.

When asked for the newer association, Gonzalez said they were lovingly referred to as ‘the defectors.’

Back to the Future

Official NCDC statements note that since the July 31 proposal it has been the only ones making concessions.

Now they say until the union comes back to the negotiating table, they are not willing to give anything else up unfairly.

The NCDC proposed to take away the Most Favored Nations Clause only if the union agreed to ‘EVERYTHING’ else originally in their July 31rst proposal.

The 701-union rejected that.

The 701 union asked the NCDC to pay into the unions health and welfare plan at rates set by actuaries, to maintain their members health benefits. NCDC proposed to ‘substantially increase’ their weekly contributions to the Health and Welfare Fund –with no increase in the employee contribution for the entire four years of the proposed contract.

Yet, A base pay argument still needs to be sorted out before the union can even call their members together for a vote.

“The NCDC has proposed a base pay reduction for mechanics that would ultimately give managers the ability to remove the base amount someone would get paid if they were punched in for 40 hours. There are vague ‘conditions’ that make the new contracts language just easier for employees base time to get reduced, and that's kind of troublesome for us.” Gonzalez said.

“The NCDC proposal includes guaranteed weekly pay at the same level that the Union has agreed to in ‘other contracts’, but our proposed guarantee language seeks to fairly adjust weekly guarantee pay for those who work at a slower pace. In other words, if a tech can’t book 40 hours for 4 consecutive weeks, his or her pay could be adjusted. Since a new law makes booking forty hours much more attainable for the vast majority of our skilled technicians, we believe the language in the new law tilts the scale heavily in favor of every technician,” said Dave Sloan, Automobile Trade Association President, on Behalf of NCDC.

That argument along with others has been tied up.

“It’s like the NCDC comes out with this counterproposal increasing our wages, but then has all these convenient ways to take that wage away,” said McNamara. “So, it boils down to them offering a raise as a carrot, but then here comes the stick.”

When the 2021 strike began, The Chicago Automobile Trade Association released a statement addressing the financial burden they knew technicians and dealers will face during this strike.

Still, they reported most dealers have decided to keep their service departments open during the negotiations.

“There are many union and non-union businesses in this extremely competitive automobile service market. The dealers greatly value their dedicated and talented service technicians, but long-term job security can be achieved only by maintaining the competitiveness of all NCDC dealerships.”

The Local 701 union members affected, decided to strike during the hours service departments are open. Most of them work an eight-hour shift before switching out post with other members.

Some have also been seen with their children.

A mechanics son sits behind him during his shift. (Leona Dunn// @leonajdunn)

“We understand the fact that this is difficult for everybody. It's a financial burden on our mechanics, it's a burden on the customers who are expecting service on their cars and now have to wait, but it's also a large burden on us if we accept substandard terms in our contract,” Gonzalez said.

Leona Dunn is a multimedia journalist currently freelancing in the Chicagoland area.

@leonajdunn