UAW members re-elect Strickland, Graham to posts

By Don Shilling

Jim Graham will start his fifth term as UAW president.

LORDSTOWN — Lordstown Auto Workers re-elected two longtime union leaders, who say they will continue working to restore workers to the plant.

Jim Graham was elected Tuesday to his fifth term as president of United Auto Workers Local 1112, which represents workers at the car assembly plant. He was unopposed.

Graham already had been the longest-serving president in the history of the local. The terms run three years.

Ben Strickland was elected to his third term as shop chairman, who is the lead bargainer for the local. The new term would make him the second-longest serving shop chairman.

Al Alli, who died in 1998, served as shop chairman for 22 years, which was the longest tenure of any UAW shop chairman in the country.

Strickland said this week’s election was his closest yet. He said he won by just 65 votes out of more than 1,000 cast. His opponent was Sam Alonso.

“I knew it was going to be close with all of the emotions that are going on in the auto industry,” Strickland said.

The Lordstown plant has seen dramatic ups and down in the past year.

When gas prices were soaring last year, General Motors restored the midnight shift to the plant in order to build more Chevrolet Cobalts and Pontiac G5s. New workers were hired, and other GM and Delphi Corp. workers were brought in.

When the economy collapsed and car sales dropped, however, the plant was reduced to one shift, and workers were laid off. In addition, production was shut down this past January and will be shut down again in June and part of July.

Strickland said many members don’t like what’s happened to the plant, but he added that the union is limited in what it can do when Cobalt sales are off 52 percent and G5 sales are down 67 percent through the first four months of this year.

“In this economy, people are looking to us for answers, and we don’t have answers for them,” he said.

Both Strickland and Graham said, however, that they are focused on restoring Lordstown’s work force.

“Getting people back to work, that’s the only agenda we have,” Graham said.

Strickland said he will continue to work with the company on bringing the Chevrolet Cruze to the plant next year.

“I’ve got one thing on my mind, and that’s to secure this plant,” he said.

UAW Local 1714, which represents workers at the adjacent fabricating plant, has elections in two weeks.

The two locals have about 1,775 members on the job and about 2,400 people laid off.

shilling@vindy.com

SEE ALSO: Delphi plans for layoffs and shutdowns.