UAW Region 4 Director Brandon Campbell – UAW Local 2250 Stand Up Strike Rally – Wentzville, Missouri – September 24, 2023

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Brandon Campbell, missouri, stand up strike, strike, UAW, UAW Local 2250, Wentzville

UAW Region 4 Director Brandon Campbell.

Sunday afternoon United Auto Workers [UAW] Local 2250 in Wentzville, Missouri held a rally in support of their stand up strike against the General Motors plant. While pickets manned the plant gates approximately 500 workers and their supporters attended the rally. UAW Region 4 Director Brandon Campbell addressed the crowd.

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….Brothers and sisters, it’s our time. And it’s about time. Members of the UAW have always been champions of social and economic justice. Our fight for civil rights and human rights isn’t just a cause, it’s an investment in our collective future….

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…The dividends that that investment is paying off right now. Of that struggle, that fight for equality. That fight for equality is a fight against corporate greed….The fight against corporate greed is a never ending battle, never ending battle between the haves and the have nots.

Mother Jones said all nations have failed when too much wealth is collected in the hands of a few. Well, that’s happening right here, right now. We cannot let it continue. We can not back down…..The rich, the powerful in this country and in this world have always tried to divide us on, on lines of race, gender, age, now seniority.

We’re fighting. We’re fighting to end tiers. Equal work should result in equal pay….We’re fighting for COLA, cost of living adjustment. When they drive the prices up our wages should keep up….This one’s tough. We’re fighting for job security. This one’s tough because I came out of the Belvedere assembly plant. The idled Belvedere assembly plant. I helped load up the cars that took half of my family to Michigan. I don’t see my grandkids nearly as often as I want to because of these greedy corporations. [“Yeah.”]

Everything else that we win at the bargaining table isn’t worth anything, it’s not worth the paper it’s written on, if we don’t have job security….And we’re fighting for the ability to retire with dignity after decades of breaking our backs for these corporations and their record profits we should have a few good years left in us that we can, we can retire with dignity….

Over the last four years, just four years, inflation is up twenty percent the cost of a vehicle, a new vehicle, is up thirty-four percent. Corporate greed is the problem. [“Yeah.”] When wages have increased in that time only six percent, a full fourteen percentage points behind inflation, say it with me, corporate greed is the problem. When CEO pay is forty percent higher, North American profits are up sixty-five percent, but we’ve lost purchasing power to inflation, inflation that they caused, corporate greed is the problem.

It’s time for justice and not for just us. It’s time, it’s time for all, all American workers to stand up. The UAW is calling for all American workers to stand up. Stand with us. For equal pay, no more tiers, for COLA to protect from inflation, for job security, and a dignified retirement….These should be rights in this country. These should be rights, not privileges for a select few. In the richest nation in the history of the world these should be rights, brothers and sisters.

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