On Thursday, the transnational battery company Clarios filed a motion demanding that a Lucas County court issue an injunction against workers striking at the company’s battery plant in Holland, Ohio, just outside Toledo. Thursday evening, Judge Michael Goulding, a Democrat, ruled in favor of Clarios, and the United Auto Workers agreed to limit pickets to five people per entrance.
On May 8, 525 workers walked out, a week and a half after they had overwhelmingly rejected a tentative agreement that had been reached between UAW Local 12 negotiators and the company. The deal included an insulting 3 percent wage increase—after workers had lost thousands of dollars from inflation and recent pay cuts of up to $10 an hour due to unilateral changes in the plant’s piece rate system. The deal also green-lighted a new “flexible” work schedule that includes 12-hour shifts without overtime payments after eight hours.
The injunction is an anti-democratic attack on the right to strike and on workers’ First Amendment freedom of speech and assembly. It is a transparent effort by the company and the local government to break the strike and keep Clarios batteries flowing to Ford, GM and other clients. It comes as workers at plants across the region, including at Dana and Stellantis, are calling for a united struggle of all autoworkers against the corporations.
In a legal brief filed by Clarios, the company claims striking workers “have engaged in illegal acts in connection with their strike,”...
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