Strike

It's come down to this:

United Auto Workers members walked out of General Motors Corp. plants shortly after 10 a.m. Monday as negotiations for a four-year contract reached an impasse 10 days after the previous contact expired.

The strike, the first against GM since 1998, came after the two sides appeared close Sunday night to historic changes in the contract concerning health care and other benefits. Few observers had expected a strike because it comes as Asian automakers are grabbing bigger shares of the U.S. market and could be damaging to both sides.

UAW President Ron Gettelfinger said the union walked out because GM "has failed to recognize and appreciate what our membership has contributed during the past four years."

The union and GM reportedly had agreed on a plan to transfer responsibility for GM's $51 billion health care liability for retirees to a union-run trust fund but were unable to settle on wages and job security issues.

Workers at GM's plant in Janesville, Wis., started picketing outside the massive facility shortly after 10 a.m., halting work on assembly lines that build large sport-utility vehicles such as the Chevrolet Tahoe and Suburban.

"If they think I'm going to take a wage cut and pay more for health care, they're dreaming," said Dave Van fossen, a 48-year-old worker at the plant. "My utilities just went up 14 percent and everything else is going up. Why would I accept a pay cut?"

The part of the article I didn't excerpt:

An extended strike could slow or derail a turnaround effort at GM that had produced three straight quarters of profit after two years of massive losses. GM has eliminated more than 150,000 UAW jobs the last two years and could cut more if it decides to close more U.S. plants.

No mention of the damage a strike would do to the union's members, and how they're soldiering on despite it, looking for fairness. Poor GM, not getting a solution to their mess on a silver platter.