Nearly 1,000 United Auto Workers walked off the job Monday at American Axle’s plant in Three Rivers, Michigan, stopping production of axles that go into General Motors’ heavy-duty Chevrolet Silverado and GMC Sierra pickups, its midsize Chevrolet Colorado and GMC Canyon trucks, and axle tubes that end up in light-duty Silverados and Sierras. The strike began at 12:01 a.m., immediately after the workers’ union contract expired Sunday night.
UAW President Shawn Fain announced the work stoppage in a Sunday evening livestream, framing the dispute as a long-overdue reckoning with a company that profited from workers’ willingness to accept deep pay cuts during the 2008 financial crisis.
“For 18 years, these members have built you an empire of profit, while getting treated like dirt. They’ve taken wage cuts, benefit cuts. They’ve poured their souls into this plant,” Fain said in the livestream. “We’ll stay out on strike until this company comes to its senses and treats these workers with dignity and respect.”
The core grievance traces to 2008, when American Axle workers agreed to cut their wages roughly in half — from $29 per hour to $14.50 — to keep the Three Rivers plant from closing during the auto industry’s near-collapse. Eighteen years later, most production workers at the plant top out at $22 per hour, according to Josh Jager, a 24-year American Axle employee and chairman of the bargaining committee for UAW Local 2093.
“We have members that take out a loan on their 401(k) almost every 12 to 24 months to pay off credit card debt, and it’s just a perpetual thing because they can’t make enough money,” Jager told the Wall Street Journal. “A guy works seven days a week, $22 an hour, and he can’t support himself.”
Besides higher pay, workers are seeking limits on the company’s ability to compel them into weekend overtime production. Jager said workers were required to work weekends in 47 of 52 weeks in 2023.
American Axle did not immediately respond to requests for comment. A GM spokesman said the company is monitoring the situation at its supplier. “We are assessing any potential impact while staying closely aligned with our teams,” the spokesman said.
The Three Rivers plant also supplies GM’s Oshawa, Ontario, truck assembly plant, which builds heavy-duty Silverados and Sierras alongside the company’s Flint, Michigan, facility. In addition to GM, the plant makes components for another automotive supplier and for Stellantis’s Chrysler Pacifica minivan.
The strike creates a production headwind for GM at a moment when the company was positioning to expand truck output. GM’s Flint truck plant was set to add a sixth production day in June, an expansion designed to capitalize on a shortage of aluminum that has limited rival Ford’s pickup production. At the same time, Stellantis’s Ram brand has been gaining ground — Ram truck sales are up 23% in 2026 from a year earlier, according to Motor Intelligence. GM’s full-size pickups are among its most profitable vehicles.
Jager accused American Axle of stockpiling axles since January in anticipation of a labor dispute as the contract expiration approached. As of Sunday, he estimated GM had roughly two weeks’ worth of axles in inventory — a buffer that would delay but not prevent production disruptions if the strike persists.
American Axle’s Three Rivers plant is one of the company’s key facilities, and its output feeds directly into GM’s truck assembly lines at a time when supply-chain reliability matters more than usual. A prolonged stoppage would force GM to choose between scaling back truck production or drawing down its axle stockpile at a pace that leaves little margin for further disruption.