How New Autoworkers Became Second-Class Employees

In 2010, Sharron Chambers was a member of the middle class, earning between $40,000 and $50,000 a year at Chrysler’s sedan plant in Sterling Heights, Mich. Since then she’s had her pay cut in half while doing the same work. She’s been unable to make the monthly payments on her car and house and has lost both. She had to move with her two children into her sister’s town house in suburban Detroit. They had to sleep on a mattress on the floor.

Chambers has the misfortune of being a Tier 2 wage earner, one of more than 30,000 union autoworkers in the U.S. who make about half as much as their 50,000 Tier 1 colleagues. This caste system was created in 2007, when the United Automobile Workers agreed to cut starting wages to help Chrysler, Ford, and General Motors amid a slowing economy and falling truck sales. The contract protected the $28-an-hour wage of existing workers but created a class of employees with less tenure who started at $14. Benefits were pared back, too.