The members of Cesar Chavez Local 1910 build high-quality custom wheels. They do not want to lose the good pay and benefits they worked hard to attain.

Cheap China Wheels Destroy 600 Los Angeles Jobs

From the foundry where aluminum ingots are melted and formed into rough wheels to the production area where they are turned into beautiful finished products, the members at Cesar Chavez Local 1910 work hard to build a better life. They’ve been through a lot together.

American Racing Custom Wheels is the only manufacturing plant in Los Angeles to be organized in the last twenty years. It was a long struggle, including a 72-hour strike before they had any union at all. Today, they have good wages, paid holidays and vacations, a pension and most important, medical insurance.

Now, many members are hurting. A downturn in wheel demand by the major car manufacturers combined with competitive pressure from imports and nonunion wheel makers has cut employment by half, from a high of 1,200 employees to 600 today.

Emilia Garcia is a veteran of the organizing drive. She’s been out of work for almost a year. Her sons are all married now, so she is just able to afford the $185 per month for medical coverage under COBRA, but it’s a tremendous strain.

“Right now the situation is pretty hard. You don’t have work, you don’t have money, but you have bills and you have to pay the COBRA. You think, ‘What am I going to do?’

“When I stopped working, the first thing that came to my mind was ‘How am I going to pay for all this? The house? The bills? The food?’

“It’s a big difference not having a union job. After the organizing drive, we were happy. We had a good salary, benefits, insurance, the credit union and the 401(k). Until I get back to work, that’s gone,” she says.

Manuela Ortega has been out of work for four months. She lives in a well-kept house with her husband, four daughters and a son. “When you’re not working, you don’t get any benefits. This morning, I had to pay the health clinic $221. We couldn’t afford the $500 a month for the COBRA insurance, so we have to pay the clinic directly each time I take the children. It’s worse for them. Many things we used to have we had to let go.

“I’ve worked all my life and I want to get back to work. I’ve never needed or asked for help before, never asked for welfare,” said Ortega. “If Congress could do something about the insurance, that’s the most important thing for our family.”

Back at the plant, Chief Steward Fernando Villanueva fights to protect jobs. “There’s a lot of pressure on us. There are non-union shops that pay half the wages and no benefits. Plus, there are cheap wheels from China. But we work hard to make a top quality product. We talk to the company all the time about ways to keep making the wheels here.

“We need some help, though,” said Villanueva. “Why is the government making it easy for companies to buy products from China? Do they want us to stop making anything here and just be consumers? If they keep letting companies buy overseas, there won’t be any jobs left here.”