September 2024

I hope you had a great summer and in the coming months you are able to enjoy the amazing fall colors this year.

I want to give a big thank you to our Retiree Chair Marta Bobillo for putting on a great picnic for the retirees this year! It was great to see everyone relaxing and breaking bread with brothers and sisters that they haven’t seen in a while.

I also want to thank the membership for your patience during the transition back to three shifts. It has been a long wait and we have gone through and are still dealing with some growing pains. We hope the chaos that this change has brought begins to settle down in the coming weeks.

With the Presidential election cycle in full swing, we are getting a lot of calls asking for yard signs. We, like everyone else in Lansing, are still waiting for the Harris and Walz signs to arrive. In the hall currently, we have the signs for Curtis Hertel, Angela Witwer and Elissa Slotkin who have all joined local 602 on our picket lines during the 2019 and 2023 strikes. With less than 60 days left in the election, please take time to make sure your family is registered and informed about the candidates up and down the ballot. Please go to UAWendorsements.org to find UAW endorsed candidates not only from our area but that site has the candidates for the whole country.

Please, please, please take the time to vote, a democratic union AND a democratic country require participation. Voting is the absolute minimum for our country and for our union to remain effective. It is the absolute least we can do; choosing not to vote is as ridiculous as voting for someone that thinks firing striking workers is funny. We need to take our obligation to vote seriously, many fought and died for us to be able to participate. Michigan will have more access to voting by mail and in person than ever before, so there is no excuse to not participate, see you at the polls!

In Solidarity,

Mike