How temp workers became a sticking point in the auto strikes.

From Marketplace, I'm Sabrina Beneshoor, in for David Bruncacio.

The United Auto Workers and the Detroit automakers failed to agree to new contracts this weekend.

A shorter work week and wage increases are among the union's demands, but striking workers

are also mad about how Ford, General Motors and Stellantis used temporary and so-called

tiered workers.

These are workers who receive lower pay and benefits for doing the same work.

Marketplace's Christian Schwab looks at how the industry came to rely on those kinds

of workers.

When automakers faced bankruptcy in 2008, auto workers faced a tough decision, lose jobs,

or agree to contract changes that would help the companies get a federal bailout.

The union chose the latter.

This was a concession that they had to make in order to sustain the bailouts and to have

some kind of recovery.

Richard Rutherford, who researches labor and the automotive industry at Syracuse University,

says from that moment on,

Almost all of the workers that were hired were on some kind of tiered system.

Up to 40% of workers in some plants are tiered.

Rutherford says, and up to 10% are temporary.

Harry Capps, a professor of collective bargaining at Cornell, says this lets companies adjust

their workforces depending on the economy and saves them money.

The base wages less and the fringe benefits are substantially less for temporary workers.

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