Meet the labor leader who will face off with GM

Cindy Estrada's journey has taken her from the dusty tomato fields of central California to the bargaining table where the UAW and General Motors will forge the future of about 48,500 U.S. workers.

Her career path to becoming the first woman to lead the UAW's GM department shares parallels with GM CEO Mary Barra, with whom she is meeting about once a month leading up to this year's labor negotiations.

They are among the point people — two glass ceiling breakers — in upcoming labor negotiations set against the backdrop of Michigan as a right-to-work state and strong feelings among union members that wages must increase considering big profits of recent years.

With the Detroit Three flush and autoworkers feeling unappreciated, negotiations could be a real donnybrook of old, when labor and management sparred aggressively over wages and working conditions years before the Great Recession and globalization changed the auto industry forever.

But if for no other reason, the negotiations should be different because of the people involved: two women who ascended to top positions in what were once firmly male-dominated executive ranks of labor and management.

Estrada is a daughter of southwest Detroit and Dearborn. She traces her fervor for workplace issues to conversations of former Cadillac Fleetwood workers she overheard at her father's Michigan Avenue bar.

"It was a big part of my life," she said when asked about Leroy's U.S. Star Bar. "I heard many stories of how hard work was in those plants. My uncles worked in some of them."

Barra, who declined to be interviewed for this report, is the daughter of a tool and die maker who was a UAW member. She's from Waterford, raised and educated in the automaking culture of metro Detroit.

Barra became the first female CEO of GM or any major auto company early last year after coming up through the ranks as an engineer on the management side. A consensus-builder, she made notable changes in the culture of her departments along the way, including a seemingly mundane relaxation of the dress code that resonated strongly and has been cited often as proof that a stodgy GM culture was changing under her direction.

She also reduced the number of GM engineers in charge of individual product development programs from three to one. Her emphasis on strong products made her popular among GM employees.

Barra was promoted to several high-level positions, including senior vice president for global product development, before becoming CEO in January 2014.

Barra has already made cooing gestures to autoworkers with larger-than-expected profit sharing checks that were not required under the current contract.

Barra and Estrada did not know each other before their latest promotions. But Estrada spoke highly of the CEO's management style and vision.

"She really does want to work on changing the culture," Estrada said. "She's a problem solver and a very smart woman. So far, my experience with her has been nothing but positive."

Organizing at Mexican Industries

Estrada's grandparents were farm workers who spent summers picking cherries in northern Michigan. Through a series of jobs her father held, which included working at Risdon Dairy, a family pizzeria and eventually the bar, Leroy Estrada and his wife, Margaret, built a life his five children considered comfortable.

"We just had a good middle-class life. We didn't have an extravagant life," Cindy Estrada said. "I remember my mom and dad being pretty happy. They helped us do things we wanted to do."

Two experiences shaped her pride in being a young Latina. Next door to the bar was the United Farm Workers' grape boycott office that connected her to her grandparents' experience. She would learn her early organizing lessons at the side of two of Cesar Chavez's closest disciples.

But Mexican Industries is where her UAW career began.

In the mid-1990s, as a 26-year organizer not yet on the union's staff, Estrada took on the daughters and son of Hank Aguirre, the former Detroit Tigers pitcher who founded Mexican Industries in 1979.

The company made steering wheels, instrument panels, air bags and spare-tire covers and employed hundreds of people from southwest Detroit, including recent immigrants. It grew to become one of the industry's largest minority-owned suppliers.

Aguirre, who died in 1994, was a pillar of the southwest Detroit community, which included GM's Fleetwood assembly plant, several parts suppliers and other local businesses.

She was familiar with the community, but she took some heat from certain neighborhood leaders for what some of them regarded as disrespect toward one of their own.

"Hank was wonderful. He started a company. He treated people well," Estrada recalled. "So there was difficulty in the community and some anger toward me, but eventually people understood that Hank wasn't there anymore."

After Aguirre's death, his three daughters and a son managed the company. The UAW launched what would become a futile organizing campaign. In June 1995, workers who were then making an average of $7 an hour, rejected the UAW by a 623-265 vote.

"We lost plain and simple," Estrada said. It was the third failed attempt to organize.

Estrada moved to central California to help with the United Farm Workers, where she had done a seven-month internship shortly after graduating from the University of Michigan with a degree in education.

Four years later, the UAW regrouped. Mexican Industries struggled with mandated price reductions from their automaking customers. Workers who stayed in touch with Estrada and other organizers said working conditions weren't any better.

They met the requirements of the National Labor Relations Board to call another election. This time the voters approved UAW representation.

But in June 2001, the company filed for bankruptcy and laid off the remaining 900 workers.

It was a pattern Estrada has seen several times in her career. After a hard-fought campaign the UAW wins certification and negotiates a contract only to see the company either close the plant because their customer moved the work to another supplier or move the work to Mexico, Asia or another low-cost location.

Battling the state

In defeat and victory, the Mexican Industries campaigns left a deep imprint on Estrada.

"That involved mostly Spanish-speaking workers, a lot of them not documented," she said. "Sometimes you want to coddle them. But what I learned from that (was) what workers want is for us to help them organize, not take care of them."

In late 2013 and 2014, Estrada engaged in difficult negotiations covering 17,000 UAW-represented state workers. The talks came less than a year after the Republican Legislature passed and Gov. Rick Snyder signed Michigan's right-to-work law.

Bargaining broke down, primarily over terms of state workers' health care coverage. In January 2014 the state civil service commission forced both sides to accept a two-year contract with 2% raises each year, a 0.5% lump-sum payment in year one, and a standardized health care plan that raised some workers' copays and deductibles.

Jan Winters, then director of the Office of the State Employer, declined to comment on Estrada's negotiating style.

Estrada acknowledges there was tension during those talks, but she said the UAW tried to emphasize that it was interested in finding more efficient ways to deliver state services without slashing jobs, wages and benefits.

"I've never seen Cindy lose her temper, but she'll get angry about what she perceives as workplace injustice," said former UAW President Bob King. "She's open and flexible about finding creative solutions, but if a company is dishonest or abusive, they've got a real fight on their hands with her."

'She can hold her own'

Marty Bryant, a former Dana executive who is now CEO of a North Carolina-based maker of waste handling and recycling equipment, sat across the table from Estrada during a 2010 negotiation that ended in a contract covering more than 3,000 Dana workers.

"Cindy's maybe 5 feet 2, but she can hold her own," Bryant said. "She was committed to her mission that working people deserve to make enough money to live on. At the same time she never gave the impression she was out to injure the company.

"When no one was watching or in heat of bargaining she was always the same person."

She is now on a bigger stage. Last June, UAW President Dennis Williams assigned her to lead negotiations with GM. Her success ultimately will be measured by the 48,500 UAW members at the nation's largest automaker.

Her counterpart across the table will be Rex Blackwell, a 31-year veteran of GM labor relations staff. But don't underestimate the relationship evolving between Estrada and GM CEO Barra. They meet at least once every month or six weeks, Estrada said.

The ongoing negotiations kick into high gear Labor Day weekend. The current contract expires Sept. 15 with opportunities for short extensions.

Estrada, Williams, Barra, Blackwell and Jim Glynn, the head of GM's global manufacturing human resources, met earlier this year before the company decided to give profit-sharing checks of $9,000 per person to its UAW members.

The amount was more than most workers expected, particularly in light of the crisis surrounding defective ignition switches that since have been cited as the cause of 87 deaths, and an unprecedented 26.9 million recalled vehicles in the U.S.

Estrada who lives in Whitmore Lake with her husband, retired UAW official Frank White, and twin 11-year-old sons Jason and Jesse, draws a parallel between her job as mother and her role with the UAW.

"Every time I make a decision in my house without involving my family, yes, it's easier in the short run, but in the long run it doesn't lead to building of a strong healthy family," she said. "It's the same thing in a workplace. If management is always making decisions absent workers, they're not always the best decision and it doesn't promote a healthy environment."

Cindy Estrada

Title: UAW vice president, General Motors department

Age: 46

High school: Dearborn High School

College: University of Michigan, bachelor's degree

Family: Married to Frank White, a retired UAW officer; twin sons, Jason and Jesse, 11; stepmother to Tracy, Jodi, Tara and Taylor, and grandmother of Alexis, Bradon, Delaney, Cadance and Carter.