Before Adrienne Schultz walks the picket lines most Mondays, she makes sure her son, Tommy, is bundled up and well fed.

Then she heads from her union hall to the north gate at Flint Truck Assembly.

Tommy usually falls asleep halfway before she gets to the picket line. Schultz has a carrier, but she often carries him, which isn't such a burden because her fellow picketers will take turns, too.

Tommy is only 2 months old, but Schultz’s other children understand that something big is happening. Her 3-year-old son, Ansen, mostly thinks it’s cool, but her 11-year-old daughter, Haeden, has a clearer understanding of the 5-week-long nationwide UAW strike against General Motors, which could wrap up by the end of this week if workers ratify a tentative agreement.

“I’ve spent some more time talking to her about it all,” Schultz said of Haeden. “(This strike) teaches them to stand up for what’s right and for what you work hard for, what you’ve earned.”

Schultz, 36, of Davison has been a temporary worker at the Flint plant since August 2016, working on the assembly line. She’d like to see her wages improve from the $18 and change an hour she receives. She’d like vision and dental benefits added to her health care and she’d like to be classified as permanent.

Since the strike began Sept. 16, her day-to-day reality, like those of other striking workers, has shifted.

Before the strike, her fiancé watched the kids, and she was pulling long hours, as much as 70 hours on any given week as the company stockpiled vehicles.

“They were offering up to 12-hour shifts left and right,” Schultz said.

That was when she returned to work after giving birth to Tommy in late July, a three-week maternity leave after a cesarean section. She was off only three weeks, because as a temp worker, it was unpaid time off and Schultz’s family relies on her income.

Now, her fiancé has taken a job at an automotive supplier in Imlay City and she watches the kids, at least the youngest, while the others are at school or, for Ansen, day care a couple of days a week.

Work on the assembly line was tough, even for an Army veteran like Schultz, but it could be repetitive, allowing her to go on autopilot a bit. Home with a baby means constant engagement.

“Honestly, it’s probably a little more challenging than being at work,“ Schultz said.

The pace at work also seemed to be at a fever pitch before the strike, helping accentuate the difference.

“You go from maximum freaking overdrive to standing still,” she said.

These weeks away from the job, however, have allowed Schultz to connect with her son in a way that she missed out on when she had to go back to work so soon after his delivery. Once the strike ends, that will change again.

Hectic return likely

Schultz said she expects that a return to work will mean seven-day shifts, at least in the short term, as the company tries to catch up on production. If workers approve a tentative agreement, Schultz would get a $4,500 ratification bonus.

But Schultz and her family have had to watch expenses over the last few weeks, with strike pay initially at $250 per week before being raised to $275 a week ago.

The family also requested a forbearance on their mortgage payment for a month. That’s on a house that they purchased just this summer. Fortunately, the monthly payment is only $100 more than the rent on the two-bedroom place they used to have for the family of five and two Pomeranians, Delilah and Runt.

Working at GM has been a change in many ways for Schultz. Apart from the Army, where she was stationed at Fort Bragg as a mechanic, Schultz spent most of her earlier working years as a bartender or in bar management and even worked in sales for an outdoors store.

She was thrilled when she got the call from GM after a lengthy application process, but didn't know what she was getting into. Some relatives had worked in the skilled trades for the company. This was different.

"It’s busy. It is very physical. You’re on your feet for basically the whole eight hours with the exception of the lunches and two breaks, and you're tied to that line," she said.

But Schultz said she's glad for the work.

“At the end of the day, I'm just grateful for this job because it does keep a roof over my family’s head," she said.

The thing that's been most surprising about the strike, to Schultz, has been the camaraderie.

"I'm impressed with how positive the energy has stayed through all this. You kind of anticipate that after the first week or two that after (the) initial burst of adrenaline, you would think that morale would start to drop. Honestly, it stayed consistent, through the majority of it," she said. “It’s an experience like nothing I’ve ever been a part of before. It was really moving, just to see everybody brought together.“

Eating dinner together

Family dinners are important for Melanie Binder.

It’s one reason she didn’t transfer to Flint when GM announced last year it would “unallocate” Detroit-Hamtramck Assembly, where she works, and four other plants. The 47-year-old said the commute from her home in Southfield to a job in Flint, where many workers from unallocated plants, like D-Ham and Lordstown, Ohio, went, would take too much time.

“My son is still young so I like to able to be home. I like … us eating dinner together. I like hearing about his day. I didn’t want to disrupt his routine as a result of the long commute,” Binder said. ”We talk about each other’s day. Those are memories, and one day he won’t be here to have those dinners. He’ll be popping in and out, you know, living his life.”

For Binder, whose son, Cannon, turns 11 this month, the last year has been a bit of a roller coaster, from not expecting to have a job this coming January to hearing that the plant is to remain open.

D-Ham, unlike Lordstown, is slated to get another vehicle, an electric pickup. That development prompts its own questions: How many people will be needed at the plant? How well will an electric truck sell?

But for now, those questions must remain unanswered, and Binder is still on strike. She’s a third-generation GM worker, whose grandfather once worked at Poletown and who had two uncles who preceded her at D-Ham before their retirements. Her father worked at several plants before his own retirement from a plant in Livonia.

In recent weeks, Binder has been picketing for four hours every other day, a much better arrangement than initially when shifts were six hours with two days off. That first day was horrible, she said, having excruciating lower back pain come on so suddenly. That discomfort has eased thanks to some stretches she found online.

“Your body’s not the same when you’re in your 40s as opposed to when you’re in your 20s,” she said.

Binder, who has been at GM for the last four years, makes doors for the Cadillac CT6. Before GM, she was a stay-at-home mom.

Life on strike, in some ways, hasn’t been so different from working days. Binder gets her son ready for school in the mornings. At home, there’s always something to do.

The family made changes before the strike, including fewer dinners out. Ten-year-olds want everything, so Binder and her husband, Phillip, have had to do more explaining about why that’s not always possible. Phillip works for a contractor for Fiat Chrysler, so they also wonder what the GM agreement will mean for him and his coworkers. Will there be changes at FCA for his work when the bargaining focus shifts to Auburn Hills?

Binder said her father’s experience with strikes has helped her because he always advised her to save. “Everything that’s up eventually is going to fall,” she explained.

She does allow herself one luxury, something that’s become a tradition for her days on the picket line — a grande Caffe Mocha from Starbucks. It used to be a weekend treat, but it’s now part of the picket routine, a little liquid warmth. That’s good for sunny days and those days when the picketers have been soaked down to their socks.

Binder also brings her radio. Motown seems to be the biggest hit among the picketers.

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Her son has joined her on the picket line a couple of times, too. At school, Cannon’s teachers let him stand up and tell the class about his experiences. When the strike is covered on the news, he listens up.

“He’s like, ‘Mom they’re talking about you,’ ” Binder said, doing a quick voice imitation. “So it’s good to know that he knows that this affects him some, too. He walks. He carried a sign. He chanted. He sang a couple of the songs. So he’s really involved.”

On Friday, she considered what she’d heard so far about the tentative agreement. She’s concerned that the ratification bonus — $11,000 for permanent workers and $4,500 for temporary workers — will be the thing that puts the agreement over the top. She’s particularly concerned about future job security.

“Of course, they know that a lot of employees are struggling, so that lump sum would definitely help a lot of people. I just think it’s sad that it may come to the carrot that they’re dangling in front of us. That’s going to make most of the people vote yes on this contract,” Binder said.

Binder takes a long-term view on the strike. She considers it historic.

“I think that people will look back on this moment right now. And labor relations classes will be talking about how we could have done this differently, or what could the students suggest that could be done differently,” Binder said. “I think that this contract, this strike is going to affect other unionized employees. I think that going forward with their contracts that they will definitely look at what we did in hopes to take something positive away. … I hope that we did make a difference, I really do. I hope that going forward we’re in a better place.“

Contact Eric D. Lawrence: elawrence@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter: @_ericdlawrence. Ryan Garza contributed to this report.