Jessie Kelly knew there was an excellent chance she would end up on strike at General Motors. Long before her union, the United Auto Workers, declared a work stoppage this weekend, the 29-year-old mother of one began socking away savings to prepare for a long battle with the Detroit automaker. “I could live out three months,” Kelly, an apprentice moldmaker at the GM Technical Center in Warren, Michigan, told HuffPost. “I 100% feel this strike is necessary.” No one knows how long the largest auto strike in more than a decade will last. But workers like Kelly have dug in and don’t plan to bend. They look at how well GM has done in recent years ― the company pulled in roughly $11 billion in pre-tax profits in 2018, and about $35 billion over the last three years combined ― and wonder why they shouldn’t have a larger piece of the pie. “They shuffle us into a room every six months and praise these record-breaking profits, but they expect us to give back,” Kelly said. “We just do not understand right now why the company is still acting like we’re in bankruptcy when for the last four years they’ve been extremely profitable.” Her outlook goes a long way in explaining why nearly 50,000 UAW members have stopped production at more than 50 GM facilities nationwide. The union said Sunday that the two sides remain far apart in negotiations, with a raft of outstanding issues to resolve. But the root of the deadlock is not hard to grasp. GM very much wants to keep its costs down as auto sales slow and the company makes bets on electric vehicles. But GM workers told HuffPost they still recall the sacrifices the union made as the industry foundered in 2007, before the company returned to profitability. The concessions they made back then, including a two-tier wage system, still cast a shadow over the current talks. Though workers have shared in GM’s strong performance since then, with profit-sharing bonuses that can top $10,000, they see no reason to bend to the company given its recent track record.

Bill Pugliano via Getty Images FLINT, MI - SEPTEMBER 16: A sign in front of United Auto Workers Local 598 after the UAW declared a national strike against GM at midnight on September 16, 2019 in Flint, Michigan. Nearly 50,000 members of the United Auto Workers went on strike after their contract expired and the two parties could not come to an agreement. (Photo by Bill Pugliano/Getty Images)

To be clear, few people away from the bargaining table know the biggest hurdles to a deal. Union leadership has not shared the company’s proposal with members. GM disclosed a few pieces of its offer, including promises to allocate production to two facilities that had been idled, an overall investment of $7 billion in UAW-represented plants, and worker bonuses of $8,000 for ratifying the contract ― what the company deemed a “strong offer” made in good faith. But pay hikes and other benefits were not specified. The union and GM could easily be at a deadlock over wage increases, health care costs and other, even trickier issues that were expected to be central to the talks. Workers said they believe GM and the union need to bridge class divisions within plants. It takes newer workers eight years to reach the top pay rate of roughly $30 per hour earned by longer-term veterans. That’s better than in the wake of the financial crisis, when new hires had no way of reaching that rate at all ― a compromise the union made as the company veered toward bankruptcy. But many workers believe the “in-progression” system, as it’s known, is still too long a slog. After all, it takes the duration of two collective bargaining agreements to complete it. They also want to limit GM’s use of temporary workers. The company says about 7% of its U.S. workforce is temps, though the share can vary significantly from department to department and shift to shift. Some workers temp for two years or more before transitioning to full-time and gaining job security. GM may be pointing to foreign-owned transplants like Nissan, where temporary workers are more widespread, and asking for similar leeway. In a letter to members Sunday, UAW Vice President Terry Dittes said the outstanding issues include the in-progression wage system as well as “the treatment of temporary workers.”

JEFF KOWALSKY via Getty Images Workers walking out of the GM facility in Flint, Michigan, early Monday morning.