He’s cur­rent­ly at Fuyao Glass Amer­i­ca, a Chi­nese-owned com­pa­ny that opened an auto­mo­tive glass plant in the Day­ton sub­urb of Moraine. Jerni­gan was one of its first employ­ees and is now part of a group of work­ers try­ing to orga­nize a union.

“I’ve worked at union and nonunion facil­i­ties,” says Jerni­gan, who’s worked at fac­to­ries around Day­ton, Ohio. ​“And it always was bet­ter at the union ones.”

Fork­lift oper­a­tor Timi Jerni­gan hopes Pres­i­dent-elect Don­ald Trump ful­fills his cam­paign promise to bring more man­u­fac­tur­ing jobs to the Unit­ed States. But he knows from expe­ri­ence that not all fac­to­ry jobs are the same.

He says the turnover rate for hourly work­ers at the plant is ​“astro­nom­i­cal” due to low wages, poor work­ing con­di­tions and a dis­or­ga­nized super­vi­so­ry structure.

“It’s just a big ball of con­fu­sion,” Joce­lyn John­son-Grant, who works in the plant’s print room, tells In These Times. ​“I’ve seen peo­ple be pro­mot­ed, and then no lat­er than one day of being in that posi­tion, they get tak­en out and put in a low­er posi­tion,” with­out an ade­quate explanation.

“It’s chaos, real­ly,” says Jerni­gan, explain­ing that employ­ee reviews for pay increas­es are often delayed for no clear rea­son. ​“When peo­ple are expect­ing to get a raise with­in a cer­tain time­frame and then it’s not occur­ring when it should, they get frustrated.”

The Fuyao fac­to­ry is locat­ed at the site of a for­mer GM assem­bly plant that employed 5,000 work­ers at its height, but was closed in Decem­ber 2008 dur­ing the Great Reces­sion. The 116-acre facil­i­ty stood vacant until the auto glass com­pa­ny — whose cus­tomers include Ford, Volk­swa­gen, Toy­ota, Hon­da, and GM — pur­chased it for $15 mil­lion in May 2014.

To attract Fuyao to Ohio, the state gave the com­pa­ny an esti­mat­ed $14 mil­lion in sub­si­dies. Upend­ing the com­mon refrain that Chi­na is ​“steal­ing” U.S. man­u­fac­tur­ing jobs, Fuyao promised to turn the aban­doned GM plant into the world’s largest auto­mo­tive glass factory.

Pro­duc­tion began late last year. Work­ers begin as temps mak­ing $12 to $14 per hour — well below the nation­al aver­age wage for man­u­fac­tur­ing work­ers of close to $21 an hour—and have to get through a 90-day tri­al peri­od before becom­ing direct hires. The plant has more than 2,000 workers.

John­son-Grant, who’s been at the plant for six months, says she has seen cowork­ers threat­ened and ter­mi­nat­ed for report­ing acci­dents and bring­ing safe­ty con­cerns to super­vi­sors. The fac­to­ry has already been hit with $227,000 in OSHA penal­ties for safe­ty vio­la­tions, includ­ing mechan­i­cal and elec­tri­cal haz­ards, lack of prop­er train­ing and unmarked exits.

In addi­tion, John­son-Grant says that work­ers are on a point sys­tem: each time employ­ees have to miss work due to ill­ness or fam­i­ly emer­gency, they get one or two points — even when the com­pa­ny sends them home sick. After get­ting five points, they can be fired.

In These Times reached out to Fuyao mul­ti­ple times for com­ment on Johnson-Grant’s claim, as well as oth­er alle­ga­tions, via phone and email. No one at the com­pa­ny responded.

“They’re not real­ly hav­ing any con­cern or com­pas­sion towards your well­be­ing,” she says of the com­pa­ny. ​“It’s uncom­fort­able know­ing that the rug can be snatched out from under you at any giv­en moment.”

New fac­to­ry jobs

The Fuyao plant in Ohio illus­trates chang­ing trends in U.S. man­u­fac­tur­ing jobs, which are begin­ning to resem­ble jobs in the fast food and retail sec­tors. While man­u­fac­tur­ing is still pop­u­lar­ly asso­ci­at­ed with liv­ing wages and com­pet­i­tive ben­e­fits, one-third of the fam­i­lies of front­line fac­to­ry work­ers are now forced to go on pub­lic assis­tance due to sub­stan­dard pay and ben­e­fits, accord­ing to a recent report by the Labor Cen­ter at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia, Berkeley.

Near­ly all of the 800,000 new fac­to­ry jobs cre­at­ed since 2010 are nonunion, with employ­ees — often hired through temp agen­cies — earn­ing around 7 per­cent less than their union­ized coun­ter­parts. More man­u­fac­tur­ing work­ers now quit their jobs than are laid off.

While Trump has promised to bring more fac­to­ry jobs back to the Unit­ed States — a par­tic­u­lar­ly appeal­ing mes­sage to work­ing-class vot­ers in Rust Belt states like Ohio — his recent inter­ven­tion with the Car­ri­er fur­nace plant in Indi­anapo­lis reveals an under­ly­ing ten­sion between his pop­ulist mes­sage and his anti-union track record.

In exchange for $7 mil­lion in tax breaks, Car­ri­er agreed to keep about 700 pro­duc­tion jobs from mov­ing to Mex­i­co — a num­ber Trump inflat­ed to 1,100 in his announce­ment of the deal. When the Car­ri­er work­ers’ local union pres­i­dent, Chuck Jones, said Trump lied and gave false hope to hun­dreds of work­ers still fac­ing lay­offs, the Pres­i­dent-elect blamed Jones and the union for the company’s deci­sion to move to Mexico.

Union cam­paign at Fuyao

Work­ers at the Fuyao plant began con­tact­ing the Unit­ed Auto Work­ers (UAW) about their inter­est in form­ing a union soon after the fac­to­ry opened, accord­ing to Ken Lortz, direc­tor of UAW Region 2‑B, which cov­ers Ohio and Indiana.

There are already four glass-mak­ing facil­i­ties in the region, Lortz explains. Two of them have union con­tracts, set­ting stan­dards that the nonunion fac­to­ries fol­low to stave off unionization.

“These oth­er glass-mak­ing plants are pay­ing a liv­ing wage,” he tells In These Times. ​“But now Fuyao is build­ing this plant that very well could be the largest in the world, with huge incen­tives from the state, and they’re offer­ing a sub­stan­dard wage and ben­e­fits struc­ture with hor­ri­ble work­ing conditions.”

Lortz wor­ries this will cre­ate a ​“com­pet­i­tive dis­ad­van­tage” for the oth­er glass fac­to­ries, pos­si­bly putting them out of busi­ness and lead­ing to layoffs.

For its part, Fuyao appears to be fight­ing the union­iza­tion cam­paign hard.

John­son-Grant says the com­pa­ny has threat­ened work­ers with ter­mi­na­tion for orga­niz­ing activ­i­ty. In fact, the UAW has filed an unfair labor prac­tice charge with the Nation­al Labor Rela­tions Board (NLRB), alleg­ing that an employ­ee was dis­missed because of his sup­port for the union. The NLRB recent­ly had to take Fuyao to fed­er­al court after the com­pa­ny refused to release doc­u­ments the board needs to con­duct its ongo­ing investigation.

Com­pa­ny attor­ney Mic­ah Sie­gal told the Day­ton Dai­ly News that ​“Fuyao has nev­er and would nev­er dis­charge an employ­ee due to their sup­port of the UAW.”

Speak­ing to the Day­ton Dai­ly News ear­li­er this year, Fuyao exec­u­tive Dave Bur­rows dis­missed the union dri­ve, say­ing that union orga­niz­ers ​“have a busi­ness to run … It [run­ning a union] is a business.”

But work­ers at the plant aren’t giv­ing up.

“Being union­ized would be not only ben­e­fi­cial to us work­ers, it would be ben­e­fi­cial to the com­pa­ny,” Jerni­gan argues. ​“With the lan­guage we would put in a con­tract, there would be less gray area and more black and white.”

Lortz says that a col­lec­tive bar­gain­ing agree­ment would also address safe­ty con­cerns, cre­ate more job secu­ri­ty and may aim to elim­i­nate the use of temp agen­cies, which he says receive sub­stan­tial sums of mon­ey from the com­pa­ny, only to share a frac­tion with the workers.

“Every­one deserves a seat at the table,” he says. ​“That’s the best way to ensure success.”