The future of the auto industry will have an outsized impact on Black America

Three generations of Lynda Jackson's family have worked in Detroit's auto plants, and three generations have been union members.

Her father moved from Alabama to Detroit in the 1960s to work at Chrysler. Her uncles, stepmother and cousins all worked at Ford, General Motors and Chrysler (now Stellantis) before they retired with retirement benefits, including health care and a pension.

Jackson, a 36-year-old Black forklift driver for Stellantis, said she wants the same for her own family, and for her community.

"The auto industry and these plants are so very important to the Black community," Jackson said. Losing jobs "would be devastating to the inner city, devastating to the Black community."

Black workers have long relied on union auto jobs as a crucial route to financial stability in America. Job by job, plant by plant, Black people forced open the auto industry and built seniority, using it to break into higher paying jobs they had previously been denied. The percentage of Black workers in the auto industry today is more than double their share of the workforce overall.

But the decline in US auto jobs and the erosion of unions have hit Black workers hardest. Many have seen auto work move from being a stable career to little more than a wage job, ever since the United Auto Workers union agreed to concessions in 2007 and 2009 as automakers were barreling toward bankruptcy and federal bailouts.

Now, the UAW strike for better wages, benefits and job protections that began Sept. 15 against Detroit's Big Three comes at a pivotal moment. US car manufacturers are switching to electric vehicles, which may require less labor, and they're opening plants in the union-hostile and lower-wage South. The outcome of a new contract for UAW members and the future of the industry will have an outsized impact on Black workers.