ED VAN KIRK / UAW LOCAL 2166
Like father, like son: UAW Local 2166 member Vincent Gallegos Jr., right, was 6 when his father, Vincent Sr., went on strike with Local 2166 in the 1970s. “I would go to union meetings with my dad,” said Vincent Jr. “I loved those times.”
UAW members:
‘Superheroes for America’
When Vincent Gallegos hit the bricks in September to go on strike against General Motors, his 12-year-old son, Vincent III, made plans to miss school so he could join his father on the picket line.
UAW roots run deep in the Gallegos family.
“I was 6 years old when my dad’s plant went on strike in the 1970s,” recalled Gallegos. “There was a big crowd of people, and I knew a lot of the guys. I would go to union meetings, too, with my dad. I loved those times.”
A 13-year UAW Local 2166 member, Gallegos is Community Action Program (CAP) chair at his local, which represents workers at GM’s Vehicle Mfg. facility in Shreveport, La.
His union family values go way back to when he was a child in Van Nuys, Calif.
Both his parents were members of UAW Local 645 before GM closed its Van Nuys plant and they transferred to Shreveport. His father was alternate committee person in the Van Nuys Paint Department, then became active with the civil rights committee at Local 2166, where he was appointed ergonomics coordinator. His mother became an alternate committee person at Shreveport as well.
Gallegos was glad the 2007 strike lasted just two days, but he wishes he could bottle up the spirit and enthusiasm of those 48 hours.
“It’s kind of like President Kennedy said: ‘Ask not what your union can do for you. Ask what you can do for your union.’ This is the first time I’ve seen our membership step up like this,” he said. “Everyone came in and did their share. I wish we could see more involvement like this all year round.”
With the tentative agreement protecting health care for active UAW GM members and creating a Voluntary Employee Beneficiary Association (VEBA) for UAW GM retirees, Gallegos looks at a contract victory as a building block to carrying on the union’s decades-long struggle to win health care for everyone.
“I think VEBA is wonderful. It assures me and my wife decent health care when I retire,” said Gallegos, a team leader on the final line at Shreveport.
“But there are still millions of Americans out there who don’t have the health care we have,” he said. “The UAW is about all the people. It’s not just about us. With the presidential election coming up, we have to get out there pushing national health care. If we don’t, who will? We have got to be the ‘Superheroes’ for America.”
His passion for the issue was always there, but now Gallegos and his wife, Lisa, have an adult daughter who is an expectant single mother with no health care insurance of her own.
“Every UAW member knows somebody or has somebody in their family who doesn’t have health care or whose health care isn’t enough. That’s why we can’t stop,” he said.
