Militant support for a strike is rapidly growing among the nearly 7,000 workers at General Motors’ Silao Complex in Guanajuato, Mexico, as a March 25 strike deadline approaches.

The plant produced 300,000 vehicles last year and is one of the most important auto production hubs in North America.

On March 4, GM unilaterally suspended contract negotiations for a week after rejecting the union’s demand for a 20 percent overall increase in wages and benefits, leaving talks that began in late February still unresolved.

The Independent Union of Auto Industry Workers (SINTTIA) was taken aback by the enthusiastic call to establish a strike committee, with 300 workers signing up.

SINTTIA General Secretary Alejandra Morales Reynoso has stressed that GM’s profits are soaring, noting that in December 2025 the company’s sales in Mexico grew 11.2 percent, and its premium channel, which includes models assembled in Silao, rose 27.7 percent, with the GMC line achieving its best historical sales results.

In an interview with Conexión Global, Morales declared, “We don’t want to reach the point of a strike, but we are prepared for it. … We are requesting a 20 percent raise directly to wages plus administrative clauses, allowing workers to take their vacations, improving mealtime in the cafeteria, as well as payment for transportation.”

Rank-and-file workers speaking to the World Socialist Web Site indicate there is widespread support for a strike but insist that nothing less than the full 20 percent is acceptable.

“Twenty percent directly to wages, and we are determined, whatever it takes,” one worker said. He and others at the complex asked for anonymity to guard against reprisals.

At the same time, there is a deep-seated distrust of the union’s intentions, based on bitter past experience in which staged conflicts ended in sellout deals. An assembly worker told the WSWS, “There is an underlying situation that we’ve already lived through, where an agreement is reached by the leadership and the company in such a way that it suits both of their interests.”

Another worker stated, “It is already arranged; they’re just going to drag it out so it looks like the union is working, but for sure there is already a deal.” A third worker summed up the prevailing skepticism by stating, “As for the strike, many of us think it is pure theater.”

There are numerous other demands not even raised by SINNTIA, including for better safety enforcement after recent accidents. “A real inspection is also needed by the Ministry of Labor to detect areas with health risks,” one said.

In related issues, workers are also denouncing intolerable speedups and the erosion of break times, conditions that the union has only addressed with a vague and inadequate call for longer meal breaks. A worker explained, “In some areas they do what they call rotation or they ‘run the line,’ which means continuing to push through trucks or transmissions or engines during lunch and snack breaks, sending half the people first and then the other half afterward; that’s how their system works.”

Another pointed out that, despite its “independent” label, the union is still effectively controlled by the Center for Labor Research and Consulting (CILAS), the same law firm that helped set up SINTTIA in the first place. It is in turn tied to the Solidarity Center, an organization run by the US AFL-CIO union bureaucracy and funded by the National Endowment for Democracy, a US government agency founded in 1983 to conduct overtly the kind of political influence operations previously carried out covertly by the CIA.

The origins of SINTTIA themselves confirm these concerns. As documented by the WSWS, the rank‑and‑file group Generating Movement was formed in early 2019 through regular meetings where active workers discussed how to expel the gangster‑ridden CTM union from the Silao plant.

The group’s courageous efforts culminated in a democratically decided campaign to oppose forced overtime and speed‑ups in solidarity with the 40‑day national GM strike in the United States that began in September 2019, temporarily forcing GM to halt production in Silao. This budding bridge for cross‑border class struggle was systematically sabotaged when Solidarity Center operatives and their partners in CILAS intervened with cash payments and promises of posts, hand‑picked a pliant leadership, and legally registered SINTTIA while sidelining and effectively destroying Generating Movement’s independent organization.

International union bodies are now trying to channel the anger in Silao into safe, pro‑corporate channels. Global IndustriALL, to which SINTTIA is affiliated, and Brazil’s National Confederation of Metalworkers (CNM/CUT) have issued statements denouncing GM for refusing to meet the union halfway to avert a strike.

Workers at Silao view such gestures with growing suspicion, since these organizations, like the Solidarity Center, specialize in declarations and symbolic delegations precisely to preempt any genuine international struggle that could block the “race to the bottom” imposed by the global auto giants.

“Neither you nor us nor anyone who doesn’t bow down and enter their methodically disguised scheme of corruption will ever get in,” an early Generating Movement supporter and active worker told the WSWS. “Those of us who initiated the project really wanted a true change.”

Disillusionment with SINTTIA has fostered internal currents, but workers warn that these are just another trap. “Within SINTTIA there is a current that calls itself the Blue Movement whose objective is to get rid of the advisers and have the rank and file take control of the union,” said one worker who has attended recent assemblies. “But I don’t think they can be trusted because they were part of the previous committee.”

Another added, “I think they are the same old bread, like a Trojan horse. … And they are a stopgap or a blockade against those of us who really want true change; they are its safeguard.”

A third warned, “Of course, that’s how these mafias operate. Those people lack unity, but with the disappointment in SINTTIA, what can you expect? We have to stay alert because there are rumors that entire crews might get laid off, and those idolized officials might just respond by saying ‘thanks.’”

The fear of mass layoffs is well-founded, fueled by reports of plant closures in northern Mexico and job cuts internationally. One worker cited reports that Volkswagen is preparing to fire 50,000 workers and warned, “If the global situation is affecting VW, GM would be no exception.”

This understanding points directly to the international character of the fight now emerging in Silao. The 2019 solidarity action by Generating Movement with the US GM strike demonstrated the power of coordinated action across borders, briefly disrupting GM’s North American supply chain.

Today, the same logic applies even more acutely. In an epoch of war and global crisis, corporations like GM play a crucial role in state policy and war production—as they did in the Second World War—making them a strategic pillar of the ruling class.

Workers in Silao are acutely aware of this nexus between GM and the state. One recalled the US government’s bailout of GM. In 2013 the government sold the shares it still held after rescuing GM with nearly $50 billion. The government lost a total of $10 billion in the operation, but it no longer has shares. It is a key company for the ruling elite and the government, because of the profits it generates, the competition with China and its capacity to produce military equipment.

Generating Movement was ultimately sabotaged by the company working together with the US Embassy and the AFL‑CIO to impose SINTTIA and block the emergence of a genuinely worker‑controlled organization.

This remains an unresolved task: GM Silao workers must rebuild an independent rank‑and‑file committee and immediately take control of the fight and link up their struggle with workers in the United States, Canada and beyond.

There already exists a network to launch an effective, international fight against transnational corporations and all capitalist exploitation, the International Workers Alliance of Rank‑and‑File Committees (IWA-RFC), whose construction is at the center of the campaign of Mack Trucks worker Will Lehman for United Auto Workers president.