BATON ROUGE, La. (WAFB) – The United Auto Workers strike is showing no signs of slowing down, but the parts supply for new and used vehicles is.
The strike is now affecting longtime family business Medine’s Collision Center in East Baton Rouge.
“My father-in-law started the business in 1965 in the first building, and then we bought the other two buildings in 1989, and now we’re in the third generation,” said Dominica Medine, co-owner of Medine’s.
The business has experienced a lot of challenges over the years, but Medine’s owners said their newest challenge is getting parts.
“We get all of our information from the dealerships, and they used to give us an ETA of when they expect things to come from the factory and now, they’re telling us they don’t even have an ETA,” Medine said.
Medine believes the driving factor is the United Auto Workers Strike. The most recent strikes at plants in Michigan and Texas this week have brought the total number of striking workers to 45,000 across the big three automakers: GM, Ford, and Stellantis.
The ongoing strikes are now having a trickle-down effect on supplies of American and foreign car parts, so repairing your car could cost you more money and time in the shop.
“It was strange for a car to be in our shop longer than five or six weeks,” Medine said. “It was really strange. Now, that’s not strange. They’re here a lot longer than that.”
Medine said they used to get parts in a few days and get a car back on the road in about a week. Now, it’s a different story.
“We have to call our customers and say, ‘I’m sorry your car is torn down, it can’t be driven, it’s stuck here at our shop while we’re waiting on parts,’” said Medine.
If the car is drivable, Medine said workers are fixing what they can so the owner can still drive it while they wait for more parts to come in.
“I don’t want their cars to be stuck here,” said Medine. “I’d rather them be driving it then be sitting here, torn apart and us not being able to get the parts to finish the vehicle.”
After experiencing this six weeks into the strike, Medine is praying it’ll come to an end soon.
“I’m hoping that at some point everybody will get together at the table and figure this thing out and everybody can move forward,” said Medine.
If you’re being affected by the parts supply issue and your car is not drivable, Medine said you can talk to your insurance agency about extending your car rental past 30 days.
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