General Motors (GM) workers have been on the picket lines for seventeen days now, and just picked up their first weekly strike pay of $250. Strikers wonder who will hold out the longest — a workforce seeking justice or an immensely profitable corporation demanding more concessions?

GM’s huge profits — $35 billion in the last three years — are both a spur to the strikers, who know GM can afford to pay, and a source of strength for the company, which has a well-padded cushion. Strikers, some of whom make as little as $15.78 an hour, have less of a fallback. With strikes a rarity at the Big Three automakers, workers may not have expected their leaders to call one this year.

But GM turned out to be playing harder ball than the United Auto Workers (UAW) pro-cooperation leaders were expecting, and thus the strike, which has gone longer than Wall Street expected. UAW vice president Terry Dittes reported Monday that the two sides were not close to an agreement.