Cindy Estrada says she first learned about the labor movement as a 7-year-old, washing glasses emptied by GM workers at her dad's bar in Detroit.

In college, she moved to Mexico to learn Spanish, then organized tomato and strawberry pickers in California under the tutelage of iconic migrant worker organizer Cesar Chavez.

At 43, Estrada is the UAW's first Latina vice president and could one day take the reins as the union's first female president.

Hard to pigeonhole, she sounds one moment like the voice of "new labor" who negotiated a deal under which state workers made concessions but got a greater voice in finding spending solutions. In the next breath, she's trashing CEOs she says take home fat paychecks but won't pay a living wage.

"Cindy brings a little bit of fire with her -- old-school fire," said Marty Bryant, a former executive at auto supplier Dana.

Estrada, who directs UAW operations for both automotive parts suppliers and public employees, said the goal in negotiations is similar for assembly line workers or those in state buildings. "Make this plant or this public sector office more efficient so you have a better product to deliver, the workers who are delivering it are happier, it's a win-win," she said.

"I agree with competitiveness, I agree with all this stuff, but I think the line has to be drawn at the point where workers can't feed their families."

Cindy Estrada makes sure state workers have voice at the table

Union and administration officials were all smiles last month when Michigan's Civil Service Commission gave final approval to a two-year contract for about 34,000 state employees.

Pay increases were modest, overtime rules were tightened and workers must pay far more for health insurance.

But to Cindy Estrada, the UAW vice president who led negotiations for five state employee unions that bargained as a council, workers won something more important -- a voice at the table and a defined role in what Gov. Rick Snyder has called the reinvention of Michigan government.

Snyder himself, along with UAW President Bob King, joined the talks to break an impasse on establishing a mechanism for workers to help identify cost savings. The unions won contract language on employee input similar to what's been adopted in a rebounding auto industry.

Whether in the private sector or state government, "it really is about companies and workers working together for the good of the company," Estrada said. "It's so ludicrous that you have to fight for that," but "even if we had got bigger raises, it would have been not smart to walk away from the table without that."

Making the search for efficiencies a critical bargaining issue contrasts sharply with the historical union emphasis on better wages and benefits. But the pragmatic demand is related to an issue on which Estrada said she remains militant.

Making government -- or an automobile plant -- more efficient is one way to make outsourcing less attractive. Last year, the state sought to privatize nursing aide jobs at the Grand Rapids Home for Veterans, replacing state workers with a private firm that pays most employees about $10 an hour.

Estrada said, and state officials confirm, that a family of four in which the sole breadwinner makes $10 an hour, or even close to $14 an hour, can be eligible for food stamps.

"They're getting subsidized as they walk out the door, collecting food stamps, because they don't have enough money to survive," Estrada said. "It's like a double hit on taxpayers."

If manufacturers or state contractors can't pay enough to keep workers off food stamps, they "shouldn't have the ability to do business in the state," she said.

Terry Bowman, a UAW member and Ford worker who is founder and president of Union Conservatives, said wages should be determined by the market and it's important state workers get pay similar to their private sector counterparts.

"Those $10-an-hour jobs, they're not unionized -- that might be the major complaint from someone like Cindy Estrada," said Bowman, who backs legislation banning so-called closed shops under which workers are required to financially support unions.

Elected a UAW vice president in June 2010, Estrada has a bachelor's degree in education from the University of Michigan. She is a longtime organizer who has led negotiations with Dana, American Axle, Johnson Controls and other companies.

King, the president, praises her for her "tremendous passion and ability" and "courageous leadership." He dropped by Zingerman's, an Ann Arbor deli, for an unrelated meeting while Estrada talked to a Free Press reporter.

The mother of twin 8-year-old boys and spouse of a retired UAW official, Estrada made $141,604 as a union official in 2010, according to a federal report.

Her uncle, Joe Estrada, a retired GM worker who once led the Labor Council for Latin American Advancement, said his niece is a role model for Latino and Hispanic workers who have resisted active involvement in the UAW.

"Some of them felt, 'What's the use?' " he said. "Now that they see somebody really made it to the top ranks, they can say, 'She did it, so can I.' "

Marty Bryant, a former Dana executive who now works for a private equity firm in New York, said Estrada can be a "spitfire," but they developed mutual trust during difficult contract talks for the auto supplier.

If Estrada felt a company official wasn't being straight with her, it wasn't unusual for her to call his cell phone and say, "This is (expletive deleted) ," Bryant said.

However, "I never got an impression that she wanted to hurt the company," he said. "In any discussions, we had to be respectful of the employees."

Arturo Rodriguez, president of the United Farm Workers of America, said he first met Estrada during the grape boycott in the 1970s, when the group's Detroit office was next door to Leroy's US Star Bar in southwest Detroit, owned by Estrada's late father.

Years later, Estrada worked for the farm workers on organizing campaigns in the California fields.

Working with Mexican farm laborers who, in many cases, have little education and are suspicious of outsiders, can be intimidating, but "she was fearless," Rodriguez said. "She just had that ability to get people to trust her and get them to do things they might not normally have done."

                           More Details: Cindy Estrada

Title: UAW vice president.

Age: 43.

Resides: Dexter area.

Education: Bachelor's degree in education, University of Michigan.

Background: Raised in Dearborn, attended Fordson High School, organized farm workers in California before joining the UAW in 1995. Mexican Industries was her first UAW organizing campaign. She has also represented workers at American Axle, the State of Michigan, Dana, Johnson Controls and Lear.

Personal: Married to retired UAW official Frank White; 8-year-old boys, Jason and Jess; four grown stepdaughters.

Quote: "We've ... seen tons of inefficiencies in the state. So (the union's message to state government is) you need to clean up your side of the street and then come to workers."