Richard Mellor
Afscme Local 444, retired
Just a very quick report on the UAW/GM tentative agreement.
The UAW wants to get this contract accepted and get back to normal, for them
that is. The UAW leadership's national Council sent the tentative
agreement out to all UAW union halls and are hoping to get the contract voted
on (and accepted no doubt) by next Friday.
As you can see in this short clip from Detroit's TV 4 what I
know so far is that in order to get the members to sign GM is offering:
$11,000 signing bonus
$4500 signing bonus for part time
The Profit sharing bonus cap of 12,000 will be eliminated
A 4% lump sum bonus and a 3% wage increase.
Look how much money up front they are offering for you to
sell your future.
The situation at Lordstown appears to be remaining the same
and it appears, as is often the case, workers are being offered transfers to
other parts of the country. This is what the GM bosses call job security, uprooting
ones family and moving hundreds and sometimes thousands of miles away.
The UAW spokesperson in the video Brian Rothenburg
talks of the strike being more than just for the UAW, but for "..the
hearts and minds of American workers and the middle class."
Trade union bureaucrats like Rothenburg dare not mention the
term working class for fear of hinting that this is all we are.
As I say, this is very brief. But what I urge fellow
workers, especially the young workers whose futures are being denied them by
capitalism (what the brother in the video refers to as greed) and its rapacious
quest for profits to
read the piece I sent out a week or so ago because in it I share the honest
and committed views of the people who control our lives; who own GM, the
economy and how society is governed.
Here is what I wrote:
The Wall Street Journal of September 27th had
this to say: “For the UAW, there’s no avoiding
the harsh reality of a wider
transition taking hold across the auto industry: Building electric vehicles
requires far fewer workers, making it
near-impossible to avoid job losses and wage cuts. In addition, fewer
components are needed, and many of them are imported.”( My added emphasis)
The journal continued stressing that, “…electric cars have fewer moving parts and are less complex to
assemble, requiring roughly 30% fewer workers to build compared with a
gas-engine vehicle, analysts and industry executives say. Morgan
Stanley estimates widespread
adoption of electric vehicles globally could eliminate 3 million auto-industry jobs.” (my added emphasis).
This mouthpiece of US big business wrote that GM is “redirecting capital” to produce 20 new
electric models in the next few years “mostly
in China” Ford is spending $11 billion on this venture as are the
foreign auto companies.
Gary Jones, the UAW president agrees with the auto bosses
and billionaire investors that “We want
new investment in technology and products to help keep us on the cutting edge, and training to make sure our workers are
competitive,”
This philosophy is a disaster and we cannot win if we adopt
it. A house that is erected or a dam that is built on the basis of incorrect
flawed blueprints and design will collapse. It is the same with theory,
strategy and tactics that we as workers adopt in our struggle with bosses to
maintain a decent living and improve our material conditions. We have to rely on our own strength, demand what we and all workers need and design the blueprint for winning it.
It is less that the heads of the UAW and some leaders in the trade
union movement are in bed with the bosses or taking bribes from them or
involved in any other crooked behavior, than they have the view of the world
that Jones expresses in the above quote. We cannot build solidarity and a
movement either at home or internationally with that view. And we cannot win if we don't
build international solidarity. We cannot build it locked in
this partnership of death, these jointness programs with the bosses.
We are in a struggle on two fronts. One is against the
bosses and the investors on Wall Street that actually own our workplaces, and
the other is the struggle against these concessionary policies of our own
leaders. We have to transform our unions and that means ridding ourselves of
the present leadership. We have to become active and see ourselves as leaders,
as policy makers as activists. We have to become conscious of ourselves as a
distinct class of people with our own interests and our own goals and desires.
We have to see all other workers as our allies in this. We have to oppose
racism, sexism and all forms of the bosses' divide and rule tactic that weakens
our unity and our ability to improve our lot.
Not only should the UAW strike Ford and Chrysler/Fiat,
but serious efforts to build links throughout the labor movement and wider
society should be paramount. Not only
should the UAW leadership reach out to the teachers/educators movement, but
just down the road from the UAW headquarters working class people in Flint
Michigan have been forced to drink poisoned water. There is a crisis in
numerous urban centers over poisoned water; organized labor must not be silent
on these issues.The movement for climate change which is so important to our
youth should be approached as well. Auto workers have a lot of potential allies
but the present leadership will not reach out to these forces in a serious way
other than rhetoric about the middle class and so forth.
The rank and file of the UAW have the power to change
this situation and a rank and file conference against concessions could be called of all UAW workers at Ford and Chrysler/Fiat The basic demand to make all temps whole, union members and
given back pay for years of wages stolen from them could not be won with this
leadership and workers should consider that we are entering in to a recession
or slump so market forces will take care of that $12,000 cap. As I said in a
previous piece, capitalism has no obligation to treat us fairly. It is
inherently an unfair system and we should see the world as it really is.
As workers and as union members, we set our sights too low along with our expectations. We never got what we have without a struggle and we won't keep it or improve on it without one either.
The first step brother sand sisters in the UAW is to vote
this contract down.
Some readers might enjoy reading this account of the Kokomo events some years ago.
Some readers might enjoy reading this account of the Kokomo events some years ago.
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