the Voice of
The Communist League of Revolutionary Workers–Internationalist
“The emancipation of the working class will only be achieved by the working class itself.”
— Karl Marx
the Voice of
The Communist League of Revolutionary Workers–Internationalist
“The emancipation of the working class will only be achieved by the working class itself.”
— Karl Marx
Aug 26, 2002
Labor Day is coming up. Officially, the government tells us that we are in an economic recovery. But for workers, the only thing to celebrate this Labor Day is that it is a day off.
That is, if you have a have a job. The ranks of the unemployed are growing. And, most ominously, those who have lost their jobs are finding it much more difficult to get back into the labor force. Long-term unemployment has more than doubled in the last year. In many parts of the country, the jobs just aren’t there.
At the same time, those of us still with jobs are facing threats: threats of layoffs, threats of wage and benefit cuts. Workers in the airline industry are undergoing some of the fiercest attacks.
In the last month, one airline after another announced job cuts and concession demands. U.S. Air, the sixth largest airline, which announced that it was going into bankruptcy, demanded wage and benefit concessions from its workforce worth 900 million dollars every year. With this demand came an ultimatum. Management threatened that if any union did not agree immediately to its demands, it would get the bankruptcy court to tear up the labor contract and impose the concessions outright.
This then set the stage for announcements from the two biggest airlines, American and United. American Airlines announced that it was going to cut 7,000 jobs, among them, the jobs of 2,500 flight attendants. This was on top of the 20,000 jobs that American cut after September 11. United Airlines also issued an ultimatum: if the unions do not accept significant takeaways within 30 days, management would declare the company bankrupt. Since much of the United employees’ retirement pensions is tied up in United stock, this would render their hard-earned savings worthless. In effect, management is holding the workers’ retirement savings hostage.
According to the airline companies, they have no choice but to demand these concessions. They claim to be going through a crisis. They say they have to restructure.
In fact, these companies have been saying the same thing for the past 25 years. Over that time, the airline industry has been in a constant state of so-called restructuring. Companies have been bought and sold. They have been merged, split apart, merged again–or pushed out of business.
In the 1980s and early 1990s, airline workers had one wave after another of concessions imposed–with the promise that when the good times returned, their wages would also recover. But in the 1990s, when airlines were showing fat profits, the airlines simply refused to agree to any increases. At United, the company agreed to long-awaited wage increases for mechanics and flight attendants less than six months ago, only to come back and demand much deeper concessions now.
In the process, some enormous fortunes have been made. One group of speculators, who call themselves Texas Pacific, specializes in swooping down and buying up big chunks of airlines in bankruptcy for a song, and then selling out after the companies is taken out of bankruptcy. They did this in the 1990s at Continental Airlines, and their so-called investment increased by 11 times. They are now pulling the same stunt at U.S. Air–which is supposedly in such "dire" shape.
At the same time, airline executives have paid themselves enormous compensation. One executive, Steve Wolfe, who headed two of the airlines, one after the other, that now claim to be out of money, United and U.S. Air, made sure that he was paid at least 20 or 30 million dollars per year for his exalted presence. Often times, these executives paid themselves big bonuses immediately after they got the workers to accept big concession packages.
This past history only proves one thing: Concessions are a trap. They don’t save jobs. They don’t provide job security. They don’t safeguard retirement savings. They only push workers living standards lower and lower for the benefit of the company, the speculators, the predators of all types.
Unfortunately, the union apparatuses have, without exception, made it seem impossible to oppose these concessions. They have made it seem like the workers have no choice but to accept the concessions.
But the workers have plenty of choices, when we decide to stand up. For these companies need us. They need our skills and labor. Without us, no planes would fly, nothing would be produced. The society as a whole could not run. We have an enormous power in our own hands when we unite.
This Labor Day can mark the end of giving in to the bosses’ demands. We can celebrate Labor Day by resolving to begin to fight for our needs.
Aug 26, 2002
President Bush used a recently burned area of forest in Oregon as the backdrop for announcing proposals to allow more commercial logging of federal forests. He claims his proposals will help to prevent the huge wildfires that have been burning out of control in western states.
Forest experts generally agree that the decades-old policy of extinguishing all forest fires as quickly as possible has created super-dense forests that can burn fiercely, particularly during periods of drought. Fires in these dense forests are extremely difficult to put out and have ravaged over three times the usual acreage lost to wildfires so far this year.
Controlled burning and limited cutting of forests have been recognized for some time as the best methods of forest management. But wealthy people, who in recent years have built more and more vacation houses on the edges of federal forests, have successfully resisted such measures near their homes. They even dared to pretend they are interested in preserving the environment, when they use some conservation rules to back up their appeals. The suppression of "controlled burns" has helped to create the conditions underlying the current rash of big wildfires.
Taking advantage of this, Bush stepped forward to propose to open up the national forests to commercial logging with few if any restraints. Bush pretended that this is intended to bring about a more balanced, environmentally friendly, type of forest management.
Behind all this babble, Bush is proposing to allow clear-cutting of federal forests. That is, lumber companies can cut down every tree in very extensive areas. Such clear-cutting will destroy the forests completely. This can only increase, rather than reduce, the chances for more even bigger, more intense forest fires in the future, because it will contribute to the accumulation of underbrush and small seedling trees in the cut areas. Moreover, since logging companies do not remove the debris from their operations, it will produce plenty of kindling right now.
This is not a way to "conserve the forests," as Bush proclaims. It is simply a way to subsidize profits for the lumber industry, which is owned by some of the biggest financial interests in the country.
Aug 26, 2002
Jerome E. Lance, police chief of Long Beach, California recently broke down in tears speaking at a local NAACP meeting about the fatal shooting of Marcella Byrd.
Byrd, a mentally ill black woman who lived in a seniors’ apartment complex, was confronted by the Long Beach cops because she had allegedly taken groceries from a store without paying for them. Seven cops followed her for at least a block. When she was crossing the street, the cops shot her with two rounds of bean bags. When she turned in anger against her attackers, three of the cops fired a total of eight bullets into her torso, killing her instantly.
You might think that Chief Lance was crying in sympathy for Byrd and her family. But no–he was crying out of sympathy for Byrd’s killers! And not because they are being punished–for they face no charges whatsoever. So what were the tears for? For emotional torment which, according to Lance, the cops must be going through!
Lance, like many other police officials, has no shame when defending killer cops. He even dared pretend that Byrd presented a threat to bystanders.
If any bystanders were in danger, it was certainly from all the bullets fired by the cops, not from a five foot three inch nearly 300 pound, severely incapacitated woman.
The worst threat, of course, comes from police officials who justify police killings.
Aug 26, 2002
The 16,000 dockworkers on the West Coast, who are represented by the ILWU (International Longshore and Warehouse Union), have been continuing to work without a contract since July 1. So far, the officials of the ILWU have continued to negotiate and have not set a strike deadline. They have not even asked for a membership vote authorizing a strike, almost two months after the contract expired.
Meanwhile, the steamship, stevedore and marine terminal companies–which are represented by the PMA (Pacific Maritime Association )–have gone on the attack. They are demanding big take-aways in medical benefits. They are also proposing to cut the workforce by subcontracting out hundreds of jobs, under the guise of changing computer technology.
Using a take-it-or-leave-it position, the PMA has threatened to lock out workers if the ILWU doesn’t accept the take-aways.
The Bush administration has publicly come down on the bosses’ side. Among other things, representatives of both the Labor Department and the Department of Homeland Security have told ILWU officials that the government is ready to move against the workers if there is any disruption at the ports–whether from a strike or a lockout.
Labor Department officials threaten to use the military to operate the ports. The Bush administration also threatened the ILWU with stripping it of its bargaining rights under the National Labor Relations Act and with breaking up the coast-wide contract, forcing the union to negotiate separate agreements by port or even by terminal, in effect, shattering the workers into small, weaker groups.
Faced with these threats from the large shipping companies–and the U.S. government–union officials have organized a few rallies along the coast of northern California, Oregon and Washington, demanding that the Bush administration let negotiations go on. And they have directed their members to appeal to Democratic Party politicians, both locally and nationally. With a Republican in the White House, the Democrats are perfectly willing to pose "as the friends of labor" and denounce the Bush administration. This costs them nothing. But neither will it reinforce the 16,000 longshore workers in the ILWU who face this brutal extortion. However, the last president to invoke the Taft-Hartley Act against striking workers was a Democrat, Jimmy Carter.
Unfortunately, while the bosses give every indication of their willingness to carry out a war, union leaders so far have gone out of their way to show how reasonable they are. Of course, this doesn’t mean the union leaders couldn’t call for a strike. Nor does it mean that workers can’t prepare for a fight right now.
One thing is sure–the bosses on their own will not be reasonable.
Aug 26, 2002
A survey of more than 1000 public libraries found that about 1 in 12 had been visited by the FBI in the first three months after the Patriot Act was passed.
The FBI is able to search the libraries’ records under this act to find out what people are reading. An FBI agent has only to state that he believes that a person who used the library is involved with a terrorist or with a terrorist activity. He needs no proof to obtain a search warrant and look through the library’s records.
Under this act, librarians who talk about the FBI investigation could be prosecuted for a criminal offense. The director for intellectual freedom of the American Library Association, Judith Krug, said, "It’s super secret and anyone who wants to talk about what the FBI did at their library faces prosecution. That has nothing to do with patriotism."
If you are one of the millions who uses the Internet at your local library and you read about September 11 or terrorism or Osama bin Laden there, you might already be on an FBI list. Is this a way to find actual terrorists? Obviously not! But it is a way to intimidate everyone.
Finally, it’s simply another method of thought control, directed especially against anyone who disagrees with the government.
Aug 26, 2002
Tom Ridge, the Homeland Security czar, threatened Steve Stallone, union leader of the West coast longshore workers. Pretending that terrorists could take advantage of any disruption on the docks–whether from a strike or a lockout–he threatened to bring in troops against the workers.
The Bush administration has also sponsored legislation to monitor, that is, spy on dockworkers, pretending they might be terrorists in disguise.
That’s terrorism all right–threatened by the state–in the service of the bosses against the working class.
Aug 26, 2002
Bill Simon, Jr., a wealthy businessman and the son of former U.S. Secretary of the Treasury, William E. Simon, is running for governor of the state of California. Like other wealthy businessmen who have run for political office, Simon claims that he will "clean up" the political system by running it "like a business."
In early August, a Los Angeles civil trial gave a glimpse into what this means. The jury found that Simon’s company had defrauded a business partner, P. Edward Hindelang. The jury ordered that the Simon company pay Hindelang 78 million dollars in compensatory and punitive damages.
But the story doesn’t end here–it seems that Simon’s business partner is a convicted drug trafficker. In the early 1980s, he had pled guilty to smuggling over half a million pounds of marijuana from Colombia into the U.S., served three years in federal prison and paid a 50 million dollar fine.
None of this seemed to bother President Bush, who came to California at the end of August to raise money for Simon’s campaign. As they say, birds of a feather flock together.
Aug 26, 2002
Three years ago, drug manufacturer Pharmacia introduced Celebrex and Vioxx. They were supposed to be pain relievers with all the advantages of aspirin but none of its drawbacks. Aspirin is an effective, non-addictive pain relieving drug which brings down fever, reduces inflammation and helps prevent heart. But it can have one serious side effect: It can cause stomach upset or even bleeding and ulcers in some people who take it for a long period of time. And people suffering from permanent painful conditions or diseases like arthritis have to take pain relievers every day.
Pharmacia not only introduced these drugs with an enormous ad campaign to convince doctors how good they were. Pharmacia also published a study showing how well Celebrex worked.
However, it turned out that the Celebrex study from 2000 was published as if it had only lasted six months when it had actually lasted for two years. Why?
Pharmacia, which paid for the study, got good results in people who took the drug for six months. But after a year, it turned out, there was nothing better about Celebrex than there was in aspirin. It had no advantage for people who took it for the longer period. In fact, there was one big disadvantage: While aspirin is protective against strokes and heart attacks, these drugs aren’t.
There was, however, one great big advantage for Pharmacia–while aspirin can be purchased for only a few dollars a month, Vioxx and Celebrex were selling for $100 for a month’s supply.
In a system based on profit, it’s not what a medication can do for a patient’s health that counts. It’s what it can do for a company’s profits.
Aug 26, 2002
In small towns in Virginia, West Virginia, Kentucky, Pennsylvania and other states, big mining companies have been coming in and stripping the tops off entire mountains to recover the coal available. Rainwater and mud start cascading down the sides of many such strip-mined mountaintops flowing into the towns and villages on the mountain sides and into the valleys below. There is regular flooding now of areas that previously had rarely experienced serious rain water problems before mountaintop removal mining began.
The mining companies involved claim that they restore the mountain tops after blasting them apart with explosives and using huge bulldozers, cranes, trucks, crushers and other equipment to grind them up to recover coal from seams in the rock. But residents of towns and villages on the mountain sides and in nearby valleys say the mining companies’ reclamation efforts are cosmetic. Restoration never returns the mountains to their former selves, and even if it did, it would not undo the damage to mountainsides and valleys from rain water running off of flattened mountain tops and out of completely buried streams while the strip mining is underway.
Add to this the honeycombing of abandoned mine shafts throughout this whole area, which regularly threaten a collapse of the ground above, and this area has been set up for disaster.
"The company and government inspectors tell us the rain’s an act of God," said one resident of a now regularly flooding town. "Well it wasn’t God who went up on our mountain with a ‘dozer to leave it naked. They are destroying us here."
Aug 26, 2002
In mid-August, 11 miners were killed in an explosion in a coal mine in northeast China. At least 39 other miners had been killed in a mine in a neighboring province in July and 115 miners were killed in June. In fact, just since January more than 3500 miners have been reported dead in mining accidents by official figures.
The English magazine, The Economist, which reported these figures, said that many more incidents probably go unreported. When 21 miners were trapped in a mining explosion in May, the mine owner tried to prevent news of the accident from leaking out. So many thousands more have undoubtedly died in this enormous industry. Coal mines produce 75% of the energy used in this country of more than a billion people.
The reasons for the deaths are simple: mine safety standards in these thousands of privately owned mines are a disastrous joke. Capitalism functions by cutting back on safety and by keeping local authorities quiet about the situation in which miners daily risk their lives.
A few years ago, the capitalists of the West happily proclaimed the return of "free enterprise" to China. Free for capitalists, perhaps, but deadly for miners.
Aug 26, 2002
Outrage and protest against Israel’s F-16 missile attack on Gaza City came not only from Palestinians in the Occupied Territories. It also came from inside Israel itself, within the "belly" of the Israeli Defense Forces.
This attack, which caused the destruction of an entire block of apartment buildings and small houses, came in the middle of the night. Missiles rained down, killing 15 civilians, including 10 children, and injuring 150 more residents.
A group of Israeli reservists, mostly young men who have refused military duty in the Occupied Territories of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, took out an ad in a major Israeli newspaper to condemn the attack.
The ad symbolically addressed the F-16 pilot who dropped the bomb: "Are you familiar with the term, ‘A patently illegal order?‘ Will you recognize such an order if you encounter one? Is the death of children and babies justified by their father’s acts, with you being the executioner?"But it was effectively a condemnation of Israeli top policy makers. "Almost without noticing, the state of Israel is turning into a state that does not recoil from any means to achieve its political goals. We hide the faces of our soldiers due to fear of the International Court for War Crimes, just as criminals hide their faces due to fear of the police."
These courageous men took the risk of standing up for their convictions and against the brutal policies of the Sharon government, policies which work against the interests of the Palestinian people and the ordinary Israeli people.
Aug 26, 2002
After months of making it seem like a U.S. military attack against Iraq was imminent, after months of leaked war plans, leaked photos and videos showing the first stages of a military build-up in the countries surrounding Iraq, the Bush administration has suddenly back-tracked. This shift was marked by a Bush news conference on August 22 in which Bush coyly seemed to say: "War? What war?"
What war, indeed! Sure, for the moment, the Bush administration has put the massive invasion of Iraq, that according to leaked war plans, would have included carpet bombing and a U.S. expeditionary force of anywhere from a "modest" Afghan-style force of "only" 70,000 troops to a "more substantial and robust" force of 275,000 on the back burner.
But this just means that the regular U.S. bombing of the country and the murderous economic embargo that has gone on for the last 11 years will continue. The U.S. generals and policy makers even have a name for that policy: "containment." Over more than 10 years time, Iraq has been almost totally laid to waste, and over a million people have died. That is the price the Iraqi population has paid for the U.S. policy of "containment."
Certainly, there have been obvious signs of opposition from within the military and the U.S. government to a U.S. invasion of Iraq almost ever since Bush announced the possibility in the weeks following September 11. The fact that Secretary of State Colin Powell let it be known that he did not agree with this direction indicated the likelihood of persistent disagreements inside the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff as well. And in the last weeks, they became more pronounced, as many high officials and former officials, including House Majority leader Republican Dick Armey; U.S. Senator John McCain, also a Republican; former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger; former national security adviser Brent Scowcroft; and even General Norman Schwartzkopf, of Gulf War fame, voiced their reservations.
The issue was brought to a head after articles critical of the Bush administration written by Scowcroft in the Wall Street Journal and Kissinger in the Washington Post appeared early in August. It didn’t take long before the Bush foreign policy team of Cheney, Rumsfeld and Rice backed off.
Much of the talk about whether or not to go to war was couched in terms of weapons of mass destruction, endless talk about whether Hussein had them, was about to get them, had buried them deep underground, put them on wheels, in suitcases, or was about to launch a missile somewhere. Of course, this was complete nonsense, it always was. As the former chief U.N. weapons inspector Scott Ritter pointed out time after time, not one shred of evidence was ever produced to support those claims. And, as others showed, finding that evidence would be highly unlikely since Hussein was not suicidal and about to hand Bush a pretext to invade the country. In fact, the only known time Hussein produced and used poison gas was with the permission and support of the U.S. during the Iran-Iraq War, both against Iran and also against a Kurdish minority that also happened to be opposed by such U.S. military allies as Turkey.
There was also all the talk about whether the U.S. would, supposedly for the first time, launch a pre-emptive strike against Iraq. As if the U.S. military supposedly only went to war after the U.S. was attacked. If that were true, then what was the U.S. doing going to war half way around the world against Korea, Viet Nam, Lebanon and the Dominican Republican in the 1940s, 50s and 60s? What was the U.S. military doing invading the tiny island of Grenada in the early 1980s, or the slightly larger country of Panama in the late 1980s–or Iraq in 1990-91? No, the U.S. government has never hesitated to unleash its military when it deemed necessary, and only created pretexts out of whole cloth to justify these brutal invasions. For example, recently published White House transcripts from the Johnson presidency during the Viet Nam War show that Johnson privately admitted that the attack by a Vietnamese PT boat on a U.S. destroyer that led to the passage of the Gulf of Tonkin resolution never actually happened.
No, behind the disagreements inside the military and Republican Party with the Bush administration’s push to invade Iraq is the concern that the U.S. military could get bogged down in a very long and costly occupation of the country. If several thousand U.S. troops are already bogged down occupying a small corner of Afghanistan, how many tens of thousands of U.S. troops would be tied up in Iraq, a much larger and more central and strategic country, after a U.S. invasion?
This could have enormous consequences. First, it could destabilize some of the U.S.-sponsored military dictatorships, kingdoms and sheikdoms in the region, which are charged with holding the lid down on their impoverished populations for the benefit of a tiny minority of the region, and above all, for the oil companies, banks and military contractors in the U.S.
Second, it could also lead to growing opposition inside the U.S. The opposition to the war in Viet Nam was hardly a fluke. There has always been a substantial opposition in the population and distrust of foreign wars and military adventures. If a war and occupation of Iraq could last some time, entailing enormous and unending sacrifices by the working population, this could ignite social movements and crises.
All those officials who today have opposed the Bush administration’s plans for war against Iraq are simply questioning whether the risks are justified by what the U.S. ruling class can gain from it, in terms of oil, power and control. Currently, they are not convinced that it does. But that could change. And if it does, the U.S. government would very well plunge the people of both the Middle East and the U.S. into another slaughter.
Aug 26, 2002
A Nigerian woman has lost her appeal to an Islamic high court. In January, 2004, she is supposed to be stoned to death. Her crime was giving birth to a daughter more than nine months after she was divorced.
The Islamic law, called shariah, was instituted in northern Nigeria after the military dictatorship ended in 1999. Shariah is also the law in other countries with Islamic majorities, most notably Pakistan, a country with the official name "The Islamic Republic of Pakistan." This summer, Islamic law in Pakistan meant the rape of a young girl and sodomy of her brother, ordered by the tribal council.
Shariah has also meant the cutting off of a hand for someone judged guilty of theft and even the beheading of a princess in Saudi Arabia, judged guilty of sex outside of marriage.
The growth of reactionary religion weighs especially heavily on women. This mother in Nigeria did not create her baby alone, but the man she said was the father was acquitted. The young girl in Pakistan was raped in revenge for her young brother, aged 11, having walked down a village road with another young girl.
But this weight of religion doesn’t just torture and repress women and children. A society under such law does not encourage any education except for religion. The Taliban, with its strict insistence on the shariah, grew out of the religious schools for young boys in refugee camps. Those schools placed no value on educating young minds to understand the world, only to memorize religious teachings. Such an education is opposed to a scientific understanding of the world in which we live, and of the ways in which it develops.
Religious leaders in all the world’s religions, not just under Islam, act as a brake on societies. Not only have they encouraged barbaric punishments, including religiously sanctioned murder. They are also used to mold the thinking of new generations into ways suited to the distant past.
Aug 26, 2002
... Every time I get to my release date I get a "false" misconduct charge on me in retaliation for my assisting other prisoners by being witness to beatings by guards on prisoners here, which is my reason for the letter now.
Here at Ionia Maximum Correctional Facility there is a pattern of guards in Unit 2 Detention beating up black prisoners while they are in full restraints and some on top-of-bed restraint position. The guards are white and extremely racist.
Prisoner Donald Turner #144118 was assaulted on December 14, 2001 by two guards, Fred Bandt (Clock #060944) and Bradley Baublitz (Clock #061116). They broke his nose. He was in full restraints and [his hands] cuffed behind his back.
Prisoner Fred Reeves #241575 was aaulted on July 7, 2002 by four guards, Basil Wolever (Clock #060811), K. Datema (Clock #060737), Officer Jolly (Clock #060775) and Officer Wolhfert (# unknown). Prisoner Kenneth Moore #201552 was assaulted on July 11, 2002 by guards, some of whose clock numbers are not known, but they work second shift in the Unit 2 Detention: Officer Pettit, Officer Jensen, Officer Bandt (Clock #060944), Officer Hall (Clock #060767), Officer Jamison, and Officer Huizing (Clock #070791).
Prisoner Moore went on an attorney phone call on July 12, 2002. When he returned to the unit, Guards Basil Wolever (#060811) and Daniel Stino (# unknown) plus Officers Wolhfert and Jolly and some other guards whom he did not know assaulted him again for telling the attorney about being assaulted.
All the guards are white; all the prisoners assaulted are black. This has been a systematic pattern of racially motivated prisoner beatings by white racist guards. There are no black guards working Unit 2 at Ionia Maximum Correctional Facility. Some of these guards claim to be members of the racist group, Aryan Nation.
We file grievances against guards and then we’re put on grievance modification and issued a misconduct charge, which alleges we lied about the guards. Medical records exhibit the beatings occurred, but the guards say the prisoners assaulted them and had to be restrained.
How can a person assault someone when they are in leg irons, hands cuffed behind the back with two guards on either side and one who is behind holding the cuffs?
We need some assistance to cease these unprovoked, unjustified, retaliatory and racist prisoner beatings by white guards at Ionia Maximum Correctional Facility.
Anyone concerned should contact the person below to complain:
William Overton, Director
Michigan Department of Corrections
PO Box 30003
Lansing, MI 48909
Phone (517) 338-1426
Governor of Michigan John Engler
PO Box 30013
Lansing MI 48909
Phone: (517) 373-6800
Attorney General Jennifer Granholm
PO Box 30212
Lansing MI 48909
Phone (517) 373-1110
U.S. Representative John Conyers Jr.
2426 Rayburn House
Washington DC 20515
Phone (212) 225-5126
State Senator Jackie Vaughn III
PO Box 30036
Lansing MI 48909
Phone: (517) 373-7918
Aug 26, 2002
Thousands of union officials, retirees and ordinary workers went to pay their respects to former UAW President Steve Yokich, who died on August 9, only a few months after he retired.
Yokich devoted his whole life to the union, from the time he was a young worker at a small tool and die shop, up through the years that he occupied positions at the head of the union. He came up through the ranks.And he was of that generation of UAW officials who had taken part in strikes. Many workers respected him exactly for these reasons.
Nonetheless, Yokich, like UAW presidents before him, carried out a policy that in the long run has worked against the interest of the workers. Like other presidents before him, he made trade-offs with the big auto companies that led us to today’s situation. The economic gains made in the contracts were more than offset by what was given up to the companies: a much faster pace of work for those on the line and very big job cuts.
In the years since the concessions began, the auto companies have cut their work force in half. Many jobs have been shipped to companies paying lower pay. And many more jobs have been lost to the vicious speed-up, as work rules were modified to let the company get more work out of every worker. The assumption all during this time has been that the workers can benefit only if the company benefits, and UAW leaders have done what they could to help reinforce the profitability of the companies.
Yokich alone was not responsible for this policy–which in fact sees the union in a partnership with the companies. But Yokich did not challenge this policy either. In fact, he was able to help impose it, precisely because he had a certain militant reputation.
Aug 26, 2002
Chanting "Show Nate the Gate–You May Be Next," several hundred workers from DaimlerChrysler’s McGraw Glass plant demonstrated in front of UAW headquarters on August 22. They flooded the sidewalk, three to four deep, for over six hours. There were signs workers made saying "Stop Plant Closings, Save McGraw" Other signs demanded, "Nate, Deny It or Take it Back."They had gathered at UAW headquarter to protest remarks that UAW Vice-president Nate Gooden made in an interview with Automotive News. When asked about persistent rumors that McGraw might be sold or simply closed down, Gooden told the reporter, "Chrysler made a mistake getting into the glass business."Did Gooden make a mistake in opening his mouth–like he usually does? Or were UAW officials giving the go-ahead to Chrysler to close McGraw?
Chrysler has certainly been threatening to get rid of McGraw. As long ago as 1987, it first proposed to put McGraw and other parts plants together into Acustar–and then spin them off into a separate company.
But, given the reaction among Chrysler workers, the company seemed to back off, signing an agreement with the union not to sell Acustar. In fact, it didn’t sell Acustar–it simply began to close or sell individual parts plants one after another. By 1993, Chrysler had shipped out so much parts production, that it made only 30% of its parts in its own factories. The rest were produced in lower-wage companies.
This did not happen at McGraw.
In 1988 and ‘89, Chrysler certainly came back to workers there, demanding they agree to concessions in work rules and in job classifications. UAW officials at the time–local, regional and international–argued that the workers had to accept or Chrysler would close or sell the plant. Instead, McGraw workers refused company demands. They voted down these proposals three times, by margins of 7 to 1 or better, despite increasing threats coming from top UAW officials.
But Chrysler didn’t close McGraw. It actually built a completely new plant on the same site, even while keeping full production going.
For awhile, the plant closing rumors disappeared. But in recent years, they have popped up again. But nothing happened.
Then, at the very end of last year, Chrysler gave the union 90 days to come up with a plan to save 50 million dollars at McGraw. If not, the plant would be closed or sold. So said the company. The International hired an "efficiency expert" who apparently proposed to the company that it close down parts of several departments, shipping the work out. About 200 jobs have since been cut. Nothing was put in front of the workers, but many workers were angry over what was happening, and expressed it in local union meetings.
The company continued to spread rumors about closing the plant.
Finally, at the July local union meeting, workers demanded to know how Chrysler could close the plant, since the UAW supposedly had a "no-plant-closings" agreement with Chrysler. A UAW regional rep replied that Chrysler could simply "mothball" the plant until the contract expired.
(In fact, this was what Chrysler had already done many times. For example, Chrysler closed down all production at a number of its stamping plants. As for the agreement not to close plants, the company announced that it was not closing the plants–only "mothballing" them until the contract expired, at which point union negotiators agreed that those plants could be closed before the new contract started.)
This is the background to UAW Vice-president Gooden’s remarks. What Chrysler is doing now sounds like earlier threats it made to close the plant if it didn’t get the concessions it wanted. And what Gooden said sounds like earlier threats UAW officials made to convince workers they had to give up concessions or face the loss of their jobs.
In that earlier time period, workers at McGraw were united enough and determined enough to face down all these threats. Not only did they refuse the concession demands, they kept all their jobs. In fact, the number of jobs at McGraw increased.
None of this is to say that Chrysler couldn’t close the plant–and with very little notice. Or it could just keep shipping out production, one line at a time.
But regardless of Chrysler’s intentions, workers can resist any and all company plans.
The demonstration that was organized shows that there are a lot of McGraw workers ready to make a stand. Over a quarter of the whole plant came out to demonstrate, including most local union officials and reps.
Of course, by themselves, McGraw workers can seem powerless and isolated. In fact, that’s not true–as they’ve already demonstrated. But McGraw workers, if they are determined to resist, can get a fight going that would pull other workers along with them. And that’s what really counts. It’s also what will force union leaders to back off of so openly taking the company’s side.
During the demonstration, other workers driving by honked horns, raised fists and otherwise signaled their solidarity to the McGraw workers. Everyone is under attack these days. Most workers would like to resist. The workers at McGraw, who have a history of resisting, can be the ones who get the ball rolling.