Rank And file Auto Workers Take A Stand

international | worker & community struggles and protests | news report Thursday January 12, 2006 22:42 by Richard Mellor - Labor's Militant Voice aactivist at igc dot org http://www.laborsmilitantvoice.com

Between 500 and 1000 thousand auto workers, other trade unionists and supporters picketed the International Auto Show in Detroit on Jan 8th

I drove to Detroit from Chicago to last Sunday to join in the auto workers' protest at the
North American International Auto Show. As I drove through Flint, Michigan I noticed the billboards alongside the freeway advertising everything from casinos and hotels to adult stores and fast food restaurants. I even saw a sign applauding the great partnership between the UAW and the auto corporations.

I saw no monuments along the way to the battles and factory occupations of the thirties. There were no billboards welcoming me to Flint, Michigan ---the home of the 1937, 44-day sit-down strike. This part of the country has a rich and militant history that took on GM and built the UAW. Most of us, union or non-union alike, are still living off the legacy of these heroic struggles. The cost of such a billboard would barely put a dent in the obscene salaries of most labor officials. But the UAW leadership of today is obsessed with being accepted by the employers and big capitalists; they do everything they can to erase from history the struggles that built the organizations that they have hijacked. They don't want us to know our own history.

And what is the history of Flint? It is the history of thousands of workers occupying factories, violating anti-union injunctions and laws. It is a history of mass pickets and working people relying on our own strength and organization rather than entering in to agreements with the bosses, the police and the big business politicians. This history is important because it is to these methods of struggle, the methods of Flint 1936-37 that we have to return.

The methods of the present day leaders of the UAW and AFL-CIO are the complete opposite of the methods of Flint 1937. Do not do anything that threatens production or profit taking. Cooperate with the employers. Cooperate with the police. Cooperate with the big business politicians and at all costs, keep the membership in the dark. These disastrous polices, have led to the present situation where Delphi workers are facing drastic pay cuts and retirees, like the airline workers before them, are about to take huge losses in their pensions. The employers, with help from the top union officials, are intent on driving us back to conditions that existed before the great struggles and factory occupations of the 1930's.

January 8th's protest at the Detroit Auto Show was not attended by the UAW officialdom, Ron Gettlefinger and company. They were too busy savoring the compliments given them by Rick Waggoner, head of GM for agreeing to cuts in wages and retiree benefits (not theirs of course) at GM and Ford. And they did not sanction it because it was a protest against the attacks on pensions and more than 50% cuts in wages proposed by Delphi Corporation. Although, as the Wall Street Journal pointed out, Delphi is not broke, the company, in league with the judges and the politicians, filed for bankruptcy protection in order to renege on pension obligations, much like the airline bosses before them.

The protest at the Cobo center in Detroit was organized by dissident UAW rank and file members calling themselves the Soldiers of Solidarity and despite reports of 200 attendees in the big business press, there were at least five or six hundred people there, maybe more. Workers came from all over the country and Canada; auto workers from Ohio, Indiana and Illinois. I was pleased to see members present from AFSCME, the Union I belonged to for almost 30 years.

It is good to see such rumblings among the ranks of organized labor; particularly important is the UAW, potentially one of the most powerful Unions in the U.S. given the role of auto in the US economy. One protestor interviewed by USA Today understood clearly what must be done when he told the paper that the protest was "to show that the rank and file have the power to bring those corporations to their knees, we're the ones who control production. We're the ones who do the work." (USA Today 1-9-06)

It is clear that if we are to drive back the employers' offensive we have to return to the methods of Flint. There is a mood to resist that is developing and was present at the protest at the auto show when a hundred or more union members refused to be cowed by the authorities and refused to stay a 1000 feet from the event passively walking around in circles. They marched toward the Cobo center where the auto show was being held until a police cordon stopped them. Apparently the organizers had agreed in a meeting with the police to stay 1000, feet away from the center but there were many UAW members present who were willing to enter the hall auto show to disrupt the proceedings. This is what should have been done. One guy said that, "I've been arrested for being drunk, I would be proud to be arrested defending my rights." Despite being short lived, the action clearly raised spirits as opposed to picketing 1000 feet away. The workers trying to march to the Cobo center (called a "mob" by the big business press) chanted, "the criminals are over there" pointing to the center, and "we're not weak, we're not mild, we're the voice of the rank and file."

The resistance growing within the UAW must not allow the employers to determine the rules of the game.

What doesn't work
We can be certain of one thing. We know what does not work; the methods of the present union leadership that have led to one disastrous defeat after another. The policy of the present union leadership from AFL-CIO President, John Sweeney to the misnamed, Change To Win Coalition led by SEIU's Andy Stern, is cooperation in the form of the Team Concept. Our present leadership sees the unions as employment agencies with themselves as the CEO's. They worship the so-called, free market, and accept that workers have to be in vicious competition with one another to see who can work cheapest, fastest, and with the least pay, benefits and rights on the job. They assist the employers in this totally anti-union concept that pits worker against worker and destroys solidarity. Workers within countries or across borders cannot successfully organize against global corporations with such a strategy.

They refuse to challenge the laws written by big business politicians to protect their interests. Strikes are no longer strikes, actions aimed at stopping production, but 24 hour protests that last for months until workers have lost their homes and cannot go on any longer. Workers that confront the employers' or the police or impede scabs are "troublemakers". or are told that they need to be realistic.

In organizing drives, neutrality agreements are made with employers so that a weak and disarmed union, a dues collecting agency really, will be formed which guarantees the employers an inactive membership and years of labor peace. Before any protests, pickets or gatherings of working people and union members, agreements are made with local politicians, authorities and the police that ensure the protests will remain harmless passive events designed only to let off some steam. In many cases, protests are such a distance away from the object of the protest that no one would know why it is happening. According to reports on one of the rank and file websites, the organizers of the Detroit protest accepted the terms set down by the police that they would stay 1000 feet from the event. It would have been much more effective to have entered the show and disrupted it; it would have let the employers know that they meant business and it would have given inspiration to workers watching to see what differences there were between the dissident's methods and those and the official UAW leadership.

The day after the rally, corporate chiefs were gloating in their press about the money they’re raking in. Financial reports for the fourth quarter of 2005 are coming in and they promise to be “13 to 14 percent higher than last year” says the Financial Times. The Times points out that it will be the “10th quarter in a row that profits have grown by at least 10%.”
The Times also reports that, “corporate profit margins and profits as a proportion of US gross domestic product are at a 30 and 50 year high respectively.”

The billions upon billions that they stash away come from the unpaid labor of workers like this at the rally on Sunday. We’re only trying to get back what is ours in the first place.

To read more on Delphi visit: http://www.laborsmilitantvoice.com/feaDelphiStatement.htm

Richard Mellor
AFSCME Local 444, Retired