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UAW Members at American Axle Approve Pact
UAW workers at five American Axle & Manufacturing plants in Michigan and New York voted to ratify a new four-year labor agreement reached last week, ending a strike that began Feb. 26.
The union reports that 78 percent of the workers voted in favor of ratification and 22 percent voted against it.
Says UAW President Ron Gettelfinger:
Our members have had to make some tough decisions for themselves and their families and have done so with careful deliberation.
The agreement covers 3,650 workers at the Detroit and Three Rivers plants in Michigan, and the Buffalo, Tonawanda and Cheektowaga plants in New York. Voting began May 19 and concluded May 22.
Says UAW Vice President Jimmy Settles, director of the union’s American Axle Manufacturing Department:
This has been a difficult process for American Axle workers and there is no doubt that they stood strong through it all.
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For critical views from workers at American Axle, check out this article
from WSWS (with photos and video).
Detroit American Axle workers speak out against UAW betrayal
By Jerry White and our reporting team
23 May 2008
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2008/may2008/axle-m23.shtml
“…
Faced with the imminent loss of their jobs and knowing full well that the union would do nothing to fight if they voted to remain on strike, the majority of workers ratified the agreement and opted to take buyouts to leave the company.
….”
“Another worker, Jerome, added, “The company and the union had this contract worked out from the beginning. They just waited 12 weeks to spring it on us.
“All of these corporations are global now with operations in Asia and elsewhere. A strike is not the way to get things done anymore. Everything is going to the super-elite.
…”
{My own thought: The traditional methods of simple trade unionism are dead as capitalism has gone global. American working people are now forced to compete against the poorest wage slaves in Mexico, China, etc.
The unions once justified their existence to working people that they could fight
for the economic needs of working people. Union members made top wages, benefits such as health insurcance, vacation pay, safe working conditions, etc.
The unions are increasingly incapable of delivering any serious benefits to working people as long as they maintain their traditional mode of operation.
The number of people represented by unions will continue to decline as corporations give unions ultimatums which impotent unions can not fight.
Some basic changes many consider essential for unions and working people must now consider if we are to survive.
1. Global capitalism must be considered the enemy of human survival. Capitalism is violently opposed to fulfilling the needs of people for living wage jobs, increasingly refuses to pay for privatized health care, refuses to end pollution and resultant global warming, etc. All these things are happening because capitalism everywhere is organized to maximium profit no matter
the effects on employees, the environment, or on human society. Thus unending wars for oil and resources, potable water and adequate food controlled by profit making interests cause massive poverty and death.
What is needed? Perhaps a new mass media, a new political party to oppose, new demands to nationalize certain industries (such as energy, housing, etc.)
to be managed by working people , and run to fultilled the needs of the mass majority of people now threatened with destruction. Better sacrifice the parasitic profits of the top one percent for the needs of survival humanity.
Read WSWS World Socialist Web Site http://www.wsws.org
The biggest problem we face is the fact the laws in our country are lousy. If corporations weren’t allowed to cut and run to foreign countries, we wouldn’t be faced with the poor economy we’re looking at today. Eventually, the chickens will come home to roost. Business analysts predict 10,000 bankruptcies by the year 2010. People who are laid off earning $250 a week or those working paid $12 an hour or less have no extra money to buy anything with.
Maybe the American Axel workers will be amused when the executives begin jumping out skyscraper windows just like they did back in the thirties when the rich lost everything!