'This is a Class War' -- Auto Workers Fight 50 Percent Pay Cut Demand

[marmar]

from Labor Notes, via AlterNet:



'This is a Class War' -- Auto Workers Fight 50 Percent Pay Cut Demand

By Wendy Thompson, Labor Notes. Posted April 15, 2008.

Workers are fighting two-tier wage system; offshoring at profitable Detroit firm.



Holbrook Avenue is a busy thoroughfare stretching from I-75 to downtown Hamtramck, a small town enclosed on all sides by Detroit. Cars honk in support of striking members of UAW Local 235 as they pass five picket lines filled 24 hours a day on both sides of the street along the large American Axle and Manufacturing (AAM) complex.

There are five more lines going south on St. Aubin Street, and two to the north. Spirits are high, and strikers are dressed warmly to face the bitter tail of winter weather.

More than 3,600 American Axle workers have been on strike since February 26 at this plant and four other plants in Detroit and Three Rivers, Michigan, and two Buffalo suburbs, Cheektowaga and Tonawanda, New York. The plants produce the axles and parts for every General Motors light truck and SUV built in North America. Their chokehold on auto production was quickly felt: 28 GM plants at press time have stopped their lines as a result of the strike.

Line in the Sand

Many workers prepared for the strike and are ready to stay out as long as it takes. One Detroit plant worker had gone as far as putting aside money for two years in anticipation of the strike. When asked about how he was faring four weeks into the strike he replied, "like a piece of cake."

Picketers talk about the need to draw a line in the sand against spiraling concessions on wages, health care benefits, and pensions.

American Axle stands out in the U.S. auto industry because it has stayed profitable since spinning off from General Motors. Staying in the black hasn't stopped the company's CEO, Dick Dauch -- who himself averaged $14.5 million in annual compensation between 2003 and 2006 -- from demanding two-tier wage concessions.

In 2004, American Axle workers were told by the company and the UAW International that they had to accept two-tier wages. Although the AAM contract was voted down in the Detroit flagship plant, it passed nationally over job security fears. .......(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.alternet.org/workplace/82319/

[shaniqua6392]

1. We have driven by them and honked our support.

I can not believe the way this company is treating its employees. They have even threatened to take the entire production to Mexico and permanently lay off the workers. Every American should be outraged at this treatment!! This could happen to any of us. This is a profitable company that is just screwing the American worker. I wish the auto companies would put the screws to them for this bad behavior. I am from a strong union family and we support American Axle union employees 100%.

[GoesTo11]

2. But they're not bitter!

[madmom]

3. I posted this story about 2 weeks ago and it sunk like a rock, how come?....people

don't care unless it's happening to them?

[InkAddict]

4. Yes, they're afraid it's contagious

and just as easily might happen to them. It's said one is known by one's associations, and people don't want to associate with corporate castoffs. They've come to fear the fascist corporations' power to destroy every networked aspect of our lives and no longer believe that organization will bring improvement. It's also popular to believe that negative vibrations have an impact on the body/mind connection, so like *s harsh mother, they don't want to disturb their beautiful minds with anyone else's worries.

It's human nature to hide one's failures and we learn early on to "present" a good image, not necessarily be good. We've also organized and corporatized our charity and/or our sense of togetherness to the point that it's imploded. We're so enmeshed in a system with so many needs that it's difficult to determine whether what we keep close (or not) is preserving of self or self-serving. The worse among us may no longer even feel a responsibility to extend charity to family members. Some send them onward to those corporate, organized, corruptable safety nets, like tuna netted for the canning groups where they'll end up in cans with expiration dates, as if the senders have no empty can with an expiration date awaiting themselves. We not only hate the sins, but truly hate the sinners and want to keep them at arms' length.

Large do-gooder funding, not individual responsibility, will provide all the safety nets, so it's easy to claim to be charitable simply by paying what the government has decreed, mowing the grass, and, perhaps, calling in to the latest phone-a-thon with a pledge.

Worse, we can't wrap our heads around how to make judgements about others' less than murderous crimes that have consequences and are left with only a crystal ball formula that looks like this: Bad choices=bad circumstances; good choices=good circumstances.

[Blue_Tires]

5. k+r