A few words you should hear from the newly elected President of the UAW and those who

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voted him in. "One Struggle, Same Fight!" is a slogan anyone with more than a fraction of a clue can understand. He got it, expressed it, can you even hear it?

The full transcript/audio/video is at: http://www.democracynow.org/2010/6/22/newly_elected_united_auto_workers_president

AMY GOODMAN: Salvador, the particular struggle there, why this was important to you? And also the fact that, for so many years, you’ve gone to Fort Benning, Georgia, to stand with those who are opposing the School of the Americas?

BOB KING: Yeah, I have a really good friend who was actually chairperson of one of our small units in the region when I was there, and she was arrested and spent six months in jail. And she came to me right before she went to jail and said, "Will you go down and represent me, because I won’t be able to be there?" And so, I did that. And it was just a—it was a very moving experience. I feel like every time I go down there, I’m renewed spiritually, because the people that are there that are demonstrating, started by Father Roy Bourgeois, they have a deep, deep passion for justice.

AMY GOODMAN: And explain why you want the School of the Americas closed?

BOB KING: What it is is they go out and they train—they train soldiers to destroy any kind of community organizations, unions. Anything that, in Central America, that is there to give power to common people, the military is out trying to destroy and maintain dictatorships. I think it’s so unbelievable that our tax dollars are spent to train soldiers to take democracy away from others in the world. And so, that’s why I feel so strongly about it.

AMY GOODMAN: As president of the UAW, will you be there at Fort Benning?

BOB KING: I will be there. Yeah, I’ll always be there.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, let me play for you a clip of Grace Lee Boggs last night.

BOB KING: OK.

AMY GOODMAN: We just played an interview with her, but we asked her to, well, tell us if she had any questions for you, for Bob King, president of the United Auto Workers. This is what she said.

GRACE LEE BOGGS: He needs to understand how much the world has changed, how much we are now not producing things, but we’re producing relations, how much the community has become as important as the plant, how much production now takes place outside the walls of the factory, and how we are at the stage in the development of humankind where our relationships with one another are the most important thing, and how we create community. And, you know, when you grow up—the labor movement, when it emerged, was when the working class was expanding. And now it’s shrinking. And how do you deal with that? And his organizers have trouble dealing with that. How do you really reach out to the community? How do you bridge that gulf?


AMY GOODMAN: That was Grace Lee Boggs, the legendary organizer, philosopher. Bob King, how do you bridge that gulf?

BOB KING: Grace is an inspiration. I think you do it by being very clear. Our mission is social justice. The mission of the UAW, if you read our preamble, our constitution, it’s social justice. And it’s having the understanding that we have the resources that we have to share, to fight for, to be part of a much broader struggle, as Grace talks about, the community, both workers inside our facilities and outside, inside the UAW and outside. The only way we can have social justice for our membership is to fight for social justice for everybody in society.

AMY GOODMAN: Let me ask you about green jobs. The UAW has opposed the CAFE standards in California. And the overall joining of the auto industry and the unions really to fight more fuel-efficient standards over the years—it’s changing now, but where do you stand on this? Why fight CAFE in California?

BOB KING: We have to be for the environment. We have to be for green jobs. We’ve got to push companies to move to electrification, to move to hydrogen. We’ve got Stan Ovshinsky. He’s right here in Michigan, who’s this great inventor who’s got, you know, a way to absorb hydrogen in a much safer way. We’ve got to really push the envelope to get environmental vehicles out there.

AMY GOODMAN: How are you going to do that?

BOB KING: Just using the power of our relationships, the power of our bargaining, because, again, that’s about—you’ve got to think long-term future of your membership. We need to be part of building the cars of the future.

AMY GOODMAN: Do you think that it’s been a mistake in the past not to be a leader in this area?

BOB KING: Well, I would argue that Walter Reuther in the early days was, that the one common standard—

AMY GOODMAN: The first UAW president?

BOB KING: Yes, yes. President Gettelfinger worked with the Obama administration to come up with a standard. We didn’t want each individual state to have a different standard. We felt that there should be more aggressive standards, but they should be national. And so, we played a role in making that happen.

AMY GOODMAN: But what about California? It is more stringent than the national standard. But we’re at a point in the earth now with global warming, where why not support these leaders in a way that the unions haven’t in the past?

BOB KING: Well, I think what we will be—what I would—the California standards need to be done nationally, if we’re going to do them. I mean, what we—our biggest concern was having different standards in every state. Having more aggressive standards, we’re in favor of, but doing it on a national basis rather than an individual state basis was a key concern of ours.

AMY GOODMAN: What about the Employee Free Choice Act?

BOB KING: Well, it is about our First Amendment rights, right? I mean, there has to be—the current system is broken. Workers don’t have a free right to organize, to decide whether they want to join unions or not. I think workers should have that decision. If they were given a free choice and they decide that they don’t want to, fine. But what is not right is to use the economic power of the employer and the power of intimidation to stop workers from organizing when they want to organize.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, Bob King, I want to thank you very much for being with us.

BOB KING: Thank you very much. Great to be here.

AMY GOODMAN: Best of luck as president of the United Auto Workers. And while it’s great to be here in Detroit and very interesting to see the UAW intimately involved with this US Social Forum that’s taking place here in Detroit, with, well, what’s believed to be 10,000 activists from around the country and around the world gathering here, we’re going to take a tour of Detroit after this break.

BOB KING: Thank you. Thanks a lot.

(edit the usual typo)

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1. Recommended

Thank you for posting this.

Don

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2. Recommend

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3. Kick for the daytime.