written by building bridges radio
at Wednesday, October 9, 2019
Striking Auto Workers Need and Deserve to Win
Big!
with
JR Baker, President
of Power Train Engine UAW Local 774 in Tonawanda, NY
and
Mike Elk, Senior Labor Reporter and founder
of Payday Report
and
Nelson Lichtenstein, director of the Center
for the Study of Work, Labor and Democracy at the University of California
Anyone who understands the need for the United States to reduce
its stratospheric levels of economic inequality and to give its workers a boost
into the middle class has to be rooting for the United Auto Workers (UAW)
members on strike now at General Motors (GM). The UAW union members organized a
strike against GM in an effort to improve wages, reopen idled plants, add jobs
and narrow the pay difference between new hires and veteran workers. Meanwhile
GM is pushing its employees to pay a greater portion of their health care costs,
and to increase work force productivity and flexibility in
factories.
“Striking autoworker President JR Baker said “striking is
uplifting because we’re making a stand. We’re not accepting concessions from a
company posting billions of dollars of profit. And because we’re all together,
there’s safety in numbers. We’re standing up for ourselves in solidarity.” The
UAW union went on strike at G.M., sending nearly 50,000 members at factories
across the Midwest and the South to picket lines. Strikers are hoping to make up
ground lost since the UAW agreed to two-tier wages in 2007, followed by the
Great Recession and the auto bailout, when GM got $50 billion from the taxpayers
and even more concessions. There are also 550 janitorial workers that do
sanitation and 'non-strategic' facility work on site that are on strike as well,
who haven’t seen a raise in years. These workers top out at $15.18 an hour and
are UAW members within the same local. GM has hired third-party companies to
come in and do sanitation and facility work, so there are now scabs at the work
sites as well.The auto industry remains crucial to the economy, counting some
220,000 people who work to manufacture cars. According to the Alliance of Auto
Manufacturers, the broader vehicle industry supports 9.9 million jobs and
historically accounts for about 3 percent of gross domestic product, so you’d
better bet that a win, indeed a big win for the UAW would be a shot of adrenelin
for the union movement and it’s up to us to get on board that union train
standing in Solidarity Forever!
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