How Do We Get Organized?

I'm an old fashioned Union guy. Wray McCalester stood out to me on FaceBook as another of those old-time traditional kick-ass Union Thugs--you know, one of those rare, rank and file Solidarity UNION guys these days who has had a long and active love affair with the good folks who do the work. I am honored by his invitation to blog along with him and his friends here. 

I was asked by a FaceBook friend, "How do we get organized?" I think the answer lies in the UAW's beginnings.

The UAW was organized to take wages and working conditions OUT of competition. The UAW in the 1930's recognized the company union in auto. They wasted no time trying to reform it. They knew the only organizations in the world that could stand up to the enormous power of the world's largest corporations were the Trade Unions. There was, and is, no other. They built the UAW democratically. They went worker-to-worker, plant-to-plant and cemented friendships with the folks who did the work. They build solidarity powerful enough to win strikes and then won victories that benefited every working stiff in our courtry.

So what happened?

In writing this piece I ran across notes I took for a UAW New Directions story I wrote about the last, great, WINNING STRIKE at UAW local 599. That strike won 800 jobs for the late, great Buick City local. Was it celebrated?

A local 879 rep downplayed the 599 win: "How did they ever let it get so bad?" he wondered.

Right question. Wrong local union.

Local 879, once recognized by Ford as the most resistant U.S. local to job cuts, has taken its place among the most undermanned assembly plants.

Local 879's president recently participated in a Ford "communication" meeting where the company bragged about the plant being "first" in the system at coming in under annual budget. This meant that $10 million due the plant's workforce was saved through job cuts while more than 1,000 local 879 members were being injured by their overloaded jobs.

GM has a lot more workers than Ford. We need MORE Ford workers--not fewer GM workers.

"First in budget performance" means bonuses for the managers and surgeries for the autoworkers.

It got so bad through Ford/UAW company programs like E.I. and QDS (adopted--and even promoted--by the UAW's administration caucus) that the floodgates of speedup, injuries, outsourcing, whipsawing and work rule giveaways were opened up and the membership suffered. It got so bad that the members were forgotten by the administration and even attacked by the caucus.

So this is where we are today in the Ford/UAW's drive for "competitiveness" push against the Solidarity UAW for the dog-eat-dog, (lower case) uaw of the caucus.

Everything the Dog-Eat-Dog uaw does today violates the Solidarity Principles of the real UAW's Constitution; every principle of and virtue of tradition and the original UAW. 

We have come full circle. We are once again paying dues to a company union.

And the answer to the question of how we organize is the same as the UAW faced back in the 1930's--We must organize each other. We must help each other. We must be friends. We must resist all the calls to cheat each other out of our jobs. We must be friends who support each other or simply give up and die.

Below is a solidarity appeal from around 1985. It is ever more true today.

To our Brother and Sister Autoworkers in North America:

We are Ford workers from Edison or St. Paul or Lorain or Dearborn or anywhere. We have families and enjoy our coworkers, communities and our lives.

We see ourselves being dragged into a competition against each other that can only benefit the company. All across the world Ford workers are being forced by fear into conceding jobs, plants, wages (and) working conditions; even the 8 hour day and weekends to 'compete' against other autoworkers. This competition destroys our union, our jobs, our hands and backs, our children's future and does the same to you.

We are interested in joining with you to talk about how we can fight this fear and regain our strength in numbers.

Where is the union?

The fear that separates us is cause both by the company and the UAW. UAW officials stood aside as Ford closed the Lorain T-Bird and Cougar assembly lines.

UAW porkchoppers helped Ford to whipsaw our locals and move production around North America, making the Lorain closing--and future closings--possible.

UAW officers threatened Rouge workers with competition from other UAW workers to gain concessions at the Rouge plant last month.

Although Ford is making record profits, the UAW is giving Ford extra capacity by allowing the company to work production on weekends and weekdays at straight time--reversing hard won 8-hr day victories.

Ford locals are competing against themselves, disrespecting the original values, principles and strategies of our union. During the Rouge Viability Contract debate at Local 600 in early October a UAW president pushed this concessionary contract by pointing out that if Local 600 did not agree to concede hard-won work rights other UAW locals would take the work being done by Local 600.

The (new) Local 600 contract limits seniority rights and raises 'competitiveness' to new heights with anti-union, dog-eat-dog competitive language. This agreement even contains a letter directing UAW reps to enforce competitive sections of this contract.

The compete, compete, compete fear politics of the UAW divided the Local with 70% of skilled workers voting against the agreement and 80% of production workers voting for it out of fear of losing their jobs to other UAW workers! Our union has ceased being a union.

The UAW at Ford exists today as a Ford junior partner interested in giving away the rights that other generations of autoworkers fought for, and sometimes, died for.

The top union leaders of the UAW have thrown away our union's principle of mutual support. They have given us the whipsaw and stolen our union rights guaranteed to all of us by the UAW Constitution. They have adopted the company's values of competition, greed, profit maximization and isolation. We see the effect of these corporate values in our UAW when the UAW reps use the fear of competition that they themselves have created within our own union. They used this fear to destroy solidarity at Local 600, and attack mutual assistance for the Lorain workers.

This new, dog-eat-dog UAW supports, even facilitates, the continuous concessions by Ford locals across the country. This new, dog-eat-dog UAW are traitors against Solidarity, to cut costs for Ford--And our livlihoods are those costs.

Competition vs Solidarity
While one billion workers are today unemployed throughout the world, Ford, and all huge international corporations are asking us to accept a dictatorship of wealth. The establishment of competition in our union is based in the same corporate greed that drives the company in NAFTA and the Multi-Lateral Agreement on Investment. The corporate garbage of whitemail, comparative advantage and favoritism that pushes the whipsaw and attacks us all and destroys our locals is extended in the MAI. The MAI extends the goals of the rich and will make capital's interests legally superior to city, state, national and international law. The Big Business agenda intends to formally replace democracy with the interest of the rich--everywhere.

Competition is a dead end for most of us.
Competing is the opposite of union. Competing means losing all the union gains the previous generations of UAW members sacrificed to win; union democracy, UAW independence from the corporation, overtime pay, weekends off, eight hour days, union work rules, seniority rights, classification, lines of demarcation, job posting rights, fair workloads, all are being given away under 'competitiveness.'

The result is Ford workers who ought to be friends are being made into enemies. Union principles like mutual support which could have been applied to save Lorain are ignored because local union leaders are competing against other local union leaders in a race to the bottom.

Autoworkers, no matter where they work, should be on the same side. We want to support you. We want you to support us. We want to rebuild a relationship with other Ford workers that is based not on greed and competition but on our own values of equality, solidarity, community, democracy and mutual assistance. 

We need a rebellion against competitiveness. That rebellion will not come from the UAW's officialdom since they are busy rebelling against us. A rebellion against competition is a revolutionary idea and is the only way we can win back our own values. It can only come from the rank and file.

The Larger Battle . . . former UAW President Douglas Fraser said in 1979:

"I believe leaders of the business community, with few exceptions, have chosen to wage a one-sided class war in this country, a war against working people, the unemployed, the very young and the very old, and even many in the middle class of society."

Today his words are more true than ever.

Here is a pledge for today's union workers:
1) We commit ourselves to supporting our coworkers and all other autoworkers wherever they work, in all the ways that we may devise.
2) We commit ourselves to begin a conversation with coworkers in our own and other plants about how to unite around the values we share of equality, solidarity, democracy and mutual assistance.
3) We pledge ourselves to ally with other autoworkers and with other working people wherever we can in order to start a revolution and create a truly democratic, fully-employed society.

Does this pledge ring true to you? Does your plant face the conditions written of above? Think, my brothers and sisters, then act!

Solidarity forever is not just a song lyric--It is the union way of life.