#united auto workers
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Striking autoworkers tricked the “Big 3” corporations into thinking strike would be taking place at incorrect locations, foiling their anti-strike preparations and inflicting financial damage.
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September 22, 2023 - A racist right-winger thought it was a good idea to drive past a UAW picket line of striking auto workers and start yellilng racial slurs at them, at the Stellantis plant in Center Line, Michigan. He quickly found out it wasn't. [video]
#UAW#united auto workers#antifa#antifascism#antifascist action#strike#industrial action#unions#direct action#picket line#gif#2023#michigan#center line#usa#working class#workers#karma#solidarity
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Paul Blest at More Perfect Union:
Thousands of workers at a Volkswagen plant in Chattanooga, Tennessee have voted to join the United Auto Workers, defying an all-out union-busting effort from the state’s political leaders and marking a key victory for the United Auto Workers in their renewed effort to organize the South and non-union plants.
Unofficial results tallied Friday showed that after three days of voting, more than two-thirds of workers voted to join the UAW. The win in Chattanooga is the first successful attempt to organize a non-union automaker in decades and comes after multiple failed attempts to organize the plant, including in 2014 and 2019. More than 4,300 workers were eligible to vote this week.
“I can't explain it. It's not like the first times,” Renee Berry, who has worked at the Chattanooga plant for 14 years and through two prior facility-wide votes, told us in the lead-up to the election. “The first few times was hell…now it's like we can roll our shoulders back, because we got it.”
Volkswagen is the world’s largest auto company by revenue, and until today, every one of its plants around the globe has been unionized except for one.
"This is going to be in history books down the road. This is huge—forever huge,” Robert Soderstrom, a worker at the plant, told More Perfect Union. “People recognize for the first time in a long time, on a mass scale, that there's got to be some changes. And some of the power and stuff that's gone to the corporate world needs to come back to us little guys.”
The victory in Tennessee continues a winning streak for the UAW, which negotiated record contracts at the Detroit Three of Ford, GM, and Stellantis last year following a lengthy “stand-up” strike. After passing the contracts, UAW President Shawn Fain announced a $40 million effort to organize non-union U.S. plants, largely based in right-to-work states like Tennessee and owned by auto companies based in Europe, Japan, and South Korea, as well as EV manufacturers like Tesla and Rivian.
Since launching that new effort, more than 10,000 autoworkers around the country have signed union cards, according to the UAW. Earlier this month, workers at a Mercedes plant in Vance, Alabama became the second group to file for an election, which will be held from May 13 to 17. Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey and the state Chamber of Commerce have forcefully opposed the unionization effort, claiming it would hurt Alabama autoworkers—who, even before the pandemic, were making less than they did in 2002 when adjusted for inflation.
The same dynamic has played out in Tennessee. Gov. Bill Lee, who denounced the last unsuccessful union campaign in 2019, said it would be a “mistake” for workers at the Chattanooga plant to unionize and boasted about the state’s “right-to-work” law.
🚨🚨 BREAKING:🚨🚨 Workers at the Volkswagen (VW) plant in Chattanooga have voted yes to join the United Auto Workers (UAW) after 2 failed attempts in 2014 and 2019. #UAW #VWChattanooga #1u
#Unionizaion#Unions#Labor#Labor Unions#Workers' Rights#VW Chattanooga#Chattanooga Tennessee#US News#Chattanooga#UAW#United Auto Workers#Volkswagen#VW#UAW Strike
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For as long as anyone can remember, the Indiana city of Kokomo has been a conservative stronghold. Ronald Reagan crushed Walter Mondale in Kokomo. Bill Clinton lost twice. So did Barack Obama. The current mayor, a Republican, is running unopposed for re-election. It’s a town known for something it would prefer to forget: a Ku Klux Klan rally in 1923 that was the largest ever.
Yet somehow Kokomo produced a union leader whose rhetoric is aimed at toppling the conservative and moneyed classes — a rebel who rejects the niceties of an earlier era in favor of a sharp-edged confrontation.
“Billionaires in my opinion don’t have a right to exist,” says Shawn Fain, who is leading the United Automobile Workers in a multifront labor battle against the Big Three carmakers that has little precedent and is making a lot of noise.
In interviews, in speeches and on social media, Mr. Fain hammers the wealthy again and again, making the cause of the union’s 150,000 autoworkers at General Motors, Ford Motor and Stellantis something much broader.
“There’s a billionaire class, and there’s the rest of us,” he said at an impromptu news conference outside a Ford plant in Wayne, Mich. “We’re all expected to sit back and take the scraps and live paycheck to paycheck and scrape to get by. We’re second-class citizens.”
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Seven thousand more UAW members just walked off the job, expanding the strike to two more plants. Twenty-five thousand autoworkers are now on strike, and the walkout could continue to escalate if the Big Three don’t budge in negotiations.
[UAW president Shawn] Fain announced that Stellantis would be spared this time. The union had been expected to strike all three companies, but, said Region 1 director LaShawn English, three minutes before Fain was scheduled to go on Facebook Live, the UAW received frantic emails from company representatives.
[Note: Love that for the UAW. Also laughing so hard. Three minutes before the next round of strikes were annouced!!]
According to Fain, Stellantis made “significant progress” on cost-of-living allowances, the right not to cross a picket line, and the right to strike over product commitments and plant closures. “We are excited about this momentum at Stellantis and hope it continues,” Fain said...
“See You Next Week — Maybe?”
“These guys wanted to go out a long time ago,” said Cody Zaremba, a Local 602 member at the Lansing GM plant after the news broke that his plant would be joining the strike. “We’re ready. Everybody, truly, I believe, in the entire membership. They’re one with what’s going on.”
Five thousand workers at thirty-eight parts distribution centers across twenty-one states have been on strike since last Friday [September 22, 2023], along with thirteen thousand at three assembly plants in Michigan, Ohio, and Missouri who walked out on September 15. (See a map of all struck facilities here.) ...
The UAW is now calling on community supporters to organize small teams to canvass dealerships that sell and repair Big Three cars and trucks. On Tuesday, the union issued a canvassing tool kit with instructions, flyers, press releases, and talking points.
In negotiations with Ford and GM, autoworkers have clinched some important gains. Among them is an agreement by both companies to end at least one of the many tiers in current contracts, putting workers at certain parts plants back on the same wage scale as assembly workers. The top rate for Big Three assembly workers is currently around $32...
Ford was spared in last week’s escalation, because bargainers there had made further progress on gains for workers.
But today, the UAW once again called out workers at Ford and GM, putting some muscle behind its bold demands — a big wage boost, a shorter workweek, elimination of tiers, cost-of-living adjustments tied to inflation, protection from plant closures, conversion of temps to permanent employees, and the restoration of retiree health care and benefit-defined pensions to all workers.
-via Jacobin, September 29, 2023. Article continues below.
Keep Them Guessing
This year, for the first time in recent history, the union has played the three auto companies against each other with its strike strategy, departing from the union’s tradition of choosing one target company and patterning an agreement at the other two.
The stand-up strike strategy draws inspiration from an approach known as CHAOS (Create Havoc Around Our System), first deployed in 1993 by Alaska Airlines flight attendants, who announced they would be striking random flights. Although they struck only seven flights in a two-month period, Alaska had to send scabs on every plane, just in case. The unpredictability drew enormous media attention and drove management up the wall. Meanwhile the union was able to conserve its strength and minimize risk.
The companies miscalculated where the UAW was going to strike first, stockpiling engines and shipping them cross-country to the wrong facilities. Autoworkers relished the self-inflicted supply chain chaos on UAW Facebook groups and other social media platforms.
Nonstrikers’ morale on the factory floor has gotten a boost from rank and filers organizing to refuse voluntary overtime. With support both from Fain and the reform caucus Unite All Workers for Democracy (UAWD), workers have been encouraging each other to “Eight and Skate,” meaning to turn down extra work and decline to do management any favors.
Majority Public Support
A majority of Americans support the UAW strikers, and the Big Three have taken a PR hit since the strike began, according to a new survey conducted by the business intelligence firm Caliber.
“Eighty-seven percent of respondents told us they were aware of the strike,” Caliber CEO Shahar Silbershatz told the Intercept. “It’s clear the strike is not just causing commercial repercussions, but reputational repercussions as well.”
These reputational repercussions will only worsen...
"We Can Unmake It"
Fain didn't pull any punches in his speech... “That’s what’s different about working-class people. Whether we’re building cars or trucks or running parts distribution centers; whether we’re writing movies or performing TV shows... we do the heavy lifting. We do the real work. Not the CEOs, not the executives.
"And though we don’t know it, that’s what power is. We have the power. The world is of our making. The economy is of our making. This industry is of our making.
“And as we’ve shown, when we withhold our labor, we can unmake it.”
-via Jacobin, September 29, 2023
#united states#us politics#organized labor#uaw#uaw strike#united auto workers#auto workers#labor rights#uaw strong#worker rights#unions#labor unions#strike#unionize#auto industry#ford#general motors#stellantis#working class#cars#michigan#ohio#missouri#solidarity forever#hot labor summer
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GENERAL STRIKE TIME BABEY. READ THE WHOLE POST.
While we're all mad at government sending money to Israel that police budgets are so inflated because of how often they pay settlements.
And also that it's a verified fact that our police train with Israeli soldiers. Remember when they were black bagging people in PDX? It reminded me of this ex-Israeli soldier talking about how they'd do the same thing to innocent Palestinians just to terrorize them and their neighbors. It was intentional terrorism when they did it.
Police budgets pay for all that.
Correction, we pay.
To put it more bluntly,
We pay for them to kill and terrorize people.
Just as our taxes pay for the deaths of Black and Brown people all over the world from Turtle Island to Sudan and Palestine.
In Dec. 2022, Louisville Metro Government agreed to pay Walker $2 million to settle lawsuits against the city. Metro government previously paid a $12 million settlement to Taylor’s family in Sept. 2020
We paid for Breonna Taylor's death.
And her murderers were never arrested btw. Not that there aren't still people trying to arrest them of course. But our money paid for their lawyers and wouldn't you know it, no charges have stuck.
Four years to the day after Breonna Taylor’s death, federal prosecutors are moving forward with a re-trial of one of the officers involved in the botched raid that ended her life.
At a status conference Wednesday, U.S. District Court Judge Rebecca Grady Jennings scheduled Brett Hankison’s final pre-trial hearing for September 13th. His re-trial is scheduled to begin on Oct. 15.
In November of last year, Hankinson was tried for violating the Constitutional rights of Breonna Taylor, her boyfriend, and three neighbors when he fired through two covered windows during the raid.
Prosecutors argued he used excessive force when he shot into the apartment complex blindly. Taylor’s boyfriend, Kenneth Walker, had fired at officers executing the search, claiming he thought they were intruders.
And Myles Cosgrove?
Yeah we're paying him to terrorize more people. He got a job as a fucking sheriff's deputy.
Myles Cosgrove, the former Louisville police officer, who was fired for fatally shooting Breonna Taylor in a botched 2020 police raid and hired earlier this year as a sheriff’s deputy in Carroll County, rammed a resident’s truck with his cruiser Monday and then pointed a gun at the owner and several bystanders, witnesses said.
Witnesses told The Courier Journal that Cosgrove barreled into Happy Hollow Private Resort Park trailer park at a high rate of speed without his emergency lights on, then struck William Joshua Short’s pickup truck with such force that it sent the vehicle flying into a building, breaking off two cinder blocks.
And Johnathan Mattingly wrote a fucking book about it to make money off of his role in her murder. $15 on Amazon.
He also wanted to sue Kenneth Walker, Breonna's boyfriend. You know why? For damages and injuries he sustained while killing Breonna Taylor.
WE PAID FOR ALL THAT. ALL OF IT.
Our power is in our dollar.
American politics and officials don't care for our lives. It's why they're content to watch us protest for months. Because we're still going to work. We are the worker ants simply fulfilling our duty, receiving the bare minimum to survive for our labor.
We're still building their bombs. Paying our taxes, so much that hardly any of us could afford more than rent.
We are just drones fulfilling our purpose to the upper class who doesn't give a shit about us beyond what we do for them and how little we will do it for.
If we want change we're gonna have to stop working. We're going to have to deprive them of products they sell, of our taxes, of our low cost labor.
And the strike that UAW is planning in May 2028 has inspired a lot of others to start looking at the opportunity to join in.
If you haven't heard of it yet, a strike is when workers organize and stop showing up for work. And a general strike is a mass strike across various industries around similar demands or bargaining positions.
There have been multiple calls for a general strike since then, predominantly from individuals and groups on social media, which has often resulted in confusion about what a general strike would actually look like. To be clear, a general strike is not a protest or a rally, a single picket line, or a boycott. It is, as I’ve previously defined, “a labor action in which a significant number of workers from a number of different industries who comprise a majority of the total labor force within a particular city, region, or country come together to take collective action.”
Throughout history, workers have used this tactic as a nuclear option to shut down entire cities when needed, including Philadelphia in 1835, Seattle in 1919, and beyond.[...]
If even four or five of the unions representing the workers mentioned above banded together in a nationwide general strike, the entire country would grind to a halt. When Shawn Fain asks his fellow unions to set the timer for May 2028, what he’s really saying is, get ready to shut sh*t down and level the playing field between bosses and workers once and for all.
JOIN A UNION. AND TALK ABOUT THIS.
And make one of the demands out to be an end of American support to countries participating in apartheid and genocide.
End the taxes for police budgets and settlements. If they want police departments so bad then they should FIND funding for themselves like the government makes USPS do.
One of the biggest pushbacks we hear is that there is never any official backing for calls to a general strike. Well here it is! Make sure you tell EVERYONE
This could be a global strike if other countries choose to participate on the same date
No, I don't think Palestine has 3 years so in the mean time join a union, keep protesting, start rioting, answer Every call to action coming from a Palestine and Sudan and the DRC and sign this strike card
#workers rights#workers party#general strike#strike#leftist#communist#anarchist#end the occupation#end the genocide#abolish the police#class war#no war but class war#2028#UAW strike#united auto workers#may 2028#may day#solidarity#classism#capitalism#biden#current events#new
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For the first time, ever, a sitting American President has joined a picket line of striking Union Workers. President Joe Biden was invited by the United Auto Worker's President Shawn Fain (standing behind Biden in the picture) to address the striking workers at GM warehouse in Michigan.
#Joe Biden#Democrats#Unions#uaw strike#united auto workers#politics#this is a holy shit moment#those of us in politics really never thought we'd see it#for 50+ years Democrats have been scared of being too pro-union#today a Democratic President was on the picket line
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#united auto workers#strike#workers solidarity#workers rights#auto workers#threads#threads app#threads an instagram app#threads account#threads post#on strike#workers#spreading awareness#i hope so#unions#union strong#union#worker solidarity
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the wga, culinary workers, the united auto workers union, and now sag-aftra. The unions just keep winning this year
unions work
GIF by choicesraccoon
#sag aftra#wga#culinary workers union#wga strike#sag strike#writers strike#actors strike#Unions#worker solidarity#labor rights#strikes#workers rights#labor unions#United auto workers#general motors#uaw#stellantis#shawn fain#uaw strike
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the wga, culinary workers, the united auto workers union, and now sag-aftra. The unions just keep winning this year
unions work
#sag aftra#wga#culinary workers union#wga strike#sag strike#writers strike#actors strike#Unions#worker solidarity#labor rights#strikes#workers rights#labor unions#United auto workers#general motors#uaw#stellantis#shawn fain#uaw strike
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Union workers at GM, Ford and Stellantis are hoping to win a 40% pay raise in their next contract.
Negotiations are underway and leaders of the United Auto Workers union are coming out swinging as they seek higher pay, shorter hours and better benefits. And they’re being vocal about it all.
It hasn’t always been this way though; the last UAW contract signed in 2019 included two 3% wage hikes. So what’s changed?
UAW President Shawn Fain said there’s a clear reason to push for a big increase in a new contract for autoworkers. He spoke to workers last week in a livestream address.
“We have to work longer and harder just to maintain the same standard of living we had before,” he said.
So that’s why the UAW is seeking a 40% wage increase over the course of the union’s next contract. Which seems like a lot, right?
“Well, in normal times, yes, it would sound like a huge raise and it would sound like an unrealistic expectation,” said Art Wheaton of Cornell University’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations.
But these are not normal times, he said: Inflation has been high, the labor market is still tight, and unions in other industries have negotiated sizable wage increases this summer, like United Airlines pilots and UPS workers.
Plus, Wheaton said that unions are well-liked right now, citing a Gallup poll from last year. “The general public has over a 71% favorability of unions.”
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As multiple work stoppages continued across the United States, Democratic Sen. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania on Thursday introduced legislation that would enable striking workers to qualify for federal food aid.
Called the Food Secure Strikers Act of 2023, Fetterman's bill would amend the Food and Nutrition Act of 2008 to ensure that striking workers aren't excluded from receiving Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits. In addition, the bill would preserve food stamp eligibility for public sector workers who are fired for striking and clarify that any income-eligible household is entitled to SNAP benefits even if a member of that household is on strike.
"Every union worker who is walking the picket line this summer needs to know that we have their back here in Washington," Fetterman said in a statement. "The union way of life is sacred. It's what built Pennsylvania and this nation. It is critical for us to protect workers' right to organize, and that includes making sure they and their families have the resources to support themselves while on strike."
"As chair of the Nutrition Subcommittee and an advocate for the union way of life, this bill is just plain common sense," he added. "I'm proud to introduce this bill that will eliminate the need for workers to choose between fighting for fair working conditions and putting food on the table for their families."
Workers typically forgo pay when they exercise their right to walk off the job in pursuit of higher wages and better conditions. Although union strike funds sometimes provide workers on the picket line with a stipend, it is less than their regular income.
Under existing law, striking workers and their households are ineligible to receive SNAP benefits unless they already qualified for food stamps prior to withholding their labor. This gives employers significant leverage over employees who can only endure economic hardship for so long. By repealing the current restriction on striking workers securing SNAP benefits, Fetterman's bill would help restore some balance to the struggle between capital and labor.
"It's good to see lawmakers attempting to correct the wrongs of the past by reinstating a benefit for striking workers that never should have been taken away in the first place," said International Brotherhood of Teamsters president Sean O'Brien. "Congress should never pass laws that punish American workers and hopefully this amendment is a repudiation of that practice."
O'Brien spent the past several weeks preparing 340,000 United Parcel Service (UPS) warehouse workers and delivery drivers for what would have been the second-largest work stoppage at a single employer in U.S. history, trailing only a 1970 strike of 400,000 General Motors workers. Although a UPS strike has likely been averted after the logistics giant and the Teamsters reached a tentative five-year contract agreement on Tuesday, Fetterman's proposal comes amid a nationwide wave of ongoing and potential labor actions.
"The United Auto Workers have mirrored the Teamsters' militant stance, blasting CEOs ahead of their own contract negotiations slated for later this year," The Intercept reported Thursday. "And the truckers union has staged trainings in dozens of cities for a strike that could shut down shipping from coast to coast. In California, meanwhile, thousands of hotel workers organized with Unite Here are already on strike, along with tens of thousands of Hollywood writers and actors belonging to the Writers Guild and SAG-AFTRA, respectively."
The walkout of 160,000 writers and actors, who are fighting for improved remuneration and attempting to safeguard unionized jobs threatened by artificial intelligence-induced automation, is perhaps the most well-known of the current strikes.
Earlier this month, an anonymous studio executive admitted to Deadline that "the endgame is to allow things to drag on until union members start losing their apartments and losing their houses," drawing widespread condemnation, including from star actor Ron Perlman.
The Food Secure Strikers Act is designed to counteract the delay tactics that bosses rely on to crush workers.
"Workers who make the difficult decision to go on strike are coming together to lift the standard of living and gain more respect for all working people," said Becky Pringle, president of the National Education Association (NEA). "They are prepared to make sacrifices—but going hungry should not be one of them. The Food Secure Strikers Act of 2023 will help ensure that when striking workers stand in solidarity for better working conditions and wages they can receive SNAP benefits so they don't put themselves and their families at risk."
The legislation is co-sponsored by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and 10 Senate Democrats, including Sherrod Brown (Ohio), Elizabeth Warren (Mass.), and Ron Wyden (Ore.). A companion bill was unveiled in the House by Democratic Reps. Alma Adams (N.C.) and Greg Casar (Texas).
It is also endorsed by numerous unions and anti-hunger organizations, including the Teamsters, NEA, the United Food and Commercial Workers, the Communications Workers of America, the Food Research Action Center, and Hunger-Free America.
"We need to get rid of the anti-union provisions in our code that starve striking workers," said Casar. "We're seeing workers exercise their rights across the country by going on strike to demand better wages and working conditions. That's why our bill, the Food Secure Strikers Act, is more important now than ever. We need to stop starving strikers, and ensure all working families are able to make ends meet."
#us politics#news#common dreams#Democrats#progressives#2023#Sen. John Fetterman#pennsylvania#Food Secure Strikers Act of 2023#supplemental nutrition assistance program#Food and Nutrition Act of 2008#striking workers#workers union#worker's rights#working class#union workers#Senate Nutrition Subcommittee#International Brotherhood of Teamsters#united parcel service inc#United Auto Workers#writers guild strike#writers guild of america#sag aftra#sag strike#National Education Association#United Food and Commercial Workers#Communications Workers of America#Food Research Action Center#Hunger-Free America
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