The fact of the matter, they were not economical.  They can say all they want, “we earn this company millions of dollars and there is no reason we need to take a cut and the executive officers get raises.”  I don’t agree with the huge separation of the pay, but that is the fallout of a capitalist economy that doesn’t put a corporation in check early enough.  No one has to work there if they think the company is immoral.  The stockholder’s will not respond until it starts hurting their pocketbook.

I work in an office where people make less than $10/hr without medical, 14 days vacation, pension, buyouts, buy downs, COLA supplements, etc. They realize that they will have to work to change their standing, but I’m sure, many of them would still be willing to take a line job at AAM. 

The auto industry is unique because of the divisive nature of the union.  At my company, you stay because you are valuable; you grow within the company because you are invaluable.  A lot of auto workers are invisible, because the work is monotonous and requires little skill in many areas.  It is difficult to separate yourself and stand out.  The union recognizes the combined worth of the workforce and has raised the individual rewards, apparently too high. 

The way capitalism works, if you can find equally skilled labor at a lower rate, you pursue it.  I haven’t heard many AAM workers argue that this couldn’t be done, that is why they are so threatened by scabs.  The only argument they make is that it simply isn’t fair.

Isn’t fair?  You are on a 4-year contract. That means nothing is certain when that contract ends.  My father worked under contract.  They could no longer quantify his value and offered him a significantly lower wage at renewal time.  He understood the circumstances and understood that it came with the territory as a contractor.  He moved on and looked for something better.  I think the main difference here, is that he had tangible skills that could translate into value at many other companies.  Now, he makes more and works less.  Auto workers can’t do this, so they freak out when they see their cash oasis dissipating into the air, leaving them high and dry in the dessert. 

I like to see all succeed, but you can’t live in a dream world.  Furthermore, this contract is not bad.  They have so many options. 

Here is the deal: http://www.clickondetroit.com/download/2008/0519/16323701.pdf 

Buyouts:           Less than 10 years = $85,000     More than 10 years = $140,000 (I make that in about 4 years)

Buy Downs:      Using the buy down, workers are really losing no wages over the next four years of this contract.  AAM is calculating the lost wage, times a multiplier to beef it up, times the average hours worked in a year, times four years; and dividing it into 3 lump-sum payments.  Workers are not losing any wages under this contract, but they are being prepared for the next contract, where there will be no buy downs. 

Poor guys now only get 14 paid holidays.  Cry me a greasy river; I get the fourth, Thanksgiving, Memorial Day, and Labor Day.  The biggest thing that will hurt the long-term workers is the frozen pension, but how many companies do you know that still offer a pension?  They don’t want these perks because it is fair.  Look at the rest of us; we don’t get it.  They want it because their greedy and don’t understand the laws of supply and demand. 

I understand that with the advent of the auto industry and the huge profits it once reaped, the unions provided a buffer against greedy corporate rulers and owners.  I love the idea of a union; it is what keeps things in check.  But, once you create that caste system, you will be at odds, rather than on the same team.  Co-dependency is not the same thing.  It is rather disgusting at AAM.  Their CEO made over $10 million in 2007, according to Executive Paywatch, an online watchdog for executive pay at public companies.  The company netted $37 million in 2007.  They could have boosted their profit over 20 percent if their CEO only made one million. 

I feel bad for families that are familiar with a certain lifestyle and have to watch it go, but they have to realize, this is just the market correcting itself.  I feel bad for kids that will have to stop shopping at Somerset and now shop at Salvation Army.  Actually, no I don’t, people brought up by parents with good character and without lots of material possession normally end up being the people I like. 

AAM offers skilled trade and education reimbursement programs.  I recommend you workers utilize that so that in 4-years you are prepared when the money stops growing on trees.  In the meantime, maybe you can use your tears to save on industrial lubricant costs for the machinery, while you waste time making axles for trucks that are going to continue to have a plummeting market share.  I hope, for the sake of AAM workers, they broaden their product line. 

The real story is the UAW and how they manipulated this situation.  This is the offer they were going to get all along.  AAM was just waiting for GM to kick in some support, and the UAW was trying to starve the workers to the point of acceptance.  They should be happy, though.  Most people don't get 4 more years for reality to sink in.   

Town of Tonawanda is MY HOME folks. [I also feel bad for Detroit dispite that they are 10 times large that we are.] I do not know what to say. I literally saw these guys every day on the lines. They were within walking distance from my house. I am stymied for words right now, and have confused thoughts and fellings. It does not matter much to me that these guys made more than me, what matters is what are they going to do now?My wife works at a convenience store and one of her regular customers from American Axle the day of the “settlement” came in to ask her for a job. Sadly, the store is not hiring. I am sure that there will be more of this to go around. When she conveyed this story my empathy overwhelmed me, I only can imagine how he felt. What is my town going to do now? I fear this is the start of going the way of Lackawanna. Where, you say? That is the point. The only thing that many younger than forty-five or from outside WNY may now know about Lackawanna, NY is the Lackawanna 6 terror cell. Once a boom town made famous by Bethlehem Steel a giant among giants, a city in its own right, until foreign imported steel. There she sits, a ghost town, the smell of success ironically still hangs in the air twenty-five years later. Sure pollution and success go hand in hand in a working class town but it still was a sweet smell in its day. Once proud, productive, and prosperous for its people now, in shambles, ashamed to even say its own name, "Lackawanna." "Lackawanna", "Tonawanda" coincidence? More than likely, but one still has to wonder if there was more that our local government, people, "the company", and the employees could have done to prevent this tragic loss. I feel Tonawanda's presence and voice ebbing into nothingness as I write this and . . .

b

 

Here is the rest of the article that sadly put us into the national spot light.

American Axle workers vote to end strike
Contract includes steep pay cuts; walkout forced thousands of GM layoffs

From fun to family friendly, Consumer Reports picks the best vehicles for 2008.
By TOM KRISHER
AP Auto Writer

updated 10:24 p.m. ET, Thurs., May. 22, 2008
HAMTRAMCK, Mich. - Workers at American Axle and Manufacturing Holdings Inc. have voted to end their nearly three-month-old strike, overwhelmingly ratifying a new contract with the company despite steep pay cuts and other concessions.

The vote, finalized Thursday, means workers likely will return to their jobs next week, ending a walkout that has crippled General Motors Corp.'s production of large sport utility vehicles and pickup trucks.

Workers at five American Axle sites in Michigan and New York voted 78 percent in favor of the four-year deal, while 22 percent voted against, the United Auto Workers said in a statement late Thursday. The union does not release vote totals.

UAW members at four sites voted overwhelmingly in favor of the contract Monday and were awaiting Thursday's vote by Local 235 in Hamtramck, which is by far the largest local in the company, with 1,983 members.

Erik Webb, election committee co-chairman for Local 235, said 1,172 workers at the local voted for the pact out of more than 1,500 who voted. A contract governing local work rules and other items at the company's Detroit manufacturing plant also was approved by a narrower margin, Webb said.

Getting the plants reopened
Workers on Thursday night expected the company to call in electricians and other skilled trades workers over the Memorial Day holiday weekend to prepare the plants to reopen, with production restarting early next week.

Company spokeswoman Renee Rogers said American Axle must wait for written vote confirmation from the UAW before deciding when to restart the factories. That could come Friday, she said.

About 3,650 UAW members have been on strike since Feb. 26 over the company's demand for lower wages to match its U.S. competitors.

American Axle has said it needs a wage structure that is competitive with other U.S. auto parts makers so it can earn new business.

Local 235 Shop Chairman Dana Edwards said union members didn't have much choice but to accept the deal.

"I think with the economy the way it is, with the truck sales the way it is, I feel that's what people thought they had to do," Edwards said.

Strike hurt GM workers
American Axle makes axles, drive shafts and stabilizer bars, mainly for GM's pickup and large SUVs. GM accounts for about 80 percent of its business.

The strike forced GM to cut production at or temporarily close more than 30 factories. It also caused thousands of layoffs at GM and other auto parts suppliers.

GM said it lost $800 million in the first quarter and produced 230,000 fewer vehicles due to the strike. But the strike also helped GM control its inventory, coming at a time when high gas prices and a slow economy reduced demand for trucks and SUVs.

GM spokesman Chris Lee said the automaker has a plan to bring its idled factories back on line, but he would not reveal details Thursday night.

Vote for, against the pact
American Axle worker Bill Johnson, 39, voted in favor of the pact, even though it cuts wages by about one-third, freezes pensions and takes away other benefits.

He said workers have to be smart and spend wisely up to $105,000 the company will pay them over three years to ease the transition to lower pay.

Other workers said they voted against it.

Council Bellomy, 32, was resentful that the company has made millions yet expects production workers to take pay cuts from around $28 per hour to $18.50.

"Freeze pension, wages, health care — you name it. They took everything our fathers fought for," Bellomy said.

Workers also have the choice of taking a $55,000 early retirement incentive or up to $140,000 to leave the company.

Under the deal, American Axle will close its Detroit and Tonawanda, N.Y., forge operations.

MSNBC ARTICLE

American Axle is well on its way to ratifying it's agreement. I have mixed feelings about that, but I trust their membership did what was best for them. I just hate to see any concessions, cutbacks or plant closures when there is no external economic relief to compensate. Gas prices keep going up. Housing industry is plummeting while home forclosures escalate.

The American Axle workers deserve a standing ovation for their commitment to their ideals and support for their union and Bargaining Committee.

Meanwhile, back at LDT ... management seems to think our strike was in support of the strike at American Axle. Where that one came from is anybody's guesstimate. Our plant does not buy any parts from American Axle that I know of. Our production was in no way restricted or threatened by their strike.

Besides, secondary boycotts/strikes are illegal, and I'm pretty sure GM would have filed charges with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) if had that been the case.

Ditto the strike at Alliance Interiors. Yes, they supply LDT with carpets and other parts, but LDT had alternate suppliers lined up, so that strike would have had limited-if any-impact on LDT production.

If anything, the strike at LDT could have seriously hampered the strike effort at Alliance/Local 724 by reducing the demand for their products. Thank God they were able to wring a decent agreement out of Alliance management.

Most of the strike-related info on Local 602's website will come down this weekend. Our 602 photographer, Brian Masengale, suggested putting his hundreds of photos on DVD to sell to our members as a fund raiser for our (way-down-the-road-in-time) new union hall.

GM Exec Troy Clarke's niece is at LDT as an intern, will be teaching some training classes.

 Solid!

dona jean

http://www.uaw.org/cap/08/issues/issue16.php

The above links will take you to an article in the Detroit Free Press about the pathetic deal the UAW negotiated for its members with American Axle and to a page from the UAW web site that defines its policy on global trade. 

And while this was taking place, the UAW has been whipped into a compliant lap dog, resiging itself to this failed "free" trade policy and deluding itself into believing that it's making a difference by advocating for workers' rights in trade agreements. If workers' rights are the source of our problems, then how does one explain the well-paid, well-treated workers in wealthy countries like Japan and Germany, countries kicking out butts in automotive trade, living well at the expense of their UAW American counterparts?

Our nation now has 170 years of experience with tariffs, followed by 61 years of experience with "free" trade. Any objective analysis of the results can come to only one conclusion: it's time for a return to the trade policies that made this country great in the first place.

Solid--djg

I have read about half of the book: "Blessed Unrest" by Paul Hawken.

Thanks, Grace and Shea, for pushing this book. It is the first book that begins to explain to me why so many of the young people in and around Detroit Summer have moved beyond the thinking of the New and Old Left. They have been raised in the closing decades of the epoch in human history that began with the destruction of indigenous people and the slave trade through industrialization (or the beginning of the destruction of the environment). They are coming of age at the beginning of the new era, moving beyond imperialism and the nation-state to corporate globalization, resistance to which entered a new era with the Zapatistas and the Battle of Seattle in 1999.

It is a book that should be read along with Naomi Klein’s Shock Doctrine and the book, THE REVOLUTION WILL NOT BE FUNDED: BEYOND THE NON-PROFIT INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX! edited by INCITE! Women of Color.

Blessed Unrest raises tremendous questions about concepts of movement building and, for me, raised the issue of the uniqueness of movement building in the 21 century. In Revolution and Evolution in the 20th Century, James and Grace Lee Boggs clearly emphasized the uniqueness and particularity of each revolution, based on the unique history of the country.

The history of the U. S. is very different from the history of Europe. Europe emerged from feudalism; the U. S. did not. The U.S. was founded at the beginning of the epoch when the main goal of western societies was economic growth and increasing productivity. The fundamental contradiction within our nation’s founding is the struggle to advance economically and technologically at the expense of those at the bottom: Native Americans, African Americans, small farmers and the working class. Simply said, Slavery advances the economy while destroying our humanity and our political and social consciousness.

As I was reading the book, it became clearer to me that the work around the
Beloved Communities Network and the concept of organizing, discovering and creating communities that forms the basis of Cities of Hope is the Boggs Center contribution to these amazing times.

How do we create new relationships on a local, regional, national and international basis as we empower, transform & heal ourselves, and deepen our concepts of Work, Education, Politics, Security and Citizenship?

This leads me to the discussion of Hillary Clinton & Bill Clinton who are
encouraging people to go backwards in time by blaming others for the fears, bitterness and insecurities of the white working & middle classes. When Sean Hannity praises Bill Clinton for speaking out against Obama (claiming that Obama "used the race card against Clinton"), we see a significant deepening and expansion of the right-wing to openly include a growing sector of the Democratic party.

We can and must intervene at this time if we recognize that growing numbers of the white working class are also supportive and respectful of Obama. They want a positive change. These are very fluid times. At the same time, a substantial number of white workers are moving beyond George Wallace/Reagan Democrats to the Clinton Democrats who are drifting toward the ideas of counter-revolution. The Clinton democrats are a natural extension of the Reagan democrats. – from Reagan’s trickle down economics to Clinton’s war on poor women via welfare reform among other things.

Hillary Clinton recently was quoted in the NYT as saying:
“They came for the steel companies and nobody said anything. They came for the auto companies and nobody said anything. They came for the office companies, people who did white-collar service jobs, and no one said anything. And they came for the professional jobs that could be outsourced, and nobody said anything.”

This is a great formulation but the alternative to silence is not solutions from the past or empty rhetoric about solidarity. Resistance without vision is doomed to failure. Our silence is more complicated than self-centeredness or selfishness.

We are silent because we think and act like consumers. We are silent because our only solutions are past solutions based upon the myth that a higher standard of living is inevitable and desirable for future generations. We ignore the fact that our standard of living is a result of our post-World War II empire status and the global domination of U. S. corporations. We are silent because we think and care about only about ourselves We have built our society on this kind of self-righteous individualism and we have internalized the values of our society., not about the environment or about the billions of others in the world who are dying of hunger and disease while we care only about maintaining or raising our standard of living. We have traded principles and values and our sacred honor for an ever-higher standard of living, for the Almighty Dollar.

Unless they were involved in the movements of the 60s and 70s. large numbers of workers have no memory of collective caring. Most industrial workers and white collar workers were involved in the labor movement only for higher wages and their own economic security; not to bring about social change and a new non-exploitative society.. The white working class and middle class believed they had reached security because they had made it into the American Dream of jobs, overtime, credit cards, larger houses, social status. They have no memory, no concept, no vision of security coming from a social movement to advance our humanity and the well-being of everyone. The attempt to equate union membership with the union movement of solidarity continues to fail because we see success as $$$ and security as $$$.

We need to acknowledge the fear of workers on the picket line at the American Axle plant in Detroit who have been on strike for more than 2 months, or the workers who have lost their jobs in the steel mills and textile mills, or who are currently losing their jobs to telemarketers overseas. Their fears are very real. They want answers from their government, but too often they want simple answers like Fair Trade and stop corporations from leaving this country. They want to protect their past. They believe that it is their right to be on the top of the ladder because they are Americans. They want their fair share as compared to a CEO earning hundreds of millions of dollars per year. BUT

• They blame African Americans for “taking” their jobs because of Affirmative Action.
• They blame Mexican Americans for coming to this country and Mexicans in Mexico for taking the jobs that relocate to their country
• Previously, men blamed women but since in the past 30 years women often work an the same sites as men this argument has decreased.
• They blame the union for not stopping the outsourcing of the jobs or for accepting concessions.
• They blame the government. Some blame the liberals for backing higher wages that drive employers overseas and growing numbers also blame Republicans and Bush for not challenging windfall profits and failure to create jobs from subsidies.
• They also blame the greed of the CEOs and the corporations.

They want security for themselves but they are not concerned about the security of those left behind. For some, there was security in the 1990s during the technology boom - and they credit Clinton for this economic security. The people losing today and being thrown overboard by technology, sourcing and globalization have short memories. They don’t remember the 1980s when another layer was displaced as the US economic empire weakened and global competition expanded. In the 1980s it was competition from Japan. Today it is from China and India. Today’s economic crash is the natural result of Clinton’s policies that they thought brought them prosperity in the 1990s – the housing crash is the result of his bank deregulation and facilitating predatory lending, etc)

In the U.S. we don’t look at those left behind until it happens to us. For the first time in human history every human being is not necessary to the economic system of production and consumption.

The challenge for activists, progressives, union folks is to learn to listen to the fears and despair so we can then engage in conversations about hope . This is the first step to becoming citizens who take control of our local economies and our communities.

We have to rely on each other and give meaning to solidarity. A solidarity not only of mobilization but of transformation. A solidarity of hope, not of fear.

Too many white workers and middle class people believe that:

• Obama is not patriotic enough?
• Michelle Obama is not proud of her country?

While this is taking place Hillary Clinton’s campaign ties Obama to Farrakhan, Ayers and Wright and she is eager to express her commitment to bomb and obliterate Iran. As she plays on fear and with international security issues, she is trying to out -McCain McCain

The strength of the counter-revolution can be challenged if we recognize that our fears and our insecurity (economic and international) can only be reduced if we recognize that workers and all American voters are human beings searching for security and they/we will either go backwards or forwards.

For them to go forward, we need to engage honestly with them and explain that we have reached the end of the epoch when increasing productivity and economic growth can be the goal of any society, any nation.

At the same time, because of the information revolution, there is now a potential for a new dream and a new quality of life that is defined by the principles and values that pervaded the vision and sermons of MLK.

• We need a radical revolution in values;
• We need to struggle against the triplets of racism, militarism and materialism.
• We need to recognize that there will not be any jobs unless we create a new local economy based upon new principles of sustainability.

There will not be any reduction in the global threat from terrorists until we join the community of nations and become global citizens.

As Americans,
our communities can be the basis of Love rather than Hate, and
our communities can be communities of Inclusion rather than Exclusion. We can create a new American Dream that involves new kinds of Health care, New kinds of Education, Work, food security and personal security - IF we recognize that we have reached the end of the old economic dream and therefore can and must create a new dream that provides security and dignity for all. But we must be willing to imagine this dream and then work for it and make it happen.

If, instead, we act like victims, blaming others and refusing to become the makers of change and history. we will be left behind, whining, complaining and ultimately at the mercy of demagogues.

Those Americans with various measures of privilege who also claim to care about racism, sexism, classism, and materialism DO have the responsibility to explore/reject unearned privilege, identify the ways in which our privilege draws on exploitation of others and in the process inherently dehumanizes us, etc.

We can longer separate the transformation of our values from the transformation of our institutions as we become global citizens and local citizens in our commitment to the next American Revolution.

Obama is giving us the opportunity to move the conversation forward on Race, Class and National Security

It is up to us to engage in this conversation, learn to listen and leave behind the categories, the labels and the solutions from another era in our nation’s history. In the 1930s Germany continued to live in the past and ended up with Hitler. In 2008 we can go forwards or we can go backwards. The future is in our hands.

American Axle negotiations reported "movement" today, as well.

As LDT's days supply of our hot-selling Buick Enclave dwindle, negotiations there are starting to pick up.

Hopefully, the strikes will end soon and we'll all be back to work for the prosperity of the oil and pharmaceutical companies.

Now, if GM would build a vehicle that burns cash, instead of gas, we could just roll up our paychecks, shove them in the gas tanks and skip all that middle-man stuff.

Speaking of GM, I got my notice of the annual GM stockholders meeting earlier this week.

I still own 6 shares of Class E Common Stock from back in the '80s when shares were part of our compensation. Four times a year, GM sends me a check, usually for $1.50, although years ago, I got a couple checks for $3.

Normally I just file the reports and proxy card away as reference material, just in case GM ever makes enough money to balance out the postage on all the crap they send me. This  year, for whatever reason (probably nothing to do with the fact that we are on strike), I was checking out the stockholder proposals on the proxy/voting card, and noticed the Board of Directors recommends voting against items 3-10, which are 3) Disclosure of Political Contributions, 4) More disclosure of Political Contributions, 5) Health Care Reform Principles, 6) Stockholder Advisory Vote on Executive Compensation, 7) Greenhouse Gas Emissions, 8)Cumulative Voting, 9) special stockholder meetings and 10) Performance-Based Equity Compensation.

Of course, GM gives reasons for voting against these proposals. For example, on the Health Care Principles, GM states "...adoption of these health care principles will not advance the legislative debate for facilitate the enactment of federal legislation that would benefit the Corporation, its stockholders or the country."

Hmmm. It's called taking a stand for the common good, General Motors. Some might even call it lobbying. Say the words outloud, already: Universal Health Care. Sign your name on the damned petition, OK?

OK, so a few Board Members may object--those who hail from the pharaceutical and insurance industries, for example. But GM already publicly conceded defeat on health care costs and handed the lion's share of the burden over to the UAW. GM is contractually committed to a National Institute on Health Care Reform along with the UAW, Chrysler LLC and Ford. 

Let me help: "Hello. My name is General Motors, and I have a health care crisis..." 

djg

Friday, April 18 11:30 AM

Rally to support AAM strikers

Hart Plaza: Woodward & Jefferson

UAW members and supporters will rally at 11:30 am on April 18 at Detroit's Hart Plaza to support striking workers at American Axle.

More than 3,500 UAW members from UAW Locals 235, 262 and 2093 in Michigan and UAW Locals 424 and 826 in New York have been on strike since Feb. 26 to protest unfair labor practices.

"The support our members have received during this strike is overwhelming," said UAW President Ron Gettelfinger. "We've heard from members of the clergy, from local businesses, from community leaders --and of course from UAW members and the entire labor movement."

"Our rally on April 18th will be a great time to show solidarity with American Axle strikers, and to demonstrate support for keeping manufacturing jobs here in the United States," said Gettelfinger.

"Even business publications like the Automotive News can't understand how American Axle can justify giving pay raises to executives while demanding pay cuts from workers," said UAW Vice President James Settles Jr., who directs the union's American Axle Department.

"In addition to their unjustified economic demands," said Settles, "AAM has refused to provide us the information we need for bargaining, andhas illegally cut off disability payments and health care for injuredworkers, as well as compensation -- including health care -- for laid off workers. That's why this is an unfair labor practices strike."

"Our members at American Axle are standing up for what's right -- and we're inviting our entire community to stand with us on April 18th at Hart Plaza."