Save the union; Save Detroit; Save the planet!
Demonstrate Sunday, January 13 & Monday, January 14, 1:30-3pm across from Cobo Center in Downtown Detroit at the 2013 North American Auto Show
With all the talk about the successful turnaround of the Big Three, the spotlight needs to be turned on to the deteriorating working conditions autoworkers are facing. We were forced by the White House Auto Task Force to “sacrifice” during the bailout at GM and Chrysler. Concessions were incorporated into the current contracts with the Detroit Three. These included the elimination of COLA, time-and-a half only after 40 hours, loss of break time and holidays, expansion of two-tier and at GM of break time and holidays, expansion of two-tier and at GM The pacts sent a signal to workers: don't complain, just “be happy you have a job.”
Alternative Work Schedules and Flexible Operating Patterns are sold to workers as family-friendly, promising three day weekends. Volume needs quickly morph 4x10 schedules into 5x10.7. The three day weekend never materializes while overtime after eight hours and the ten hour overtime limit become relics of a more humane system. Contract language on “Emergency Situations” is invoked to force instant mandatory overtime of 11.5 hour shifts, without considering workers' family responsibilities. Workers are faced with the choice of discipline or not attending to after work responsibilities. Heartless managers have disciplined workers who left at the end of their posted shift rather than leave children stranded at child care providers.
Once injured on the job, we often are harassed by management. We are forced back to work and put on jobs we shouldn't do with our injuries. The jobs that used to go to people coming off workers' compensation have been outsourced.
The companies have wasted no time implementing an agenda that allows permanent “temporaries,” outsources in-plant jobs to companies paying as low as $9 an hour, and increases the pace of work. Management is no longer interested in having long-term employees. They prefer the maquiladora model, where one rarely lasts more than ten years.
We stand with our sister and brother workers who face this aggressive management model in their countries. We understand that if corporations in other countries can fire workers after they become injured on the job, that same become injured on the job, that same practice will be here soon. We express our solidarity with the more than 200 injured and fired GM workers from the Colmotores plant in Bogotá, Colombia. They have been denied workers' compensation and the health care they need. We believe GM owes a debt to these workers, who have organized themselves into a union, ASOTRECOL. The president of their union, Jorge Parra, has been in the U.S. since August, trying to get a meeting with GM executives.
When we went to Lansing on December 11 to protest passage of the right-to-work-for-less law, Jorge Parra accompanied us—he understood the need to unite the struggles for union rights all over the globe. We demand repeal of “Right to Work,” the new emergency management law, and all union busting bills.
The global restructuring of the Detroit Three has been accomplished on the backs of working people to maximize profits—with no regard for workers or the environment. A restructuring of the auto industry is indeed necessary; but one using the know-how of workers to retool our plants and build what is necessary to stop global warming, prevent more disasters like Superstorm Sandy and avoid the environmental catastrophe facing us. We need clean vehicles and a mass transit web to meet local, regional and national needs. We need renewable energy. We know that such a project would unleash workers' energies and create much-needed jobs for Detroit and hard-hit communities across the country.
For more information e-mail autoworkercaravan@gmail.com or call Dianne (313)-843-2125
All are invited to come out and show their solidarity with Autoworker Caravan
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