UAW dissident scores gains for upcoming district vote
1989Kevin Fitzpatrick 1989-04Read it in the scan (PDF at ETOL), page 4 →
Read from the scan by machine and not corrected: expect misread words, and now and then a caption or a line from a neighbouring story. For anything you quote, read the scan.
Scan page 4
4 SOCIALIST ACTION APRIL 1989 DETROIT-Following a series of wellattended meetings, Don Douglas, a key leader in the "New Beginnings" opposition in the United Auto Workers union (UAW), announced his candidacy for regional director in early February. [For more background, see the February 1989 issue of Socialist Action.] In the first weeks of this campaign, Douglas has won important victories.
In the strict sense, the director will be chosen by the delegates to the formally merged Detroit-area Regions 1 and 1-B. The selection will take place at the UAW's Constitutional Convention in Anaheim, Calif., on June 18-22.
The contest now is over who will win the majority of the approximately 1050 delegates who will represent the over 100,000 members of what will be the UAW's largest region.
A juggernaut effect?
The supporters of Bob Lent, the Administration Caucus candidate and incumbent director of Region 1-B, were cocky. The official UAW leadership had put the arm on local officials to support Lent, hoping to create a juggernaut effect.
On top of this, a "Friends' Social Club" was set in motion, which will collect up to $400,000 to fight UAW dissidents. The money is being "voluntarily donated" by UAW staffers.
And two former UAW presidents, Leonard Woodcock and Douglas Fraser, along with other retired officers, had issued an attack on Victor Reuther. He is a supporter of both "New Beginnings" and Region 5 Director Jerry Tucker's "New Directions" movement.
Harold Cox, president of Local 653, felt emboldened enough to pipe up, "I think all the people who know Bob Lent will support him." Perhaps people know Bob Lent all too well, because that very local gave 14 of its 21 delegates and eight of its 14 alternates to Douglas supporters.
The Detroit Free Press reported on March 3 that "one UAW insider" called the vote a "shocker." The local's vice president, also a Lent supporter, had to admit that "the membership is letting the international union know they don't like what is going on."
In the next two weeks, Douglas swept the delegates at GM's Orion Township assembly complex, and walked away with his own Local 594 (GM Truck and Bus) in Pontiac. The Administration Caucus is now talking out of the other side of its mouth, claiming that once the vote gets outside GM and Pontiac, Lent will start to win. But it forgets that GM was precisely the showpiece of "labor-management cooperation."
"Time to make it happen"
The struggle for Don Douglas reflects the deep discontent auto workers feel with the wretched policies of the UAW leadership. "New Beginnings," in a pamphlet called "Decade of Decline," not only attacks the original concessions bargaining. It also shows the aftermath of this capitulation to the corporations: "whipsawing" (playing off one local against another), "team" concepts, and massive layoffs and unemployment.
It states the importance of the fight: "The UAW led American Labor into retreat during the Reagan years. Only our Union is large enough and strong enough to declare that it's time for labor to surge forward again, and make it happen."
As part of the fight for union democracy and "accountability," the opposition has prepared a single, simple resolution to be presented to the Constitutional Convention.
Pointing out the burning differences that exist within the union, the proposal puts forward a specific constitutional amendment that will forbid "omnibus resolutions" through which the Administration Caucus has buried all alternative proposals at the Special Bargaining Conventions that precede contract expirations.
These are small beginnings; the fight is hard and the road ahead is far from smooth. But something is stirring deep down in the ranks of the American labor movement, something that will find a stronger and more political expression in every battle-won or lost-and in every lesson learned in that struggle.
bined force of the employers, courts, and governmental authorities-the union leadership has retreated.
When Eastern Airlines executives said they were "delighted" with the decision to appoint a mediator in the strike, both the IAM and the Air Line Pilots Association announced that they, too, applauded the decision.
At the same time, the unions (together with Democratic Party members of Congress) are continuing to press for a federal emergency board to end the strike. They thus maintain the fiction that a government mediator or emergency board could be impartial in the Eastern dispute.
But the Eastern strike has already been pushed back by the courts. What more proof is necessary to show that governmental agencies are always loyal to the bosses?
Spread the strike!
In reality, the union officials are aiming for a compromise. The government mediator would tell the workers to give concessions— although less than Lorenzo originally asked for. And the union tops would justify the settlement with the statement: "It's all we can get right now."
But this is a mistaken policy. The strikers can win much more. Workers are tired of sacrificing for the sake of Lorenzo and the other coupon-clippers. And the heroic solidarity expressed by the pilots, the flight attendants, and other unionists have shown the power of the labor movement on the picket line.
Lorenzo went to the courts, not because he was strong, but because the strikers were strong—and he had no other choice. Now the strike is in danger. The unions must continue to hold fast on the picket line. They must enlarge the strike, in the first place, by targeting Continental Airlines, a non-union airline also owned by Lorenzo.
If the courts and the federal government continue to try to tie down the strike with injunctions against secondary picketing, then the unions must be prepared to defend their rights.
Mass picketing is necessary. The e ntire labor movement must be mobilized to ‹ ome to the aid of the Eastern strikers. Solid arity and strength are the only things that will make Lorenzo give in.—The editors