Did Obama ‘save’ the UAW?
2012Andrew Pollack 2012-09Read it in the scan (PDF at ETOL), page 5 →
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On the eve of the Democratic Party Con vention, President Obama tried his best to firm up his pro-labor credentials. Dur ing a Labor Day campaign gathering of autoworkers and steelworkers in Toledo, Ohio, Obama boasted of his role in hand ing the big automakers a financial bailout in 2009. That measure, he told his audi ence, was responsible for saving jobs. But what is the truth?
In 2009, Floyd Norris, a New York Times columnist, wrote, “It took a conservative Republican to open relations with the largest Communist country in the world, it took a liberal Democrat to break the UAW.” Obama, so-called friend of work ing families, destroyed one of the pow erhouses of U.S. labor, the United Auto Workers union, after only a couple of The United States in late summer 2012 was awash with anti-Muslim, anti-Sikh violence and rhetoric, perpe trated by racists both in and out of office.
In an Aug. 17 statement, the National Lawyers Guild’s Muslim Defense Project (MDP) noted: “Today, merely gathering as a Muslim has become an act of courage in the face of terror. Indeed, the last few weeks have been marked by horrifying instances of hatred around the United States. The day after Wade Michael Page, who had ties to white supremacy groups, brutally attacked members of the Sikh community at their gurdwara in Oak Creek, Wisconsin, a mosque was also burned to the ground in Joplin, Missouri. This mosque had been the subject of persistent attempts at arson. In Morton Grove, Illinois, a man was shot at an Islamic center where 500 Muslims had gathered for Ramadan prayers. And in the suburb of Lombard, a soda bottle filled with household chemicals was thrown at an Is lamic school, also during Ramadan prayers.”
The MDP countered media attempts to portray each case as unique and inexplicable: “These acts of hatred towards Muslims and others regarded as ‘foreigners’ to American society are not random or isolated but have been fomented by politicians, law enforcement officials, and sanctioned by judges. The two attacks in Illinois followed the incendiary claim made by local Republican House Representative Joe Walsh … that there is ‘a radical strain of Islam in this country … try ing to kill Americans every week.’”
The MDP itself has been organizing against spying by the New York City police department, which has put every Muslim house of worship, business, and school under surveillance. The Project notes that the department “continues to promote its ‘radicalization’ theory, connecting all Muslims to terrorism, which it uses to justify the wholesale surveillance of commu nities, with an army of informants and spies in areas extending far beyond New York City.”
On Aug. 21 the latest in a series of stories by the As sociated Press exposing NYPD spying focused on a de position by NYPD Assistant Chief Joseph Galati, head of the department’s Intelligence Division, in which he admitted that the department had turned up not a single lead to any crime, much less any terrorist act, despite years of spying on every Muslim organization and establishment in several cities. This news soon went viral on the internet. But the deeper significance of the story was widely underplayed, the fact that Galati admitted their real goal had been achieved: that is, the department had sufficient spies in the Mus lim community to listen to political conversations of thousands of community members.
Just speaking Urdu or Bengali, just coming from Leb anon, said Galati, was enough to be worthy of depart mental interest. By the same token, a conversation by any Arab, South Asian, or Muslim in any language complaining about anti-Muslim words or deeds was enough to get noted down in NYPD records. Com plaining about anti-Muslim hate crimes, about U.S. killing of civilians using drone aircraft, and similar speech supposedly protected under the Constitution made you worthy of surveillance, said Galati. (Galati, by the way, is the same cop who harassed and illegally detained Iranian diplomats in a widely-reported 2007 incident.)
So while they turned up not a single lead, the depart ment was able to cast a net over entire communities in the hopes of intimidating them and discouraging political activity and dissuading them from asserting their rights. And the longer-term danger is that this ubiquitous surveillance puts in place a mapping of the months on the job.
After the government takeover of GM and Chrysler, the president’s “Auto Task Force,” packed with corporate execu tives, told the UAW to reduce its labor costs to that of non-union manufacturers like Honda, Toyota, and other non-union outfits.
And under the government threat of im posing bankruptcy and voiding out union contracts, the UAW bureaucrats shame lessly—without a fight of any kind—ne gotiated the terms of surrender. While the auto companies got billions in bailout dough for making gas-guzzlers (the big auto shareholders were financial corporations like Goldman Sachs), new employee wages were cut in half. That destroyed in one blow the UAW traditions of solidarity. There were thousands of lay offs, despite bosses’ promises. Health benefits were off-loaded onto a union-run Voluntary Employee Benefits Association (VEBA), with limited cor porate contributions. Ford motors, which had not asked for a bailout, got the UAW to agree to a deal that echoed the massive concessions at GM and Chrysler, in order to “stay competitive.”
In October 2011, after a vigorous fear campaign, auto members approved a contract that upheld the main features of the previous rout. Included was the continuation of a no-strike pledge and a first time zero pension increase. A side agreement allows the bosses and UAW brass to amend the pension plan with out a membership vote.
UAW members have pointed out that the union has adopted concession-lad en contracts for 30 years only to see its ranks drop by 50 percent since 2001!
In 1979, another Democrat, Jimmy Carter, twisted the UAW’s arm to ac cept concessions as condition for bail ing out the Chrysler bosses. In return, autoworkers got mass layoffs.
It makes no sense for union members to vote for the Democrats, who have sold them out repeatedly. Both major parties serve the interests of the wealthy 1%, not working people. Workers need their own party—a Labor Party that can effectively lead the fightback against the bosses and win! n