sophieflyer

Bet the house the phone lines were burning up between the company and uaw following the Local 879 March membership meetings. Unionism broke out in Local 879 and was threatening to spread everywhere.

"We want to go to other plants and let our brothers and sisters know we are going to be there for them and we want them to be there for us," said Steve Simones at Local 879's niteshift meeting March 8.

Simones was speaking in support of a historic move by Local 879 Chassis Committeeman Mike Melville to send ordinary WORKING autoworkers on the road from our local to other plants to build solidarity on a worker to worker basis. "We need unity," and we think this is the way to get it," said Melville in making the motion. "We need a UNION program."

The motion was approved unanimously at the nightshift meeting. It was opposed at the dayshift meeting by a handful of appointees and the usual EB and BC suspects. The nightshift vote far outweighed dayshift and a plan for these solidarity trips will be presented at next month's meetings.

If you've been staying away from monthly membership meetings because they have not really been Union meetings, now is the time to start going again. The Melville Motion, this Solidarity action, can save our plant and everyone else's too.

The solidarity sentiments behind this motion return us to the organizing days of the real UAW. What Melville and the members of our local have set in motion here can be as powerful as the Flint Sitdowns. What our local has begun is the only thing that Ford is afraid of. It is the only action that can save us all. It can be the movement that will not only save our jobs and plants but change the world. The simple Union idea of everyone supporting everyone else is crystallized in Melville's motion.

Fellow niteshift committeeman Tim Peddycoart backed Melville up as did alot of production workers. "We need Union programs," he stressed. "The company wants to give us FPS. This Union idea is just common sense. It is the only thing that can work for us and we should do it now."

When other local leaders expressed reservations about cost, a niteshift chassis worker asked, "How can we afford NOT to do this?" When dayshift committeeman Tom Albrecht suggested we get the company to pay for it out of FPS funds he was laughed at. A member asked, "Is there anyone here who wants the company in this UNION program?" The answer was a resounding "Hell no!" (Cont. Pg. 2)

Dayshift chassis committeeman Jim Eagle who was co-author of the motion and who defended it at the dayshift meeting and members of the local's communication and education committees and other members will meet to consider alot of ideas presented by members in and out of our two meetings on how to do this.

Be advised, the "leadership" is looking for a way not to do this. They are willing to promote any program - even lean production - supported by Ford and/or their friendly top uaw porkchoppers. They get a little skittish with the members' ideas. Especially this one. Key to the organization of these trips will be keeping the planning committee open to all and run by the folks who do the work and pay the dues.

A practical case of how these Solidarity Trips can work comes out of an idea from the TriLevel job fight. As our guys were fighting for good jobs they were of course attacked by Ford. Not of course was the fact they were also attacked by our own Bargain Committee. One idea for help was sending a letter to TriLevel workers in Kansas City appealing for combined action between rail workers here and there. There was never an answer to this appeal for help. This appeal for Solidarity was attacked by the porkchoppers. But, if we had sent our workers to meet with KC workers, they would have seen that we all had everything in common. They would have sat down and figured out a way to fight for these good jobs everywhere instead of allowing Forduaw to isolate and destroy our guys and our jobs. We could have won everything instead of a compromise.

We're making Union progress now. A month ago, we were fighting at these same shift meetings over fundamental Union values and principles. March 8, we were talking SOLIDARITY, talking about acting like a Union again! It was wonderful! It was the most inspiring thing I have seen in our Union Hall in 28 years. This is the way the UNION is supposed to work. This is the action that will draw people back to the UNION hall. This is the way to win!

And, MEMO to Ford: You ought to be ashamed of the way you treat line workers. You will not always have the upper hand. Think about what you are doing to our jobs and injured workers because we sure as hell are not going to forget what you are doing now!

Hey, at our Local, half of the Bargaining Committee was excluded from the contract negotiations! Have you ever heard of such a thing? The only ones that bargained the latest agreement were:

Another positive note from the meeting was Janet Schachtner, an executive board member defending Nancy Schillinger's right to speak after the pres. and a few of his cronies had attempted to shout Nancy down.

Janet said a letter sent to EB members challenging the propriety of her expulsion had raised serious ethical questions and she said Nancy should be allowed to address them. Spuds disagreed and Nancy was not able to say much. But it took some courage for Janet to do what she did and what she did was inspiring to most of us.

Troubling were a few younger members who have been pumped by Spuds and do not know Nancy's side but tried to keep her from speaking anyway. One was a UAW-CAP activist. Some politics this guy is pushing! They want us to elect more Democrats but kick free speech in the butt in our own Union Hall.

"Due process is required in internal union disciplinary hearings, including the right to specific written charges; the right to confront and cross-examine accusers; adequate time to prepare a defense; and the right to a full and fair hearing and a decision based on the evidence."

Is it right that people who hold positions of power in our local, who are most responsible for defending our democratic rights - something as basic as free speech and due process- are instead engaged in taking these rights away?

Not only is Mr. McKenzie guilty of depriving Nancy of her democratic rights, he continues to practice his part-time psychiatry telling those who disagree with him how crazy they are. It is time for Dr. McKenzie to review his own record of activism, his own positions of some years ago that don't seem to be strikingly different than Nancy's, especially in regard to union democracy.

Nancy is guilty of standing up to a bunch of bullies who did their best to wreck her life. She is guilty of demanding a Union that enforced every section of the contracts that make our worklives more livable. She's outspoken for us.

Yet, like the mass production system, lean remained limited by its focus on short, fixed-term production cycles. The lean system did not, and could not, enable an employer to quickly adapt or change over the production process to produce other things. In addition, the lean system was highly vulnerable to production disruptions because its efficiency at doing just one thing made it fragile and resistant to change. The lean system simply did not give an operation agility. Agile Manufacturing

Agile builds on the streamlined work process of lean manufacturing, but unlike lean, an agile manufacturing system is able to shift course rapidly. It focuses across production cycles rather than within them. This allows a factory to be reconfigured for an unplanned production requirement, or to rapidly build customized products. Agile allows an organization to thrive in an environment of constant and unpredictable change by responding quickly to competitive threats and market opportunities. Implementing an agile system therefore means a sharp acceleration of the restructuring process at the plant level.

The concept of agile manufacturing may be very new to us. But Corporate America has been encouraging the development of agile and working towards its implementation for the past decade. In fact, the US Department of Defense contributed $5 million to the Agile Manufacturing Enterprise Forum. The US government, Fortune 500 companies and the American Big Three automakers all support the agile vision. They believe it promises "a new means of organizing technical, human, social and natural resources into what is likely to become the dominant world industrial order of the 21st Century."1 By implementing agile, American corporations hope to restore the US to a position of global supremacy in industrial manufacturing.

The advocates of agile envision a workforce that "shares a common vision with management, a common commitment to shared values for joint success, and a shared responsibility for creating that success."2

Agile manufacturing rejects the slow, hierarchical decision chains of mass production. Because "continuous and unpredictable change requires frequent and accurate decisions," knowledgeable, highly trained and empowered workers who can make quick decisions will be required for an organization to be flexible, rapid and responsive to change.3

Lowering the point of decision-making depends on a workforce committed to the corporations' goals. Yet, as with the lean system, the power of defining these goals and allocating the monies necessary to meet them belong at the top of the corporate structure. Empowerment is only meant to go so far.

Every structure within a corporation or enterprise, must be agile in order for it to be a genuinely agile organization. With respect to business relationships in the auto industry, for example, this means it will generate infinitely more joint ventures or strategic alliances between corporations than ever before.

A central concept of agile is the virtual enterprise. These are fluid bodies, made up of partnerships which "form quickly and operate effectively even when distributed among many physical locations." They share data and resources, in order to achieve specific goals, then dissolve once the alliance is no longer useful. Virtual enterprises will enable different corporations to make use of each others' specific strengths on an "as needed" basis.

In other words, they will enable auto plants and other corporate facilities to rapidly restructure or reconfigure their operations to make new products. This makes mass customization possible in an agile system.

Virtual enterprises have only become possible due to advances in computer networking and high speed communications. Players need only be "plug compatible" to achieve the tremendous agility of virtual enterprises on an "as needed" basis.

The structure and composition of an agile workforce is particularly disturbing from a labour point of view. Despite claims that workers will be "the primary assets" of an agile enterprise, the agile vision ominously calls for a "virtual workforce" with a very fluid structure, capable of readily adapting to continuous change.

In an agile system, managers become coordinators who will form their workers into teams within an overall network. These teams can "integrate rapidly in the best combination or sequence required to tailor products or services."5

The individuals who participate in these dynamic networks and form "instant teams" will be expected to work together immediately. Job descriptions will "become increasingly broad, and may even disappear."6

A truly agile workforce has two tiers: a core of broadly skilled, highly trained and relatively secure permanent workers, and a large and fluid body of temporary workers. These temporary workers will only be able to obtain work with an enterprise on an "as needed" basis. Temporary workers will augment the core of permanent workers to "absorb fluctuating staff requirements and to provide specialty skills." These specialty skills must be available to the organization on demand, in essentially the same way that a hospital emergency room depends on getting whatever resources it requires almost immediately. The resulting mix of temporary and permanent workers will facilitate the easy reconfiguration of instant teams "with skill sets matched to tasks. "7

These temporary workers will also serve as a convenient pool from which new permanent workers will be recruited. Once they are permanently hired on, they will be given the limited job security denied to those still in the temporary workforce. Only then will an employer invest in training or skill broadening for these workers, and only then will an employer cease to arbitrarily take advantage of these workers on an "as needed" basis.

This concept of a virtual workforce is a prescription for contracting out on a huge scale. This will be especially true in an industry like auto, where increased outsourcing has gone hand in hand with the implementation of lean manufacturing, and where global sourcing from a single supplier is now a common practice.

Because agile is a decisive departure from the old mass production system, it cannot coexist with the types of collective agreements that have been in place since the North American auto industry was first organized by the UAW.

Geez, we sound defeated on the notes regarding ergonomics. If the AFL/CIO was doing it's job, it would be on a highly visible national campaign offering job placements in alternative industries, creating public support, and a rallying point for action. Why should they? We agree to act as second class citizens accepting their untouchable lifetime jobs.

They have no exposure to these risks, and never will. If the uaw represented autoworkers, this easy come easy go legislation would be irrelevant as we would be the ones determining workplace safety rules. I like to think of this situation we're in as investing. When everyone feels hopeless and desperate, and capitulates, the experienced and knowledgeable start buying. It's not possible for things to get worse, it's time to attack. Be clear about fps. This is a choice to become partners with automakers. We've always had that choice available, it's called employment as salaried employees. The uaw has determined that autoworkers no longer have the need for an adversarial relationship with automakers. They are waiting for us to roll-over, as always, so they can book their flights for spring golf. There remains no value to autoworkers, for being members of the uaw. Our interests are not their interests.

Our problem is not some silly legislation. Our problem is our position of being subjected to the creeds and decrees of an untouchable union infrastructure. How does someone who is appointed a lifetime position; who is elected second party; who is untouchable by autoworkers; who is climbing a career ladder; who is not subjected to the same workplace health and safety concerns; how do they represent us? How does a group of untouchables meeting regionally as it's idea of communicating with sister plants, how do they represent autoworkers? They do not!

What do we do? Start a union! Mike's motion at the local 879 night shift meeting to cross reciprocate with other company plants, with the internet, is all it takes. Specifically, he suggests sending rank and file members to meet and begin relationships with rank and file members of sister plants. A simple necessity lost to our subjection to regional untouchables.

Look, there is no alternative. Continue as is, and your pay, benefits, working conditions, etc., continue their downtrend. The company owns many plants. The uaw constrains us with plant individuality and isolation.

We have the legal right to maintain an adversarial relationship with our employer, and it ain't happening. There was a unanimous approval to that motion, but the bureaucrat's conditioned responses concern me. By the time it got to the day shift meeting, the local president was taking damage control and suggesting he would oversee these efforts. This is, and the motion was, a rank and file effort. Any bureaucratic control, involvement, oversight, administration of, is specifically contradictory to the motion, and will break the intent and stop the rewards. Oversight, administration of, and control is by and for the rank and file in any informal structure they choose.

Although the labor movement starts and ends on the shop floor, without this multi-plant corroboration, an individual plant has no defense against a multi-plant owner. Damn it feels good to hear cross-plant talk! I tried that 10 years ago, and failed. What a fool I was, arguing with local elected slugs, that the future was cross plant organizing. The UAW hasn't forgotten where the union came from. They have chosen to become partners with the company! We need to start a union. We need to grow our numbers in all plants until we have the power to represent autoworkers. - Al

D-1 as its called, means that the Union could force Ford to hire to alleviate all the problems we are having in the plant with contracting out, people working out of classification, injurious workloads, criminal treatment of injured workers, timely moves on postings, etc.. One man and a few of his supporters have decided that begging is better than collective bargaining.

CC has opted for promises to hire that never materialize. The fulltime transfer of 28 TPTs means we are still about 30 fulltime workers short of where we were last October because of retirements and discharges. In recent years our production has gone from 44.5 uph to 50 with only token hiring to cover the added work..

We commit ourselves to starting a conversation with our coworkers in our own and other plants about how we can all unite around the values we share of friendship, equality, solidarity, democracy and mutual assistance.

We pledge ourselves to ally with other autoworkers and with other working people wherever we can in order to start a revolution to create a truly democratic Union, society and world.

What do you think we could do if we simply delivered such a message to our Brothers and Sisters in other plants? What would they say? What could we do together? What kind of Union could we have out of this simple expression of Solidarity?

Charlie Holt, 81 years young, is not your ordinary, laid-back retiree. Charlie thinks the generational gap between old and young uaw workers is wrong and he's determined to do something about it.

Charlie is a member of "Fairness for Retirees" a group organized in Ohio that is trying to go national. The group is petitioning for a special uaw convention to focus on the following demands:

"When I retired in 1982 the pension I received from Ford and Social Security was $57.00 different from my pay for a 40-hour week," Charlie says. "I wish all of you would help us get the word out about the call for a Special Convention for retirees now."

These are important days we live in. Solidarity is under attack everywhere. Big Business unions join corporations in stealing jobs from workers. Jobs get harder and harder. Unemployment grows. Dogs eat dogs. The rich get richer. The poor go to prison.

On our side, from farms to factories, from schools to offices and hospitals good people fight back for Solidarity, Democracy and Equality. On the job most people still stick together, still support each other every day - our proof that Solidarity is possible. This is the way to a fair workplace and world.

On the solidarity note- I can't tell you how proud I am of the workers in Zone A Bodybuild; especially the women! They have been standing up to management, and showing the guys what courage and fighting back is all about. Damn, I'm proud of them! There isn't one other place in the entire plant that I would rather be than with those great people in Zone A. They are making management look like a bunch of clowns, and solidarity and pride is growing in Zone A!

As for Labor Relations, I think even they are coming over to our way of thinking. I heard that Dick Peterson had a run in with the head of HR, and basically told her he doesn't need any advice about how to run his area from her.

And I assume you know about Luis being confined to his office and not allowed to come down on the shop floor, right? It has turned into a real circus in BB, and I am actually looking forward to going to work every day just to see what will happen that day!

I never looked forward to going to work before!! If Franchino still thinks we don't have a "problem" in BB, it really shows how out of touch he really is. Fortunately, BB management is doing a lot of our work for us in building solidarity on the shop floor, and I have serious doubts the FPS or FTPM or any other BS program the company wants to introduce will ever really get off the ground, as long as they keep trying to push people around in BB. Keep on top of this, as each day brings more incidents, and it is just great the way these people are taking the company on! I look forward to being with them every day! - Staying Solid in Zone A Bodybuild, -Gene-