Striking Auto Workers Need and Deserve to Win Big! with JR Baker, President of Power Train Engine UAW Local 774 in Tonawanda, NY and Mike Elk, Senior Labor Reporter and founder of Payday Report and Nelson Lichtenstein, director of the Center for the Study of Work, Labor and Democracy at the University of California
Anyone who understands the need for the United States to reduce its stratospheric levels of economic inequality and to give its workers a boost into the middle class has to be rooting for the United Auto Workers (UAW) members on strike now at General Motors (GM). The UAW union members organized a strike against GM in an effort to improve wages, reopen idled plants, add jobs and narrow the pay difference between new hires and veteran workers. Meanwhile GM is pushing its employees to pay a greater portion of their health care costs, and to increase work force productivity and flexibility in factories.
Striking autoworker President JR Baker said striking is uplifting because were making a stand. Were not accepting concessions from a company posting billions of dollars of profit. And because were all together, theres safety in numbers. Were standing up for ourselves in solidarity. The UAW union went on strike at G.M., sending nearly 50,000 members at factories across the Midwest and the South to picket lines. Strikers are hoping to make up ground lost since the UAW agreed to two-tier wages in 2007, followed by the Great Recession and the auto bailout, when GM got $50 billion from the taxpayers and even more concessions. There are also 550 janitorial workers that do sanitation and 'non-strategic' facility work on site that are on strike as well, who havent seen a raise in years. These workers top out at $15.18 an hour and are UAW members within the same local. GM has hired third-party companies to come in and do sanitation and facility work, so there are now scabs at the work sites as well.The auto industry remains crucial to the economy, counting some 220,000 people who work to manufacture cars. According to the Alliance of Auto Manufacturers, the broader vehicle industry supports 9.9 million jobs and historically accounts for about 3 percent of gross domestic product, so youd better bet that a win, indeed a big win for the UAW would be a shot of adrenelin for the union movement and its up to us to get on board that union train standing in Solidarity Forever!
produced by Ken Nash and Mimi Rosenberg
please notify us if you plan to broadcast this program - knash@igc.org
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