just transition

By Les Leopold - Common Dreams, November 14, 2023

This historic victory could have significant benefits for all working people.

The United Auto Workers has scored major victories in its new contracts with the Big Three automakers: GM, Ford, and Stellantis. Not only did the union win massive wage increases and other critical demands, but it also won the virtually unheard of right to strike over plant closures. This historic victory could have significant benefits for all working people.

Since the dawn of capitalism, plant closings and mass layoffs have disrupted working-class lives. The problem rapidly accelerated when Republican and Democratic administrations, starting with Reagan in 1980, freed Wall Street from regulations that discouraged job-killing leveraged corporate takeovers and stock buybacks. While researching my upcoming book, Wall Street’s War on Workers, we found that more than 30 million workers have been subjected to mass layoffs since 1996.

The auto industry was one of the first to institute mass layoffs as mismanagement and stiff competition from abroad in the 1970s cut into the Big Three’s market share. Until this recent UAW contract, unions mostly had been unable to stop mass layoffs. Instead, they only had the contractual right to conduct “effects bargaining,” negotiating to secure severance payments for the workers who would be let go. Even if they had wanted to strike, in most cases it would have been prohibited by their contracts.

The UAW has changed that game. If GM or Ford or Stellantis decide to shut down a facility going forward, they will now be forced to think twice. Is the risk of a national strike that could cost them billions, worth the short-term savings that come with layoffs? Or might it make more sense to find another use for the facility and keep everyone working? The new UAW contracts with the Big Three bring this entirely new financial dynamic into the mass layoff game. Already, Stellantis has agreed to reopen its plant in Belvidere, Illinois, and rehire all 1,200 laid-off workers there.

By Alex N Press - Jacobin, November 14, 2023

In speaking about the details of the tentative agreements now secured with the Big Three automakers, United Auto Workers (UAW) president Shawn Fain said, “One of our biggest goals coming out of this contract victory is to organize like we’ve never organized before.”

“When we return to the bargaining table in 2028, it won’t just be the Big Three, but with the Big Five or Big Six,” he concluded.

Those weren’t empty words. The same day that the union announced that it had reached a tentative agreement with General Motors (GM), the final company of the Big Three to reach a deal, news broke that the UAW was already on the move. Bloomberg reported that workers have formed an organizing committee with the UAW at Tesla’s flagship Fremont, California, plant.

Before Tesla purchased the plant in 2010, it was a UAW shop, an unusual joint venture between Toyota and GM. The two companies operated the facility for twenty-five years; GM pulled out during its 2009 bankruptcy proceedings, and Toyota shut the factory down the following year. When Tesla took over, the union was not part of the agreement.

Today the 5.3 million square-foot Fremont plant employs some twenty thousand workers, and while there have been efforts to unionize it with the UAW in recent years, those attempts failed, thanks in part to Elon Musk’s unwavering opposition to unions. When Jose Moran, then a production worker at the Fremont plant, led the charge to organize in 2017, the tech CEO called the effort “morally outrageous” and went after Moran publicly, claiming that he was on the UAW’s payroll and didn’t actually work for Tesla. (Moran is no longer employed at the plant, and Musk has appealed the National Labor Relations Board rulings that declared his actions illegal.) None of that history seems to be stopping the UAW.

“We can beat anybody,” Fain told Bloomberg of taking on Tesla. “I believe it’s doable.”

By staff - International Alliance of Waste Pickers, November 13, 2023

The IAWP position paper outlines the essential steps that need to be taken to ensure that the transition to a circular economy for plastics is fair and inclusive for all workers, particularly waste pickers. These steps include:

• Recognizing and formalising the role of waste pickers in the plastic waste management system.
• Providing social protection and decent work conditions for waste pickers.
• Investing in training and capacity building for waste pickers.
• Ensuring that waste pickers have a meaningful say in the design and implementation of plastic waste management policies and programs.

Waste pickers are essential to the global plastic waste management system. They collect and sort recyclable materials, which helps to reduce pollution and conserve resources. However, waste pickers often work in hazardous conditions and are denied basic labour rights.

Download a copy of this publication here (link).

For further background see this site.

By Sam Pizzigati - ZNetwork, November 10, 2023

Working people the world over have celebrated the first of May as “International Labor Day” since 1886, when workers in the United States struggling for an eight-hour day staged a May 1 national protest.

Thanks to the new deal America’s auto workers have signed with Detroit’s Big Three — Ford, GM, and Stellantis — that day could have new global significance. Their watershed new contracts all set April 30, 2028 as their expiration date.

If May 1, 2028 arrives without signed contracts for America’s unionized auto workers, UAW president Shawn Fain has made plain, these workers don’t plan on walking out alone.

“We invite unions around the country to align your contract expirations with our own so that together we can begin to flex our collective muscles,” says Fain. “If we’re going to truly take on the billionaire class and rebuild the economy so that it starts to work for the benefit of the many and not the few, then it’s important that we not only strike but that we strike together.”

But that May 1 day is clearly inviting coordination beyond the national level.

The May Day that workers worldwide have so long honored, Fain notes, has always been “more than just a day of commemoration, it’s a call to action.” And the labor movement worldwide is showing real signs of acting more in strategic concert.

Within the global auto industry, no corporation more embodies the inequality of our corporate world than the non-union Tesla. Under CEO Elon Musk, the world’s richest single individual, Tesla pays wages that run substantially below those of Detroit’s Big Three, and that gap will only widen after the new UAW contracts go into effect.

The new UAW contracts, predicts German Bender of the Swedish think-tank Arena, could well “boost union interest among Tesla workers.”

By Keith Brower Brown - Labor Notes, November 10, 2023

On breaks between harnessing wires and bolting fenders, Auto Workers across the country are debating the contract offers their strike wrenched out of Ford, General Motors, and Stellantis.

Just a fraction of plants have voted, with the rest set to cast ballots in the next two weeks. Contract details are here.

Ford locals have been the first to weigh in. Three larger locals voted heavily in favor of the deal. Two other major locals passed the offer with a narrower majority, reflecting that members’ expectations were raised sharply by new leaders and an aggressive contract fight.

The first Ford plant to strike was Michigan Assembly near Detroit. With about four-fifths of the 5,000 members casting ballots, the local voted ‘yes’ by 82 percent.

Longtime production worker Audrey Bell says she and her co-workers had few qualms about the major gains made: “I think it’s basically good, especially for the new workers. We made big progress on two tiers. Got the COLA [cost-of-living adjustment] back.”

At Ford Chicago Assembly, members passed the deal by a slimmer 57 percent, on 56 percent turnout. This local has often rejected tentative contracts, turning down the 2019 deal by nearly two-thirds. Members there joined the Stand-Up Strike on September 29.

Scott Houldieson, who’s worked as an electrician at the plant for 34 years, supported the agreement. (He is chair of the caucus Unite All Workers for Democracy, UAWD, which opted for a neutral stance.) “It was a strike that was trying to dig us out of 40 years of concessions, 40 years of cooperating with the companies, 40 years of corruption,” Houldieson said.

By Mike Elk - Payday Report, November 10, 2023

his week, nearly 12,000 Brazilian autoworkers are celebrating a victory after a roughly two-week strike against three central factories in the suburbs outside of Sao Paulo. 

The workers went on strike after G.M. illegally fired 1,244 workers on October 23rd. On Wednesday, the union celebrated as they won the cancelation of those layoffs and back pay for the three weeks they were on strike. 

“Our victory of back pay and the canceling of layoffs is the fruit of the big fight that united workers at three factories and showed our force,” said Valmir Montaeo of the Metalworkers union of São José dos Campos.

G.M. workers in Brazil said that they had been closely watching following the UAW’s strike in the U.S. 

“The strike of American workers served as an inspiration for Brazilians as well,” CSP-Conlutas union leader Luiz Carlos Mancha told Payday Report last month. “It inspired us because the process of reducing salaries and taking away rights is also happening in Brazil. The strike that is happening in the U.S. is a turning point in the situation.” 

Brazilian and American workers have had a long relationship that has impacted trade unionists in both countries. In the 1970s and 1980s, Brazilian and American solidarity played a crucial role in toppling the dictatorship in Brazil. 

By Dave Kamper - The Forge, November 10, 2023

In a monumental labor victory echoing the 1937 Flint Sit-Down Strike, the UAW's triumphant strike against top automakers marks a defining moment in modern labor history.

When I was a kid, my church youth group in the summers would often go to a water park in Rockford, Illinois. To get there we’d take Interstate 90, and even now, I remember what it looked like when we drove past the Chrysler plant in Belvedere. Even on Sundays, that place was humming. It looked like what a factory was supposed to look like - a steady hum of activity, car carriers rolling onto the highway, people coming and going.

Earlier this year, Stellantis, the successor to Chrysler, closed the plant. Its workers were scattered to backup jobs across the country. I marched with some of them on the picket line at the parts distribution center in Plymouth, Minnesota.

Last week, the United Auto Workers settled their contract with Stellantis. It includes the reopening of the Belvedere plant. That’s… that’s never happened before.

The United Auto Workers have won a signal victory in their strike against the Big 3 Automakers. It’s easily the most important strike win since the 1997 Teamsters strike. If you’re feeling particularly enthusiastic, you can even make the case that the last time a US strike was this successful - in terms not just of the size of the victory, but its importance for the moment - was the original Sit-Down Strike in Flint, Michigan, in 1936-37, that launched the UAW and the modern American labor movement. A stretch, to be sure, but this was a pretty big win.

From where we sit now, it’s easy to feel like it was always going to go this way. But while we like to repeat the mantra, “strikes work,” the more accurate formulation is, “strikes can work.”

Sometimes they don’t work. A strike is a risk.

By Teddy Ostrow, Barry Eidlin, and Ruby Walsh - The Upsurge, November 10, 2023

By Shawn Fain and Ryan Grim - Deconstructed, November 10, 2023

In late October, after a six-week strike, the United Auto Workers reached a historic contract deal with the big three Detroit automakers. This week, as membership votes to approve the contract are underway, President Joe Biden rallied with the UAW president in Illinois to celebrate the tentative agreement between the union and the automakers. This week on Deconstructed, UAW President Shawn Fain joins Ryan Grim to discuss the victory. Fain was elected president of the union earlier this year by the union membership, in the first UAW election in which members could directly vote for the union president. Fain discusses the recent win, the union election that led to his victory, corruption inside union ranks, and the broader labor reform movement for direct democracy within unions.

By Union Jake, Adam Keller, and Yaffee - Valley Labor Report, November 9, 2023