Workers across the U.S. take part in action meetings over layoffs at Warren Truck and strike at Dakkota parts manufacturers
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Over 100 people attended the online conference “For Global Action to Defend Jobs at Warren Truck and Around the World” sponsored by the International Workers Alliance of Rank-and-File Committees (IWA-RFC) on Sunday. Workers and supporters from across the U.S. and around the world participated in an important discussion on a strategy for a two-front war against management and its accomplices in the union bureaucracy.
A strong delegation of striking auto parts workers from Chicago was in attendance. Members of the Dakkota Workers Rank-and-Fie Committee joined the meeting shortly after the workers rejected a sell-out supported by the United Auto Workers union for the fourth consecutive day, fending off attempts by union bureaucrats to bully them into submission.
The UAW apparatus is desperately trying to end the strike in order to isolate the Dakkota workers from the workers at Ford’s Chicago Assembly Plant. Ford supplies the plant and the plant is still using scab parts. The UAW office also wants to isolate the Stellantis workers, who are facing mass layoffs.
To forestall worker anger, the UAW has issued a disingenuous strike threat against Stellantis because the company has backed away from plans to reopen its plant in Belvidere, Philippines, starting this year.
One worker described the UAW bureaucracy’s efforts to repeatedly push through Dakkota’s low-wage contract, saying, “It seemed to me that what they were doing was illegal because they were forcing us to vote. Now we’re taking matters into our own hands.”
Another worker continued: “I’m willing to lose my house (if I have to). But I want everyone here in the industry to stand with us, to stand strong with us worldwide and to know that they can’t continue like this.”
The WSWS will publish longer and more detailed comments from the Dakkota workers, as well as statements from other workers involved in the meeting, in the coming days.
“Organize yourselves in grassroots committees, with an international perspective”
The opening report of the meeting was given by Will Lehman, a Mack Trucks worker who ran against UAW Chairman Shawn Fain in the 2022 leadership election on a socialist platform.
“We are holding this meeting today to prepare actions to stop job losses and fight for higher wages across the auto industry,” Lehman said.
Referring to Stellantis’ announced layoffs of 2,450 Warren Truck workers, which are set to take effect on October 8, he said: “This shows what the ‘historic contracts’ between the UAW and the Big Three really are. These were concessions that the UAW bureaucracy knew nothing about.”
The UAW’s sell-out of the Big Three’s contract dispute has allowed the corporations to accelerate their global attacks on jobs, affecting autoworkers in every country, he continued. “In Italy, Stellantis wants to eliminate up to 25,000 jobs … in Germany, Volkswagen is taking measures to reduce capacity.”
These are all transnational corporations that “scour the globe for the most exploitable workers,” he continued. “And in each country they use the national unions to pit workers against each other,” claiming “that jobs can only be secured by accepting higher levels of exploitation than workers in other countries.”
The union bureaucracy “has lost all legitimacy to lead this struggle… It will enforce the corporation’s dictates until they close the factories.”
He then spoke of the sham election that brought Fain to power, noting that he was “elected by about 3 percent of the membership. They didn’t want to risk a fight against the bureaucracy to let the workers take power, so they had to suppress any information about the election.” That summer, Lehman won a court case against mass voter suppression. In a later statement, the IWA-RFC called for a rerun of the election under rank-and-file supervision.
At the start of his campaign, Lehman said: “We have said that one bureaucrat replacing another will not bring reforms… so it is up to the workers in all the factories. What we have to do is organize ourselves into action committees with an international perspective.”
“The question is: what will the workers do?”
Lehman’s report was followed by comments from Tom Hall, an author of the World Socialist Website“The UAW said last Monday that it was prepared to strike over inadequate product allocation to the Belvidere assembly plant,” Hall began. “To put it bluntly, they already know what will happen as long as it remains in the hands of the bureaucracy: nothing.”
At most, he warned, bureaucrats might call for another limited “walkout strike,” as the Big Three did last fall, “to let off steam” while they negotiate a deal with even more concessions that workers would “suddenly find out about months later.”
Even in their fuss over the fate of Belvidere, he continued, they have said nothing about the layoffs at Warren Truck, the thousands of additional workers laid off since the new contract went into effect last year. “And why is that? Because all of those layoffs were specifically authorized behind closed doors by the UAW apparatus.”
The bureaucracy, he continued, is not only in bed with management, “but also with the government.” He pointed to Fain’s appearance before the Democratic National Committee, where he praised Kamala Harris and Joe Biden as “friends” of the working class and attacked the fascist Trump as a “strikebreaker.”
“You have to be one to know one,” Hall replied. “The bureaucrats run the UAW like a dictatorship, where workers have absolutely no say in the real decisions that affect their lives, their families and future generations of autoworkers. And if you want fresh proof of that, look no further than what is happening in Dakota today.”
“So we know what the bureaucracy will do. The question is: What will the workers do?” Citing a recent statement by the Autoworkers Rank-and-File Committee Network on the Warren Truck layoffs, Hall stressed that the “alternative … is the development of new forms of organization to counteract the bureaucratic sell-out and meet the needs of class struggle in a globally unified 21st century economy.” These forms are action committees.
A wide-ranging discussion followed. At the meeting, workers from the Big Three in southeast Michigan spoke about conditions at their plants, particularly the impact of Covid-19. A moving statement was read by Cheborah Long, the widow of Tywaun Long, who died while working at the Ford truck plant in Dearborn earlier this year.
The meeting also featured K. Nesan, a WSWS reporter from Germany, reporting on conditions in the auto industry abroad. He reported on the recent distribution of the German edition of the WSWS Perspective “Stop Mass Layoffs at Stellantis Warren Truck Assembly Plant!” at a Stellantis plant in Germany.
“A secure and well-paid job is a basic social right”
The final speech to the meeting was given by Jerry White, the Socialist Equality Party’s candidate for US Vice President. (On Monday, the SEP learned that its candidates would be running in the key swing state of Michigan.)
“This was a crucial and absolutely unique meeting,” White began, “part of the growing initiative of rank-and-file workers around the world, emerging through the work of the International Workers Alliance of Rank-and-File Committees.”
White pointed to the death last week of Antonio Gaston, a 53-year-old autoworker at the Stellantis Jeep plant in Toledo. “These conditions are the direct result of the collective bargaining agreement that the UAW signed.” The bureaucracy’s claim that it was willing to strike over Belvidere was “no more legitimate than its worthless promises to the temporary workers that they would be converted to full-time,” but instead they were fired.
The problems facing workers have their roots in the “nature of the capitalist system itself,” he continued. “The working class is nothing more than a wage slave. If they die, they are replaced. If they resist, management hopes, they will be fired and replaced. It is not simply a matter of ‘corporate greed.’ There is no capitalism without corporate greed. The very nature of capitalism is exploitation.”
White and his running mate, Joe Kishore, the SEP’s presidential candidate, “insist that … a secure and well-paying job is a basic social right that must take precedence over the so-called ‘right’ of capital owners to exploit workers and throw them out of their jobs.” The bureaucrats, on the other hand, accept the so-called “right” of corporations to exploit workers.
In summary, White concluded:
Fain is a government asset. He is a state asset. He is brought in because the Democratic Party’s primary focus is war – a war for the same corporate interests that are being waged against workers at home. … But of course workers have no interest in killing or being killed by workers in other countries. We have every interest in uniting across national lines to defend the right to a decent standard of living.
It is therefore vital that we know, as was explained at this meeting, what we are fighting against. No one but the working class itself can defend the social rights of the working class. We must build the International Workers Alliance of Action Committees.
That is why I would like to call on all of you to join the rank and file committees, to build this opposition and support (our) campaign so that the working class can fight for its own independent political interests.
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