UAW and the Race Card—A Decades-Old Fault of Labor
By Ira Grupper irag@iglou.com

March 6, 2010

LABOR PAEANS— March 2010
Ira Grupper
(published by FORsooth, newspaper of Louisville, Kentucky chapter of F.O.R. [Fellowship of Reconciliation] )

UAW and the Race Card—A Decades-Old Fault of Labor

Certain current truths about the United States are hard to swallow. Both the “left” (those who think society’s woes are systemic) and “liberal” (those who want little changes to prevent big changes) sectors of the progressive movement are relatively ineffective. The labor movement, wracked by jobs moving to right-to-work states, and then overseas. for too long unable to organize the unorganized in a significant way, split in two, and oftentimes politically myopic-- has only in the last little while begun serious analysis and some good positive action.

The Democratic Party was flying high with President Obama”s election, a new head of the U.S. Department of Justice, and more. Yet the wimpy legislative responses to the Republican Party’s watering down healthcare, and then not knowing what to do about job-creating legislation, effectively pulled the rug from under poor and working class people.

Democratic Party leaders Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi had no specific plans to strongly oppose Republican initiatives. And so we turn to comedian Jay Leno, as good an analyst as any: "It's hard to believe President Obama has now been in office for a year. And, you know, it's incredible. He took something that was in terrible, terrible shape, and he brought it back from the brink of disaster. The Republican Party."

Writes John Nichols in The Nation (February 11): “With an unstable economy, an ill-defined ‘war on terror’ and polls showing Americans who thought the country was steered off course by Republicans now think it's headed in the wrong direction under Democrats, this is shaping up as a wild race through uncharted territory. For progressives--as frustrated by Democratic compromises and missteps as they are frightened by the extremism of a reconstituted right and suddenly swaggering Republicans--it's an unsettling moment.”

This column has for ten years been a “paean” to labor, meaning a fervent tribute to the proletariat, the working class, the large majority among us who sell our labor power for a wage. But it should not be interpreted as an uncritical assessment of all policies of those organizations working in our behalf. The labor movement has faced many difficulties, and we must deal with them directly.

Case in point: a January 10 UAW and Teamsters Union joint news release: “(we join with) representatives from labor, environmental and consumer groups outside the Embassy of Japan in Washington today to call on the Japanese government to hold Toyota accountable for waging an attack on thousands of good-paying jobs in the United States.

“In addition to endangering 5,000 middle class jobs in the carhaul industry, Toyota is also planning to close its New United Motors Manufacturing Inc. (NUMMI) assembly plant in Fremont, CA, which will mean a loss of up to 50,000 jobs at NUMMI and suppliers and other supporting businesses.

“ The delegation delivered a letter from UAW Vice President Jimmy Settles and Hoffa to Prime Minister of Japan Yukio Hatoyama following the speaking program. In the letter, the leaders of UAW and the Teamsters expressed concern that Toyota’s plan to abandon workers and communities will negatively affect America’s perception of Japan, and calls on the Japanese government to meet with them and with Toyota management.

“ ‘It’s outrageous that the number one-selling car in Cash for Clunkers was the Corolla, the car that is manufactured in the NUMMI plant.. After receiving more money in this bailout program than any other company, Toyota is turning its back on American workers and American taxpayers by closing the plant in the state where they sell the most cars in the U.S., shipping these jobs to Japan, and then importing the cars back to the United States for sale,’ said King.”

" ‘…Toyota's plant closure plan in California has betrayed American workers and exhibited a disdain for our federal programs like cash for clunkers that directly and handsomely benefited Toyota,’ said Dr. Brent Blackwelder, President Emeritus of Friends of the Earth US. "Toyota's decision to shift production to Japan will dramatically increase shipping miles to California for its new vehicles and is inconsistent with a worldwide effort to reduce carbon footprints."

Now read the analysis of Frank Hammer, a retired UAW-GM Dept International Representative and Past President and Chairperson, UAW Local 909, in Warren, Michigan: “I am reminded by this news release of the incident in 1982 when Vincent Chin, a 27-year old Chinese-American draftsman, was killed outside a Detroit fast food place by two men toting baseball bats who mistook him for being Japanese. At the time the UAW was distributing anti-Japanese bumper stickers and looking the other way when autoworkers made a spectacle of bashing a Japanese-made car – maybe a Toyota. For the UAW to selectively choose to challenge Toyota for its anti-worker policies amounts to playing the ‘race card,’ pitting US workers and the public more generally against the Japanese and a Japanese corporation.

“The worst part about it is that the article is misleading. UAW Vice-President Bob King is quoted as saying Toyota is moving the work to Japan; the statement is a half-truth, at best. According to the Car Connection and other news sources, which have been reporting on the scheduled NUMMI closure for months, the Tacoma truck production is going, not to Japan, but to San Antonio, Texas. The other product – the Corolla – is only partly going to Japan; Corolla production is also going to Ontario, Canada. What the actual work is that is going to Japan is unknown. A former union officer at the NUMMI location knew nothing about any work going to Japan when asked where the work was going. What the Ontario and San Antonio plants have in common is that they are both non-union.

“To say that Toyota is sending the work to Japan is designed to inflame anti-foreign sentiment, and distract us from the fact that every major auto company is playing the global game of musical chairs. While we scurry around to the sound of the music, we are all seeing our plants close – whether it’s Toyota, Chrysler, GM, Ford, Opel (GM) in Europe, etc.

“The reality is that the UAW last year already tried to negotiate concessions; Toyota’s answer was that the plant was not profitable. Had concessions been forced on the NUMMI workers, they would have had to close the plant anyway for the simple reason that NUMMI workers - being residents of Northern California’s pricey Bay Area - would no longer have been able to afford working there.

“The UAW had to realize that, at the moment in 2009 when GM announced that it was pulling out of the joint venture, Toyota would follow with an announcement of NUMMI's closure. Where was the UAW’s protest over the GM pullout? Why weren’t petitions circulated then calling out GM for abandoning the lucrative car market in California, especially after US taxpayers prevented the company from slipping into liquidation? Why was there no petition to the Obama administration, which took 60% ownership of the company, to stop GM’s withdrawal from NUMMI?

“For that matter, why didn't the UAW initiate petition campaigns for the dozens of plants being shut down by the likes of GM, Chrysler and Ford, or Dick Dauch's American Axle plants, especially the one in the heart of Detroit? Why didn't the UAW petition against Ford when it sought to wring more concessions from Ford workers in a year when the company took in $2.9 billion in profits?

“Misinforming the US public that the products assembled at NUMMI were being sent to Japan, and then shipped back for sale in the US, is bad enough. That they then protest this on the environmental grounds (shipping the cars across the Pacific contributes to the carbon footprint) is the height of cynicism. All of a sudden the UAW figures out an environmental concern to throw at Toyota. Where has the UAW been in the last few decades when environmentalists were complaining about the effect on the carbon footprint of the gas guzzling, UAW-assembled trucks and SUVs? Hasn’t the UAW sided repeatedly with the Big 3 against the raising of CAFÉ standards, with total disregard for the “carbon footprint?

“By attacking Toyota, the UAW is obscuring the fact that autoworkers worldwide are confronted with production overcapacity. We have the factories to produce 90 million vehicles, while “only” 60 million actually got produced in 2008. The auto barons are using that excess capacity to force workers to compete with each other in a race to the bottom, pitting the union workers at NUMMI against the non-union workers at San Antonio and Ontario. How do you figure the workers in San Antonio are going to feel when the same UAW that wanted to keep the work in NUMMI comes around trying to organize them? What do you think the workers at San Antonio are going to say?

“What the UAW could be doing is telling Toyota – which wraps itself in environmental green – to convert the NUMMI plant for production of buses and light rail, or components for renewable energy. This would both save jobs for Californian UAW members as well as contribute to the reduction of carbon emissions, which are contributing to global warming. Wouldn’t that be well received in a state with a reputation for environmental consciousness? Has this even been seriously explored?

“It should also be demanding complete access to the San Antonio workforce so as to explain the union contract that was in place at NUMMI which made the NUMMI plant the North American model for high quality and efficiency while providing workers a decent quality of life. Toyota must be exposed for the anti-worker, union buster that it is.”

Thank you, union brother Frank. Those of us who support the house of labor must also look at our rotting floorboards.

Contact Ira Grupper: irag@iglou.com