------------------------- Via Workers World News Service Reprinted from the Sept. 14, 2000 issue of Workers World newspaper -------------------------
LESSONS OF FIRESTONE TIRE CRISIS: SHOULD WORKERS TAKE OVER THEIR INDUSTRY?
By Milt Neidenberg
Could the tragic loss of life and serious injuries caused by defective Bridgestone/ Firestone tires have been avoided? Did scab replacements produce a dangerous and flawed product during the 27-month struggle from 1994 to 1996--tires which have caused many deaths and injuries when their treads separated from the rest of the tire?
The answer to both questions is "yes."
The defective tires were built primarily in Decatur, Ill., when the tire corporation extensively and ruthlessly replaced a skilled, experienced union workforce with scabs. The bosses call them replacement workers to legitimize their role in strikes and lockouts. Scab labor is cheap labor. Scabs serve at the mercy of profit-driven corporations and have no rights.
The Ford Motor Company bought these defective tires and knew where and under what conditions they were built. Yet they conspired with Bridgestone/Firestone to twist and bend the truth to cover it up. Only recently did they publicly admit they knew scabs built those tires.
It has been confirmed again and again that in a corporate culture that feeds on lies and deception, profits come before safety regulations.
What really happened during those fateful years when millions of defective tires were built?
The class struggle had reached a fever pitch in Decatur. There was a bitter and prolonged strike at Caterpillar, the world's largest producer of earth-moving equipment, a company similar to Bridgestone/Firestone.
There was another strike at A. E. Staley, a giant corn- grinding corporation, whose product ends up as sweetener for beverage corporations like Pepsi-Cola. Tate and Lyle, a British conglomerate, had acquired Staley in a 1988 merger.
Bridgestone, a powerful Japanese rubber corporation, had merged with Firestone to produce Bridgestone/Firestone. It immediately put into operation a brutal plan that downsized the unionized workforce and increased production levels. This resulted in inhuman speedups on the assembly and production lines--speedups that made it difficult to separate out defective rubber.
Union members who testified in preparation for legal suits against Bridgestone/Firestone recently exposed these production problems.
DECATUR WAS THE 'WAR ZONE'
Unionists all over the United States knew Decatur as the "War Zone." It was an embattled city under assault from absentee corporate/bankers who were determined to break the unions. It is important to note that the rank-and-file rubber workers, skilled and with years of experience, fought for over two years to save their jobs and maintain some leverage over wages and working conditions.
Many workers lost their homes. Families broke up due to extreme financial and personal tensions. Other workers left, seeking jobs elsewhere so they could send money back to keep their homes intact. And all during this period they saw company-paid goons intimidate the picket lines so scabs could cross and produce tires at an unprecedented rate-- tires that later turned up with many defects.
When the rank and file fought back against the goons, cops attacked them. Court injunctions limited picketing.
It is ironic that during this corporate assault the rubber workers asked for a national boycott of Bridgestone/Firestone. Had the boycott succeeded, many tragic accidents could have been avoided.
In May 1995, following a 10-month strike and prior to their merger with the Steelworkers, the Rubber Workers agreed to return to work. In November 1996 they signed a new contract with the company. Still Bridgestone/Firestone kept a majority of the scabs in the workforce.
Under the contract, a minority of union members returned to work alongside thousands of scabs. Union workers reported that management personnel set standards of production and conduct in the plant. Any worker who failed to abide by these standards was subject to indefinite suspension and disciplinary action, up to and including discharge.
The last issue of the Staley Workers Solidarity Report from January 1996 summed up conditions in the Decatur War Zone. It spoke for all the thousands of courageous workers from the different unions who were forced to take down their picket lines. The scabs were in and the skilled, experienced labor unionists were out.
Union workers would trickle back subject to the bosses' decisions. The front-page headline was "Decatur War Zone Now a Corporation Concentration Camp."
It was during this two-and-a-half year period of corporate tyranny and turmoil that Bridgestone/Firestone produced the defective tires that Ford put on its Explorers. Ford has now publicly confirmed what was well known for years--that most of the defective tires they bought from Bridgestone/Firestone were built with a scab workforce in Decatur. Yet for more than five years, Ford continued to mount these tires on their high-selling and high-profit sport utility vehicles.
Now the corporate criminals are having a falling out. Ford has accused Bridgestone/ Firestone of producing defective tires in Decatur, and Ford is accused of knowing about the defects long ago. The corporations were forced to admit the truth because of fear that legal liability in the mounting deaths and injuries could cost them hundreds of millions of dollars.
CORPORATIONS FACE MONUMENTAL CRISIS
They are also worried that they will lose customers to giant transnational competitors in the rubber and auto industries. How this will play out among the global corporations has yet to be revealed. But under the glare of public scrutiny, there are reports of more deaths from the defective tires. More groups are preparing lawsuits and the corporations' stock prices are plunging. Both corporations face a crisis of monumental proportions.
Ford closed three plants in order to replace defective tires. The auto giant reported it would lose production of 10,000 Explorer and 15,000 Ranger vehicles. This will have a ripple effect on suppliers who will have to curtail operations.
In addition, Ford faces a recall of two million vehicles produced from 1983 to 1995 for knowingly installing defective ignition mechanisms, according to a complaint upheld by a California judge.
There is now belated pressure from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to add another 1.4 million recalls of defective tires to the 6.5 million that were agreed to earlier. The agency finally admits most of these defective tires were also manufactured in Decatur.
In addition, the Venezuelan consumer protection agency has accused both corporations of criminal activities. It is asking the Venezuelan prosecutor to charge Ford and Bridgestone/Firestone with conspiring to hide defects that caused many deaths and injuries in that country. Venezuela is one of 18 countries where tires are being recalled.
Recently John Lampe, the executive vice-president of Bridgestone/Firestone's U.S. subsidiary, hypocritically reported that his company "would soon appoint an independent investigator to look into the company's products and practices."
Ford spends millions of dollars daily on TV ads showcasing their chief executive, Jacques Nasser, trying to control the public relations damage and restore consumers' confidence.
Now that the evidence is in, there will be Congressional hearings on the culpability of the two corporations that knowingly endangered the safety of millions of people. Past experience indicates these hearings will be an election-year political show that ends in no serious legislation with penalties and controls.
The bitter events of the Decatur debacle can impart important lessons to the workers and indicate what can be done. It wasn't the government that brought these tragic events to light. It was public anger and frustration fuelled by mounting deaths and injuries that put the corporations on trial.
It is timely and urgent during this period of crisis for the labor movement to impart a broader, independent and militant perspective to the over 100 million workers in the multinational working class in the United States while these two global giant corporations are still on the defensive.
WORKERS' TAKEOVER OF INDUSTRY
The time has come to raise the question of a workers' takeover of the tire industry.
In his 1986 book, "High Tech, Low Pay," Workers World Party founder Sam Marcy outlined this strategy. Marcy viewed the demand for a workers' takeover as a "possibility of overturning the capital-labor relationship in a huge plant or preferably, where it might be more successful, in an industry." He proposed that this demand should be raised during a crisis.
The Bridgestone/Firestone and Ford crisis is no isolated event. It is endemic to all the giant transnational corporations that impose their financial power here and around the globe in the sacred name of profits.
Didn't the Verizon strike prove that without an experienced and skilled workforce, notwithstanding the thousands of management scabs working 24 hours a day, seven days a week, the biggest telecommunications corporation in the world was powerless? Yes, it did.
The workers are capable of running any industry. Raising the issue of workers' control over the corporation will find favor not only among the multinational working class here but the millions of consumers who are suspicious of products manufactured by the transnational corporations.
Even if there is no strike to rally around, the slogan of a workers' takeover of the industry would enable the labor movement to prepare, educate and organize for the days ahead.
Workers' control over production and all conditions in the workplace raises the issue of the right to occupy the plants to safeguard jobs--especially in this period of mega-mergers that dominates corporate life. When workers on strike occupied factories during the late 1930s--known as the sit- in strikes--they gave a splendid example of what could be done during a crisis.
Veterans of the Decatur War Zone have a strong message for the hundreds of thousands of trade unionists who are marching on Labor Day. It's inscribed on their T-shirts: "Never forget."
*********
AGREEMENT REACHED AT BRIDGESTONE/FIRESTONE
After three days of intense negotiations, the Steel Workers locals representing more than 8,000 workers at Bridgestone/Firestone reached tentative agreements with the company early on Sept. 4.
The contract, if ratified, will cover all nine of the company's plants in the United States. Preliminary reports indicate it includes 12- to 25-percent wage and pension increases, better heath care and other insurance benefits, as well as improvements in grievance and arbitration procedures.
--Gery Armsby
- END -
(Copyleft Workers World Service: Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim copies of this document, but changing it is not allowed. For more information contact Workers World, 55 W. 17 St., NY, NY 10011; via e-mail: ww at workers.org. For subscription info send message to: info at workers.org. Web: http://www.workers.org)