[lbo-talk] A Delphi worker on Delphi

Marvin Gandall marvgandall at videotron.ca
Wed Nov 2 08:37:19 PST 2005


I believe the UAW is on record as favouring national health insurance. It doesn't campaign around it. But, then again, apart from campaigning against trade deals and for the Democrats during elections, the US labour movement doesn't seem to campaign these days around much of anything. The hemorrhaging industrial unions in all of the advanced capitalist countries are badly dispirited, and their aging members, facing an undertain retirement, seem mostly interested in salvaging whatever pension and health benefits they can out of their shaky collective agreements. So they're probably more inclined to deal-cutting than wildcatting. A revival of trade unionism will have to originate within the younger service sectors - a breakthrough at Walmart would likely be what GM was to the 30s - and I think we all know this. But I'd also love for the Delphi workers to surprise and galvanize other American workers around this issue.

----- Original Message ----- From: "Yoshie Furuhashi" <furuhashi.1 at osu.edu> To: <lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org> Sent: Wednesday, November 02, 2005 10:14 AM Subject: [lbo-talk] A Delphi worker on Delphi


>> Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:
>>
>> >GM, Delphi, etc., *if* they lose their attacks on unions, have an
>> >incentive to push for national health insurance; if they win and
>> >bust unions (through lockouts) or cut unionized auto workers' wages
>> >and benefits (through the UAW's concessions) to the level of
>> >meatpacking workers', they won't have any incentive to push for it
>> >AT ALL.
>>
>> Shouldn't the union be taking the lead on this, rather than hoping that
>> some dying industrial dinosaurs might? It's hard to imagine a Wal-Mart
>> associate getting behind the struggle of $100,000/year autoworkers as
>> long as the autoworkers' struggle isn't presented as a broad class
>> project.
>>
>> Doug
>
> The top leaders of the UAW aren't interested in "a broad class project."
> Given a chance, they would sacrifice Delphi workers in order to save GM
> workers, as Gregg Shotwell suspects, except that concessions to Delphi
> will only embolden GM rather than mollify it, contrary to what they hope
> for.
>
> Autoworkers can fight back only if they manage to build horizontal
> communication networks among militants in different locals, networks
> strong enough to push the UAW to take on that "broad class project."
>
> Anyhow, defeat of autoworkers -- especially a defeat as decisive as
> meatpacking workers' -- will dim the prospect of national health
> insurance in the near future considerably. To the extent that
> autoworkers and other industrial workers can sock health care costs to
> corporations, they give the rest of us -- including those of us who work
> for Wal-Mart -- political leverage to fight for national health
> insurance. Their fight is our fight.
>
> Yoshie Furuhashi



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