Leo W. Gerard

By Leo W. Gerard
International President

Republican Party Chairman Michael Steele appears to be suffering philosophical identity confusion, you know, like some people experience sexual identity confusion.

He’s got an organization named United STEELE Workers Union, white hardhat emblem and all, collecting members for him on Facebook. It had 255 worldwide as of June 19.

This is disconcerting on so many levels, least of which is that I head the original, authentic United Steelworkers Union (USW). It has, by the way, 1.2 million retired and active members in North America.

Far more importantly, Steele historically has expressed hostility toward unions. When President Obama agreed to help General Motors restructure in bankruptcy, for example, Steele said it was “another handout to the union cronies who helped bankroll his presidential campaign.” Now that there’s a union created in his own image, if Steele slams labor organizations, is he criticizing himself? Has he become a “union crony?”

Steele can perch that white hard hat atop his head, but he’s going to have to labor at learning some hard philosophical lessons before becoming a real steelworker, a true union man.

A union brother or sister knows it’s all for one and one for all. Our union brothers and sisters don’t see themselves as “ownership society” islands. That’s because they know when the sun stops shining, it’s nice to have union siblings to help clean up after the hurricane.

To join, Steele must learn that a union man has his brother’s back; he doesn’t stab him in the back. This may be a tough lesson for the Republican. Consider, for example, what Mark Bergeron, the STEELE Worker Union Facebook group administrator, says on his blog about the party’s 2008 nominee for president:

“How far to the left do we as Conservatives go to satisfy some of our Moderate ( Liberal ) Republicans? What sacrifices will we make to the Moderates? Abortion? Illegal Immiration [sic], a little more Socialism? Less Fiscal Responsibility? My point is that we have already made concessions to these softies and we got John McCain.”

In addition to insulting McCain, that smacks of exclusion. It is the Republican Party wringing itself out, shedding diversity at the insistence of its most conservative, self-appointed, over-amplified leader, Rush Limbaugh. So it has been reduced to little more than wealthy white protestant males — and wannabes. A union, by contrast, is a collective. By nature, then, it is inclusive. This may be a tough one for Steele to accept, considering he refused to stand up to Limbaugh earlier this year when the talk show host insisted he, not Steele, headed the Republican Party.

The STEELE Worker Union Facebook site says the group is interested in organizing. That’s a great first step in the correct direction. An important function of an international union, like the United Steelworkers, is to help employees at individual workplaces organize their local unions. Those efforts in recent years, however, have been thwarted by corporate campaigns of intimidation against union organizers and sympathizers. This is documented in a study called, “No Holds Barred: The Intensification of Employer Opposition to Organization,” released in May by Cornell University professor, Kate Bronfenbrenner.

Bronfenbrenner, who has researched labor issues for a quarter century, documents employers obstructing unionization by firing union organizers, threatening to close down the shop, cutting wages and benefits, and forcing workers to meet one-on-one with supervisors who interrogate them to determine whether they support the union. Bronfenbrenner found employers conducted these coercive tactics, many of which are illegal, in the run-up to union elections more frequently than in the past to dissuade workers from voting for unionization.

The upshot is that organizers and union sympathizers risk their livelihoods and corporations are increasingly killing unions. The Employee Free Choice Act now before Congress would significantly reduce that. It would allow workers — rather than the employer — to decide how to form the union. It would give workers the right to choose whether to form their union by collecting signatures from a majority of the workers or by conducting a secret ballot election. The threat-filled period before balloting could be eliminated, if the workers wanted.

The United Steelworkers union actively and vociferously supports the Employee Free Choice Act. If Michael Steele wants to be a real union man, he must do so as well. I will be waiting to hear from him. If I do, I will be glad to take him under my wing and mentor him. I will make him an Associate Member of the real United Steelworkers union. We will embrace him. Of course, I will warn my male members to be careful not to actually hug him because this is a guy, so touchy about unions, that he even used the word “crazy” to describe civil unions.

Leo W. Gerard

 By Leo W. Gerard
International President

A group of tire importers that should be competitors banded together recently to ally themselves with China in a trade case.

Doesn’t sound like they’re working for the interests of the United States, does it? No, they’re not. They’re collaborating with China against American manufacturing in general and American tire workers, represented by the United Steelworkers, in particular.

They’re opposing the union’s petition seeking a limit on the flood of Chinese tires that has so overwhelmed the U.S. market in the past five years that six American tire plants closed and nearly 7,000 American workers lost their jobs.

China cheats in international trade. It does so by manipulating its currency and subsidizing its manufacturing, which results in lower prices for its exports. For the tire importers, calling themselves the American Coalition for Free Trade in Tires, China cheating means higher profits.

After taking up with China, these companies are not the American Coalition of anything. They’re the Chutzpah Coalition. Here’s the quote that explains why: “If you impose quotas, you harm American jobs because of the impact on all of the people that work for independent dealers.” The Chutzpah Coalition lawyer, Jim Jochum of Jochum, Shore & Trossevim had the lack of insight to say that.

What we have here are tire import companies that grew and profited at the cost of American tire plants and American workers now asserting that if they are forbidden from importing limitless tires, then the result will be terribly wrong and unfair because some of their importing jobs might have to be cut.

If imports are limited, preserving thousands of American tire workers’ jobs, here’s what Del-Nat president Jim Mayfield asked at the Chutzpah Coalition press conference, “What’s supposed to happen to my company and my workers?” A call to Del-Nat asking for the total number of employees got this response: 68.

That’s chutzpah.

For those unfamiliar with Yiddish, chutzpah is not generally considered a positive attribute. The typical definition goes something like this: A boy kills his parents then seeks the court’s mercy because he’s an orphan.

In dealing with the Chinese and this coalition, there’s reason to believe chutzpah can be deadly. Chinese manufacturers are notorious for cutting corners in ways that proved lethal to consumers.  Babies, cats and dogs have all died from melamine-laced milk and pet food from China. In another case, the Chinese manufacturer of Aqua Dots substituted a chemical, which when ingested reacted like the “date rape” drug, forcing a recall of the toy after it sickened American children who put the dots in their mouths, and caused at least one youngster to end up in a coma.

And then there’s the tire case. On Aug. 12, 2006, four Philadelphia carpenters were driving home after work when the treads on one of the Chinese-made tires on their van separated. The rollover crash that followed killed two of the men and permanently impaired a third. An investigation showed that the tires, imported by Foreign Tire Sales - one of the members of the Chutzpah Coalition - did not contain a gum strip between belts necessary to prevent tread separation.

Initially, when the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration ordered Foreign Tire Sales to recall the defective tires, the company said it couldn’t afford to do that. Foreign Tire said it could pay only 10 to 15 percent of the approximately $80 million cost of recovering nearly half a million tires. Sure, it could profit from importing defective products. But it wasn’t prepared to pay to clean up the mess.

Later, it decided that only 255,000 tires needed to be returned. Ultimately, Foreign Tire was spared when drivers turned in fewer than 20,000 of those tires - less than 8 percent of the total. Who knows what happened to the remainder of those questionable tires or the people driving the cars they were on.

Foreign Tire, the Chutzpah Coalition and China want to continue importing freely - free trade not fair trade. And Chinese officials have taken steps to ensure that happens. Early in May, according to a report in the People’s Daily, China’s Vice Minister of Commerce met with U.S. Embassy personnel in Beijing “to negotiate on two trade remedy investigations targeting Chinese-made products that U.S. industries recently filed with the U.S. government.”

After that, the International Trade Commission released a memo revealing that Chinese officials attempted to discuss trade cases in a private meeting - a contact that was improper because other parties in these cases did not have an opportunity to argue their side. The ITC memo said China expressed particular concern about petitions filed under Section 421, the China-specific trade safeguard law that the USW used in the tire case.

Here’s what is at risk for China and their Chutzpah Coalition allies: in 2004 China sent 14 million tires to the U.S. valued at $453 million. By last year, that had increased to 46 million tires valued at $1.7 billion.

The USW wants the U.S. International Trade Commission to limit the imports to the 2005 level, which was 21 million. That number then could rise by five percent the following year, and five percent more the year after that. 

Congress added Section 421 to the U.S. Trade Act in 2000 to give U.S. industries and workers an opportunity to obtain product-specific relief from sharp increases in imports from China. Section 421 could provide resolution more quickly than a dumping or countervailing duty case.

Another good reason to call this group of tire importers the Chutzpah Coalition is that in its news release, announcing its formation, it suggested it represented “thousands of Americans working in the tire industry.” Not likely. Two of the six members refused to say how many employees they have - Dunlap & Kyle Co., Inc. and Foreign Tire. But the total employed in the U.S. for the other four together: American Omni Trading Co.; Del-Nat Tire Corp.; Hercules Tire & Rubber Co. and Orteck Global Supply & Distribution Co., is 400.

That’s hardly “thousands of Americans.”

But they’ve cost 7,000 Americans their jobs. And they’re fine with that. They’re working hard every day to add more to that number.

Leo W. Gerard

By Leo W. Gerard
USW International President

Judge Sonia Sotomayor would help provide balance to a U.S. Supreme Court that remains all too white and all too male.

Dismissing the effect of life experiences on decision-making is to treat judges like Vulcan characters. Some jurists may claim to be Dr. Spock clones, but they’re not. Spock was fiction. 

The Party-of-No began opposing Sotomayor even before President Obama nominated her for the Supreme Court, citing a 2001 speech she made acknowledging that the paths people walk through life may affect their accumulation of wisdom.

Here is what she said in that talk entitled “A Latina Judge’s Voice”:  “Whether born from experience or inherent physiological or cultural differences, a possibility I abhor less or discount less than my colleague Judge Cedarbaum, our gender and national origins may and will make a difference in our judging. Justice O’Connor has often been cited as saying that a wise old man and wise old woman will reach the same conclusion in deciding cases…I am not so sure that I agree with the statement. First, as Professor Martha Minnow has noted, there can never be a universal definition of wise. Second, I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life.”

It makes you wonder how the infamous Dred Scott case would have been decided if three or four black justices had sat on the Supreme Court in 1857. An all-white panel decided in that case that black human beings imported from Africa as slaves and their descendents were not legally people and could not, as a result, be U.S. citizens. All-male panels of justices never saw gender discrimination in a Supreme Court case until 1972.

Here’s what Judge Sotomayor also, wisely, said in that speech, “Hence, one must accept the proposition that a difference there will be by the presence of women and people of color on the bench. Personal experiences affect the facts that judges choose to see. My hope is that I will take the good from my experiences and extrapolate them further into areas with which I am unfamiliar. I simply do not know exactly what that difference will be in my judging. But I accept there will be some based on my gender and my Latina heritage.”

To do justice in a diverse society, the justices themselves must be diverse. President Obama has nominated for the Supreme Court a judge who was valedictorian of her high school class, who won a scholarship to Princeton University and who served as editor of the Yale Law Review while earning her law degree from Yale University. She was first appointed to the federal bench by former President George H.W. Bush and to her current seat on the federal appeals bench by former President Bill Clinton. She has more judicial experience than anyone currently serving on the court when appointed. In addition to all of that, she is wise and thoughtful. She acknowledges and celebrates the fact that her path to this place may affect the future.

That is telling the truth. It is also the truth that Chief Justice John Roberts’  background as a wealthy white male affects his thinking. For the workers in this country, the people of color, the women, for everyone who is not wealthy, white and male, to provide balance on the court is to improve justice.

Leo W. Gerard

By Leo W. Gerard
International President

Randel K. Johnson, vice president of that esteemed group, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, recently revealed a corporate-squelched truth in a slip of the tongue.

During a debate on May 15 with Stewart Acuff of the AFL-CIO about the Employee Free Choice Act, Johnson admitted - finally - that the act preserves secret ballot elections for unions. The act would allow workers - rather than employers - to decide whether to form a union by conducting a secret ballot election or by collecting signed membership cards from a majority of workers.

Incredibly, for as much as unearned-bonus-grubbing-CEOs have lied about secret ballots in their relentless campaign against the Employee Free Choice Act, that was not Johnson’s revelation.

No, here’s what he disclosed: If the act passes, he said, “It would be a rare union that would decide to risk a normal secret ballot election.” 

Risk. Interesting word, Mr. Johnson.

The Chamber of Commerce knows there’s a huge risk to secret ballot elections. And the Chamber likes it that way. Employers stack the deck against workers in secret ballot elections. They don’t publicly admit it though. That’s why Johnson’s use of the word “risk” was so surprising.

The Chamber and big corporations like Wal-Mart are intent on defeating the act because it would remove from employers the power to force workers to conduct secret ballot elections.  It would strip from employers that ability to generate risk, to defeat unions, and thus to further shrink wages and the American middle class.

A Cornell University professor, Kate Bronfenbrenner, who has researched labor issues for a quarter century, issued a new study last week that clearly illustrates the risk of secret ballot elections and how employers have labored long and hard to increase that risk in recent years. It’s called, “No Holds Barred: The Intensification of Employer Opposition to Organization.”

Among the tactics she documents employers using in the weeks before the “secret ballot” election to thwart unionization are firing of union organizers, threats to close the plant or cut wages and benefits, and forcing workers to meet one-on-one with supervisors who intimidate and interrogate them to determine whether they support the union.

Bronfenbrenner concluded, “This combination of threats, interrogation, surveillance, and harassment has ensured that there is no such thing as a democratic ‘secret ballot’ in the NLRB (National Labor Relations Board) certification election process. The progression of actions the employer has taken can ensure that the employer knows exactly which way every worker plans to vote long before the election takes place.”

Her study showed employers implementing these tactics more frequently than in the past. When she compared organizing campaigns in this five-year period to those in the studies over the previous 20 years, she discovered two disconcerting facts: the cases in which employers used 10 of these threatening techniques in the run-up to elections more than doubled. And employers focused much more on coercive and punitive methods rather than positive procedures such as unscheduled raises and promotions.

Not surprisingly, she also found that as employers exploited harsher tactics and intensified their attacks in the weeks before “secret balloting,” the union was more likely to lose. And, conversely, she found that in campaigns where public sector workers tried organizing and government agencies refrained from coercive and illegal tactics, the union was significantly more likely to win.

If it weren’t so easy for employers to create risk for workers, millions more could get the union protection they want. Surveys show an increasing number of American workers desire a union. In the mid 1990s, it was 40 percent. Now it’s 53 percent. Yet only 12.4 percent of American workers have that protection - and the better wages and benefits that go with it.

Bronfenbrenner addressed this issue in her report: “Our findings suggest that the aspirations for representation are being thwarted by a coercive and punitive climate for organizing that goes unrestrained due to a fundamentally flawed regulatory regime that neither protects their rights nor provides any disincentive for employers to continue disregarding the law.”

She continues: “Unless serious labor law reform with real penalties is enacted, only a fraction of the workers who seek representation under the National Labor Relations Act will be successful.”

That reform is the Employee Free Choice Act, and there’s the point of Johnson’s use of the word risk. The Chamber of Commerce intends to kill the act and leave risk fully on the shoulders of workers. As Bronfenbrenner showed, that would mean fewer will be unionized. Middle class wages and benefits would continue to decline.

It is time for American workers to stop bearing all of the risk. They’re working for less and bailing out the very people who are obstructing their ability to fairly bargain for more.

In October, Bank of America, which has received more than $45 billion in taxpayer bailout money, hosted a conference call with conservatives and business officials, including a representative of AIG, which has received more than $100 billion in taxpayer bailout money, to organize opposition to the Employee Free Choice Act. Then in March, just days after the act was introduced, Citigroup Inc., which got $50 billion in bailout money, hosted a similar conference call, this one led by Glenn Spencer of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

During the October call, Bernie Marcus, co-founder of Home Depot, said he should be on a 350-foot boat in the Mediterranean, but he thought fighting the Employee Free Choice Act was more important because, “This is the demise of a civilization. . . This is how a civilization disappears.”

Yes, the Employee Free Choice Act could contribute ever so slightly to dissipation of a decadent class. Unionization is how the middle class re-emerges. America could do without a few filthy-rich boys lolling on yachts in the Mediterranean. At the heart of America, however, must be a strong and broad middle class.

By Leo W. Gerard
International President

The economic structure of Jim Henson’s cartoon realm called Fraggle Rock reflects our own. In one HBO episode, the industrious, hard-hatted Doozers prepare to leave the rock, which would have quickly left the Fraggles starving. Somehow, politicians and powerbrokers in this country don’t see the simple parallel. If the U.S. continues to send its manufacturing overseas — with the latest proposal General Motors plants — the result will be hungry U.S. families.

I saw this up close and personal as I toured the U.S. last week on the 11-state, 32-city “Keep it Made in America” bus tour. I talked to unemployed manufacturing workers who are desperate. Through no fault of their own, they’ve lost their jobs, their homes, their health care. These are the people who are the strength of America, who in better times volunteered in New York City after 9-11 and in New Orleans after Katrina. Now, they’re forced to get groceries at their union hall’s food bank. They’re humiliated.

This economic crisis was inflicted on them by recklessness on Wall Street and in Washington. Over the past 40 years, politicians have eroded regulations that could have helped prevent the sub-prime mortgage bubble and bust. And Wall Street banks and investors took full advantages of that rule-free environment to behave capriciously in the market, causing stocks to tank, driving unemployment up to the current 8.9 percent, and contributing to the loss of 5.2 million manufacturing jobs since 2000.

Let me introduce you to four Steelworkers, four hard-hats struck down by the decisions so disastrous to the economy made in Washington and on Wall Street. They are Diana Arends, an aluminum can maker; Matt Dossett, a rubber worker; Andy Nirschl, a papermaker, and Kevin Vest, a copper miner.

Diana Arends’ employer, Ball Corp., shuttered its Kansas City aluminum beer can manufacturing plant March 27. Ball blamed the economy when it announced the closure that cost 150 Steelworkers their jobs. Beer sales are down. As the economy contracted, Americans had fewer coins in their pockets for every little pleasure, including throwing a few back.

Diana Arends

The plant closure was both an economic and emotional shock to Arends. She’s divorced, and supports a daughter and granddaughter. Before the plant mothballing, she routinely worked 12-hour days, with the overtime paying her mortgage and bills. Now she’s only getting unemployment.

Her house in Lees Summit, Mo., on which she has paid for 10 years, already is going to foreclosure. She doesn’t have any credit cards, but she does owe on a used car she bought a couple of years ago.

When she heard the plant was to shut, she immediately dropped her internet and cable TV services, ended trash collection and stopped eating out. She buys food in bulk at a wholesale store. But it’s just not enough.

She’s thinking about taking the remnants of her stock market-ravaged 401K and using it to support herself, her daughter and granddaughter because she has been unable to find another job. No one has called her back for a second interview, although she also has 28 years experience manufacturing grain bins for CTB, Inc. Let’s face it, she points out, who’s going to hire a 59-year-old?

She recollects, a few years ago, “I got to feeling set. I had a 401K and just a few more years to retire.” But now she’s jobless, and soon she may be homeless. “I did nothing to deserve that,” protests Arends, who went the extra mile, serving as president of USW Local 13, a position she loves, but one she’ll be forced to relinquish May 14 because she no longer is employed as a Steelworker.

Diana Arends is concerned about running up federal debt to pay for the bank bailouts and stimulus package, so she doesn’t understand anyone proposing to use one dollar of that money overseas. The stimulus is American tax dollars designated to create American jobs - not Chinese jobs or Korean jobs or Mexican jobs. So when General Motors submitted a bail out plan in which it would get American tax dollars, then use them to build fewer cars here and more cars overseas that would be sent back here to be sold, Arends just couldn’t believe it. “These are middle class jobs lost, the people who go to the grocery store and support food banks and the Little League,” she noted.

And they’re not just GM assembly line jobs. The more jobs GM sends overseas, the more support and supply jobs go overseas too. And that threatens the economic lives of millions more Americans — workers like Matt Dossett.

Matt Dossett

He’s a rubber worker from Fancy Farm, Ky., furloughed with 50 other Steelworkers from the Goodyear Tire plant in Union City on Feb. 28. Dossett, 27, who tried to get a job at the plant since he graduated from high school, had worked there just a year before the lay off. He knew it was a good job because his father and uncles had all worked there. “They had their whole careers there,” he said, “They worked 40 years and retired there. They had good lives from working there. It is one of the best paying jobs in this area.”

He worked on a balance crew in the curing department - cooking tread onto the tires, a place where it could get well over 100 degrees in the summer. Still, he longs for that call back, “I really enjoyed it down there. I enjoyed the people I worked with and the job I was doing,” he said.

But that’s all jeopardized by the sagging economy, unfair trade practices by China in supporting its tire makers which export to the U.S. and GM’s plan to move production offshore - including to China.

When he was working, Dossett paid off his car loans and saved money just in case he got furloughed. But making the mortgage payments is starting to get tough. His wife works, so that’s helping them pay the bills. And they’ve cut out all frills. They don’t visit her family in Chicago anymore. They don’t go out to eat. They don’t visit Nashville for weekends. Dossett has a credit card, but no debt because he only uses it in emergencies. “I worked hard for everything I’ve got,” he explained, “I’m trying not to lose it all now.”

He sees a clear connection between GM building cars here and his job.  Because billions of American tax dollars have already gone into bailing out GM, they shouldn’t be talking about moving jobs overseas, he says. “We gave them money to build here, to create jobs here. Let the Chinese pay if they want a plant in China,” he said.

Like Dossett, Andy Nirschl worked for an industry damaged by unfair trade. He was a process operator, controlling pulp, for the NewPage Corp. Kimberly mill in Wisconsin. It made the kind of glossy paper used in magazines and new car catalogues. The mill had operated in the town of 5,000 since 1889 and was the largest employer. Kimberly was NewPage’s largest producer, but the Ohio corporation closed it after a defeat in a trade case with China under the Bush administration.

Andy Nirschl

That was Sept. 30, 2008. Nirschl, president of USW Local 2-9, knows all the gory details: 475 Steelworkers lost their jobs, and 125 salaried guys got thrown out of theirs. When NewPage refused to sell or re-open the plant, the town considered renaming its high school teams. They are called the papermakers.

Nirschl’s wife, who had worked at home, had to switch jobs so the family could get health insurance. He’d married late in life, so he had a good start paying off his mortgage. He isn’t behind yet but knows lots of fellow Steelworkers who are. He has only one credit card and no debt on it or on his cars, so he’s in better shape than many of his friends. Still, his family has cut out vacations and eating at restaurants.

Nirschl got a new job earlier this month, a good union job with the state helping the unemployed find work. It doesn’t pay as much as the mill did but has good benefits. The pay comes from the $700 billion stimulus package, and he’s hoping the position is renewed in the state’s next budget year in June.

He says he hopes Congress gets on board to save the American auto industry. He says his friends understand that to have a strong, solid economy, America must manufacture. It’s not clear to them why politicians are willing to back struggling banks with billions but balk at supporting industry.

Like Nirschl, Kevin Vest talks about a cycle of industrial life. It’s obvious to him. The haul truck driver furloughed with 600 fellow Steelworkers Feb. 13 from Freeport McMoRan’s Chino mine in New Mexico, where they extracted copper and molybdenum, a steel hardener, offers this story:

He read in a newspaper about a $100 million wind farm to be built near his daughter’s house in Arizona. The 30 wind turbines are to be manufactured by a company from India and the huge towers are to be constructed in Mexico. Vest wants to know why GE can’t make those turbines. If the American company did the work, they’d probably buy the copper wire for the turbines from an American company. And that company might buy the ore to make the wire from his mine - or some other downed U.S. copper mine, putting some Steelworker back to work. If there’s one cent of tax breaks or stimulus money in this wind farm, then it’s doubly outrageous to employ Indian and Mexican workers.

For the same reason, Vest always buys American cars. There’s copper wire in engines and molybdenum (molly) in other steel car parts. Buying that car keeps him employed, but also fellow Americans who make the glass and axles and all the other parts.

And he’s got news for people who deride the quality of American cars. He’s owned a series of them and driven them more than 150,000 miles with no problems. Now he has a 1997 Chevy Silverado with 160,000 miles on it that he’s planning to drive 1,400 miles to Iowa to visit relatives. His father has owned nothing but American cars, and when his brother bought a Nissan, told him to park it down the street. “When I got out of the service,” Vest said, “my dad tried a Toyota Celica GT. . . He looked at me and said he felt bad to have even test driven it. He bought a Ford Ranger pick up.”

At 54, Vest is without health insurance and behind on his credit card payments. He owes $2,000, and the collector is hounding him. He is hoping to get a job at a mine in Arizona, close to where his daughter lives. But that may not be possible until copper prices rise.

Workers like Vest, Nirschl, Dossett, Arends and me are taking the message to Washington D.C. this week for a teach-in to explain how crucial manufacturing is to the economy of this country and how essential manufacturing is to construction of automobiles in this country, not just the final product, but also all those products leading up to the final car — from glass for windshields to glossy paper for brochures. We are going to try to explain that 7.2 million paychecks are dependent on U.S. autos, including health care, education, service and other jobs, so that the politicians and policy makers understand clearly that the very idea that General Motors would ask for taxpayer dollars to ship more car manufacturing overseas - and then import the cars - is an insult and an affront to American workers - as well as an economic threat to the country. We are not going to allow American manufacturing to starve for support. But that support cannot go to pay for manufacturing overseas, or ever more American families will end up stretched like Arends, Dossett, Nirschl and Vest.

Leo W. Gerard

By Leo W. Gerard
International President

The proposition General Motors has presented to the United Auto Workers and American taxpayers in its latest restructuring plan is simple: You must pay for your own execution.

GM, which already took $15.4 billion in bailout money, wants another $11.6 billion and is offering in return this deal: It will close 16 of its American manufacturing plants, terminate 21,000 of its factory workers and double the cars it builds in low-wage Mexico, China and South Korea and ships back to the U.S. to sell.

There it is: GM is demanding that Americans pay to send their own jobs overseas.

In the world where corporate executives live, the one in which boards of directors grant CEOs multi-million dollar bonuses even after companies tank, maybe that’s not a perverse proposition.

But in the world where real Americans live, we’ve had enough of this crap. Decades of foolish tax and other federal policies that encouraged American manufacturing firms to throw Americans out of work and expatriate were bad enough. To expect American taxpayers to bankroll GM’s plans to layoff American workers and move their jobs overseas goes too far.

We’re taking a stand. It’s gotta stop here. The United Steelworkers (USW), the Alliance for American Manufacturing (AAM) and the Mayors and Municipalities Automotive Coalition (MMAC) are conducting an 11-state, 32-city protest bus tour. At each stop so far, hundreds of people have cheered our message: “Keep it Made in America.” And they’ve signed our petition calling for support of a simple idea: Buy it here; build it here.      We will present the petitions at a teach-in conference in Washington, D.C. on May 19 when we will explain to elected officials why GM’s plan fails America and why they must require GM to submit a new plan supporting American jobs.

As much as for the UAW, this is a life and death struggle for the USW, American manufacturing, and for millions of Americans in good-paying jobs. Without manufacturing, America is in danger of attempting to subsist on an economy based on nothing more than amorphous derivatives, credit default swaps and Ponzi schemes. The Steelworkers represent hundreds of thousands of workers whose jobs depend on the auto industry, from steelworkers who make the steel, to the rubber workers who make the tires, to the glass workers who make the windshields, to the paper workers who make the glossy pamphlets.

Altogether, more than 7 million paychecks depend on the U.S. auto industry, including healthcare, education, service, retail and other jobs. This bus tour is about preserving those jobs, all of those jobs.

In just the past eight months of this recession, caused in huge part by recklessness on Wall Street, this country has lost 1.2 million manufacturing jobs, according to the U.S. Department of Labor. GM cannot take tax dollars to slash more. Former U.S. Labor Secretary Robert B. Reich agrees. Here’s what he told the Washington Post, “. . . it raises fundamental questions about the purpose of bailing out these big companies. If GM is going to do more of its production overseas, then why exactly are we saving GM?”

It’s not as if it’s impossible for a U.S. auto company to manufacture here. Ford Motor Co., which is not taking any bailout money, is investing $500 million in retooling its Michigan Truck plant outside Detroit so that it can make small cars that it will sell worldwide, including its next-generation, battery-electric Focus. And Chrysler, which is getting bailout money, has made a deal with Fiat under which the Italian car company will manufacture a small car in one of Chrysler’s U.S. assembly facilities, which, along with other long-term commitments, will eventually create 4,000 U.S. jobs.

On the first day of the bus tour, I was joined by the Rev. Jesse Jackson, actor Danny Glover, the angriest mayor in the U.S., Virg Bernero of Lansing, and U.S. Sen. Debbie Stabenow, among others.

The Rev. Jackson drew cheers as he remarked that somehow we’ve given billions to the “banksters,” yet somehow we’re still hemorrhaging hundreds of thousands of jobs and homes each month. He called for a moratorium on foreclosures and plant closings, and I’m with him.

Bernero is tired of Wall Street describing his father, a retired auto worker, as a legacy cost. His father is a human being, a senior citizen, who worked hard every day of his life and returned home exhausted from an honest day’s work. Now, however, Wall Street thinks it’s fine to reduce him to a sub-human term and cheat him out of the retirement benefits he earned.

Bernero’s father made things, real things that could be touched, held in the hand - not derivatives, not figments of the imagination that turned out to have less than no value at all.

Now Wall Street and GM must be made to understand that Main Street isn’t going to take it anymore. We’re not going to continue allowing corporate America to outsource the American dream. Bernero said it right: “This is America’s fight.”

Join us. Sign the petition. We have no intention of buying our own noose. We intend to win this fight.

Leo W. Gerard

By Leo W. Gerard
International President

“He’s a real nowhere Man,
Sitting in his Nowhere Land,
Making all his nowhere plans
For nobody.”

These lyrics to “Nowhere Man,” written and recorded in 1965 by John Lennon and Paul McCartney, describe the Republican Party of 2009. Pennsylvania Sen. Arlen Specter rejected that party and returned to his Democratic roots because, even at the age of 79, he’s got plans that go somewhere.

The GOP’s leaders and their inactions have placed the party at the corner of Unpopular and Nowhere. GOP voter registration fell in every western state in 2008, including Colorado where it dropped a whopping 9 percent. That year, the Pew Research Center found that voters calling themselves Republicans declined six points over four years, for the lowest percentage of self-identified Republican voters in 16 years of Pew polling.

Pennsylvania voters, not always in step, were this time. More than 200,000 Republicans switched registration to Democrat in 2008. Arlen Specter, who was a Democrat the first 16 years of his adult life, this spring joined those fellow Pennsylvania Republicans and returned to his Democratic roots.

The Republican response typifies why voters continue to convert the GOP to D on their party membership cards. The Republican National Committee posted on its web site nasty automatic e-mails to Specter that can be sent with the click of a mouse. Mean spirited is bad enough, but these lack a certain introspection.

One is supposed to be the White House teleprompter welcoming Specter to the Democratic Party. The text says, “Welcome to the Democrats. I look forward to working together to borrow more money from China.” Another is supposed to be a welcome from Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, saying, “You’ll love how much we can spend taxpayer money.” Both are blind to a fact that taxpayers clearly see - Republican majorities during the Bush administration spent so much that they created the largest budget deficits known to man or nation, compelling excessive borrowing from China.

He’s as blind as he can be,
Just sees what he wants to see,
Nowhere Man can you see me at all? - Nowhere Man

The leader of Specter’s new party - President Barack Obama - stood before the American people on his 100^th day in office, assessing progress and promising to press forward to aid people in need during the worst recession since the Great Depression.

He spoke of accomplishments, such as the stimulus bill that will create or save 3.5 million jobs, the extension of health insurance for 11 million children whose parents work full-time, and a measure to help homeowners refinance their mortgages. He talked of changing the tone of foreign policy from threats to diplomacy, forbidding torture and closing the detention center at Guantanamo Bay.

This Democrat has his sights set on the next hundreds and hundreds of days and pledged to continue working on priorities he established during his campaign, including health care reform and clean energy development.

Even those who disagree with him know he’s got plans. He’s going places.  This guy’s definitely not at the corner of Unpopular and Nowhere.

He has offered to bring Republicans along with him, to negotiate with them, to include them in the process. But they’ve smacked him down at every turn. They’re not just fighting with him, either. They’re also bickering among themselves. And it isn’t pretty.

There was the infamous back and forth between GOP mouthpiece Rush Limbaugh who is calling for the president of his country to fail, and GOP chairman Michael Steele, who made himself famous by promising an “off the hook” public relations blitz “to uptick our image with everyone, including one-armed midgets.”  After Obama’s chief of staff said Limbaugh was the representative of the GOP, Steele shot back saying he was the head of the party, adding that Limbaugh was incendiary and “ugly.” Limbaugh responded with a rant on radio that Steele was unfit to lead, to which Steele responded by crawling on his belly to apologize to the “ugly” one.  There’s some inspiring leaders for you!

Now a group of Republicans has split from the RNC, calling itself the National Council for a New America. They contend they are upset that the GOP has failed to provide alternatives to the Democrats’ plans. The group includes former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney. “It’s no secret that we’re in a seriously troubling time for the Republicans,” said Mike Murphy, a strategist who has advised Romney and Sen. John McCain.

It’s also seriously troubling that this new cabal, supposedly trying to solve the old group’s problems, called itself National Council for a New America. Clearly they are not satisfied with the current America, the America that is rejecting Republicans. So their plan is to remake America rather than to remake themselves.  Good luck with that.

Actually, there’s a much easier option. Obama described it to Republicans during the press conference on his 100^th day in office. Even with Specter in the Democratic fold and the potential of a 60-vote supermajority for Democrats in the Senate, the President said he would like to work with Republicans. He said the majority will likely rule on core issues. But there are many matters on which Republicans could exert influence if they would come to the table and negotiate in good faith.

Republicans can continue to simply vote NO on everything. They can bicker among themselves and look ridiculous to the American people. They can get nothing done and be the party of “I’m-in-control-NO-I’m-in-control” nonsense. They can continue to lose members and statesmen like Specter. Obama suggested that would be an unwise strategy.

That would be a nowhere strategy.

Leo W. Gerard

By Leo W. Gerard
International President

April 30, 2008, two days after Workers Memorial Day last spring, a mammoth steel girder crushed to death a 61-year-old crane repairman who worked at ArcelorMittal in Burns Harbor, Ind. A 33-year-veteran of the mill, the member of United Steelworkers (USW) Local 6787 left behind a wife and two sons.

He became one of the 21 to die that day at work, the 21 who die each day at work.  To reduce that daily toll, to make Workers Memorial Day less memorable, the U.S. Labor Department and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration must be properly funded and empowered.

The 5,680 workplace deaths each year are called “accidents” in hushed tones in funeral homes when widows or widowers speak of what befell the loved ones they’d kissed as they left for work, never suspecting they’d never return. But they’re not accidents if the employer failed to supply safety equipment, sufficient workers to safely perform the task, or, generally, a safe working environment.

Employers must provide safe workplaces. For those who don’t understand that moral requirement, Congress established a legal mandate with the Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970. Under OSHA, the Department of Labor created regulations and enforcement mechanisms “to promote the safety and health of America’s working men and women.”

August 15, 2008, a 41-year-old electrical apprentice from Superior, Ariz. was fatally electrocuted while replacing the ballast in a 480-volt flood light on the edge of the Asarco LLC Ray Mine copper pit in Kearny, Ariz. He’d trained for a year and 20 weeks as an electrician, but for 13 years before that had worked at the mine as a member of the USW, and his former Steelworkers local union president, Celestino Flores, said of him, “He was such a hard worker. . . Such a good guy.”  The U.S. Department of Labor cited Asarco, saying, “The accident occurred because management policies and controls were inadequate and failed to ensure that the electrical circuit was deenergized, locked-out, tagged, and tested before work was performed.” But the Labor Department never imposed fines, and after all the mine’s electricians received training, it rescinded the citation.   

Something is wrong. Over the past eight years, the Bush Administration managed to emasculate many regulatory agencies, including the Labor Department and OSHA.  The federal OSHA program has 570 fewer inspectors today than it did in 1980, for example, and its budget of $486 million for 2008 amounted to only $3.89 per worker.

An Office of Inspector General audit report describes one terrible result of this government-shriveling process - additional deaths at workplaces with histories of deaths. The March 31, 2009 report carries an intimidating but also chilling title: “Employers with Reported Fatalities were not Always Properly Identified and Inspected under OSHA’s Enhanced Enforcement Program.”

That special enforcement program (EEP) is for “employers indifferent to their obligations” under the OSHA act. In the audit, the Inspector General found that under the Bush Administration, OSHA was not properly identifying employers for enhanced enforcement. And even when it did, OSHA failed to take proper action. For example, in 29 cases, it “did not take any of the appropriate enhanced enforcement actions. Sixteen of the 29 employers subsequently had 20 fatalities.”  In 14 of those, the violations were similar to the initial ones. But the employer suffered no OSHA penalty the first time. The violation recurred. And another worker died.

“While we cannot conclude that enhanced enforcement would prevent subsequent fatalities, full and proper application of EEP procedures may have deterred and abated workplace hazards at the worksites of 45 employers where 58 fatalities occurred,” the auditors wrote.

January 4, 2009, a 46-year-old municipal worker died of drowning and blunt force trauma when he apparently was caught in a conveyor system and dragged into a pit at the Galveston, Texas waste water treatment plant. A member of USW Local 13-1, he worked for the City of Galveston for a decade. The co-founder of the Galveston Hurricanes and the team’s coach for 14 years, he left behind a widow and three sons.

Tuesday, April 28, is this year’s Workers Memorial Day. The date marks passage of OSHA, which clearly needs to be enforced so fewer bells are tolled on this day to commemorate dead workers and so fewer workers die ignominiously in waste water treatment plants.  Two weeks ago, on the deadline for filing federal income taxes, tea bag protestors cavorted across the country at the behest of conservative talk show hosts. Still conservatives are trying to shrink government, end regulation, strangle enforcement. For American workers, who depend on OSHA for their lives, smaller is perilous. For their very survival, workers need robust regulation immediately.

February 2, 2009, a tracked timber-loading crane ran over and crushed a 65-year-old crane operator at International Paper in Augusta, Ga. A 43-year veteran of the plant, he’d been scheduled to be off that day but went in anyway when called and worked a job not normally his. He left behind a wife, two children and five grandchildren, all of whom had hoped to see him retire next year. A member of USW Local 983, he was, ironically, EMS trained, functioned as a first responder for International Paper and taught CPR.

Leo W. Gerard

By Leo W. Gerard
International President

Americans are paying big time now for decades of buying into a hoax.

And it wasn’t sub-prime mortgages.

It was the conservative contention that government is evil and inept. Swallowing that absurd assertion resulted in relaxation and elimination of supposedly onerous and unnecessary government regulations - from the ones that prevented banks from growing too big to fail to those that protected union organizers from illegal corporate obstruction tactics.

Unfettered, Wall Street speculators went on a rampage of reckless wagering that ultimately knocked the wind out of the world economy’s bubble. With unrestrained corporate threats and interference, union membership declined to 12 percent, although 58 percent of non-managment workers surveyed said they’d like to join a union.

Now, that reviled institution - government - is the only one big and strong enough to rescue the economy that perpetration of the hoax devastated. How ironic. The  government must also restore the ability of the American people to organize unions at their workplaces, if they so choose, by passing the Employee Free Choice Act.

President Barack Obama has said he wants to make government cool again. He stood on the steps of the Old State Capitol in Springfield, Ill.  on the bicentennial of  Abraham Lincoln’s birth and talked about why the 16^th President supported the union and why concerted action is so effective. Speaking of the hoax, he said, “Such knee-jerk disdain for government - this constant rejection of any common endeavor - cannot rebuild our levees or our roads or our bridges.”

Common endeavor is the power of unions, whether they be unions of states or labor unions. That is why corporations across America so fear the Employee Free Choice Act. It would ease forming a labor union. It would allow workers - rather than CEOs - to decide whether to create a labor union by collecting signatures from a majority of workers or by a secret ballot election.

Big business is attempting to perpetrate a second hoax on America - that the Employee Free Choice Act is no good. They’ve been flying a bunch of anti-union lobbyists to Washington to pressure politicians to vote against it. Sounds a lot like CEOs jetting to D.C. in private planes for bailout money. 

The bailout money will, of course, come from the pockets of working Americans who those very CEOs don’t want to unionize. And after decades when the policies of the government-is-evil-hoax meant wealth accrued to the very richest, it turns out that the economy would have been better served if wealth had been more evenly distributed.

More workers with more money to spend means more cars and houses and All-Clad pots and pans bought. Those purchases keep other workers employed, who spend more money.

When those workers are unionized, studies reveal two important statistics.  One is that they earn 30 percent more than non-union workers. The other is that they are 59 percent more likely to be covered by employer-provided health insurance. So, in the end, unionization is good for the economy.

That effect was acknowledged in 1935 when the National Labor Relations Act was passed to encourage unionization and collective bargaining. It occurred in the midst of the Great Depression and followed decades rocked by lesser economic “panics” causing runs on banks.

The NLRA “Declaration of Policy” says this about this law: “The inequality of bargaining power between employees who do not possess full freedom of association or actual liberty of contract, and employers who are organized in corporate or other forms of ownership association, substantially burdens and affects the flow of commerce, and tends to aggravate recurrent business depressions, by depressing wage rates and the purchasing power of wage earners.”

Simply put, employers wield considerable strength, and workers must be able to unionize so wage and benefit negotiations occur on a more even playing field. There’s power in common endeavor.

In 1935, in the depth of the Great Depression, the government encouraged workers to use their power to obtain better wages. It did that because better wages to many would help end the depression for all.

Since then, corporations and CEOs - the perpetrators of the great government-is-evil hoax — have also chipped away at the NLRA. They’ve seized from workers the ability to determine how unions are formed.

And they increasingly harass workers trying to form unions. In 2007, employers illegally harassed or coerced 29,000 workers. In the 1950s, companies illegally punished fewer that 1,000 workers a year for union activity. Thirty-six percent of workers who voted against a union said they did so because of pressure from the employer, according to an NLRB survey of 400 election campaigns in 1998 and 1999.

Just like in 1935, workers now need unions to help them secure better wages, which will, in the end, be good for the country because it will improve the economy.

For that to happen, though, the Employee Free Choice Act must pass. Workers must have the right, once again, to choose how they want to form their own organizations.

In Obama’s speech in Springfield, in which he discussed the union of states, he quoted Lincoln on the purpose of government, saying, “The legitimate object of government is to do for the people what needs to be done, but which they can not, by individual effort, do at all, or do so well, by themselves.”

In this quote, labor unions could be substituted for government: “The legitimate object of unions is to do for the people what needs to be done, but which they can not, by individual effort, do at all, or do so well, by themselves.”

That is why workers must vanquish the new hoax being perpetrated by conservatives, greedy CEOs and other labor union-haters. Workers must win the freedom that they had in 1935 to choose how to form their unions. Labor unions give workers the ability to do what needs to be done but which cannot be accomplished by individuals. And that includes bargaining for the better wages that, when spent throughout the economy, will help end the current great recession.

Leo W. Gerard

By Leo W. Gerard
International President

With college teams lined up in brackets, March Madness reminds me of greyhound racing. It’s not the obvious similarities - all the wagering over both competitions or all the sleek strength on display.

No, it’s that just like broken down greyhounds, injured college players often are tossed aside. Of course, a college can’t euthanize a ball player whose injury renders him unable to resume play or whose grades disqualify him - at least not the way a race track can put down an injured dog.

What universities can do is kill players’ dreams. And they do.

Over the past year, 169 players have “disappeared” from the rosters of the teams in the men’s basketball tournament. The National College Players Association, which is supported by the United Steelworkers, compared the 2007-08 rosters to the current ones and noted the missing players.

Universities advertise themselves all over TV, particularly during college basketball and football games, as places where dreams are made. A National Collegiate Athletic Association policy, however, destroys dreams for many young athletes. It forbids schools to dole out more than one-year scholarships to athletes. This means they disappear from sports rosters and enrollment rolls at the same time.

It’s unfair and unnecessary. A bum knee may keep a kid from playing ball but certainly shouldn’t prevent him from becoming a sportscaster or a civil engineer.

In addition, a second National College Players Association study found that players also suffer because the NCAA prohibits universities from providing athletic scholarships that equal the cost of attendance. That means athletes, often from impoverished backgrounds, are expected to pay out-of-pocket for expenses not covered by what was described to them and their families as “full” scholarships. The study found the average cost to the athletes is $2,763 a year, but it’s as high as $6,000.

The NCAA needs to spend more on scholarships from the $545 million it receives each year from CBS Sports for the right to televise the men’s basketball tournament. The NCAA must end the prohibition on full scholarships, and the scholarships must be awarded for four years. If an athlete drops out, or fails out, that’s one thing, but he should never lose his ability to attend school because a coach doesn’t like him or because he’s injured.

The National College Players Association study that concluded 169 players “disappeared” from the rosters of men’s teams now in the basketball tournament excluded those young men who graduated or got drafted into the National Basketball Association.

Athletes disappear for less positive reasons than finishing school or getting big pro contracts. They no longer qualify to play because grueling athletic schedules and inadequate academic support lead to poor scholastic records. They’re injured, can’t play, and their coaches revoke their scholarships. Coaches take a dislike to them, find promising high school players to replace them and cancel their scholarships.

The loss of the scholarship means not only that there’s no chance of going pro but also, for many students, there’s no chance of finishing college. All dreams are dead.

It’s galling. Until that point, the college used their likeness, their name, their accomplishments to sell tickets and t-shirts. The college coaches raked in million-dollar salaries and the universities and conferences pulled down tens of millions from the television deals and corporate sponsors. But the student is left with nothing.

Even athletes who are lucky enough to remain on the roster until graduation, retaining their year-to-year scholarships as they go, may end their college careers thousands of dollars in debt. The National College Players Association and Ellen J. Staurowsky, a professor of sport management at Ithaca College in New York, calculated the scholarship shortfall costs at Division I universities.  

For the average athlete, who attends five years, the shortfall ads up to $13,800. But what students must pay at some schools is much higher. The steepest is at Indiana University-Purdue University at Indianapolis. There it’s $6,000 a year, for a total of $30,000 over five years.

University of Oklahoma player Courtney Paris snared huge publicity this March Madness season when she swore she’d return her scholarship money - estimated to be worth as much as $100,000 — if the Sooners didn’t win the national basketball championship.

That’s easier for her to say than most players, however. For one thing, it’s expected she’ll go pro, a prize only one percent of all college athletes attain.

In addition, her father, Bubba Paris, a former tackle for the San Francisco 49ers and owner of three Super Bowl rings, might be able to help her pay tuition with less difficulty than the average college athlete’s dad.

The National College Players Association is not asking for pay for play. Its demand is much more basic, and fair: four-year complete scholarships for student athletes. No more deceptive one-year partial deals.

For greyhounds, there’s a rescue and adoption society to give those who are spared a good life after the trials of the track. Student athletes aren’t asking to be “kept.” They just want a fair chance to compete in the classroom.