State of the Union May 24, 2012

State of the Union May 24, 2012

· Reminder: Tomorrow is a VR blackout day. Tuesday, May 29 is the holiday qualifying day and a VR blackout day.

· From the Women’s Committee: The Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure is June 23 in St. Louis. The local has formed a team - the name is “UAW Local 2250” for anyone who would like to register with us and we will pick up the T-shirts and get them to everyone before the race. The last day to enter online is June 1. There will be entry forms at the doors that can be filled out and we can get them registered.

· Also: The annual Women’s Committee Benefit Golf Tournament will be held Saturday, June 30 at Country Lake golf course in Warrenton. It is a three person scramble with a 1:30 pm shotgun start. The cost is $70 per person/$210 per team. The first 3 places in 3 flights will be paid. There will also be a longest drive, closest to the pin and a skin game. Food and beer will be served after the tournament. The proceeds will go to “Turning Point” abused women’s shelter. Entry forms are available at the entrances.

· From Automotive News: The Obama campaign continued its assault on Mitt Romney’s record at Bain Capital today as it said the investment firm that Romney founded was responsible for laying off nearly 1,000 employees at a now-defunct Michigan auto supplier. Bain bought 39 percent of parts maker Cambridge Industries in 1995. Within two years, the investment firm owned a majority stake in Cambridge. By 2000, Cambridge suffered financial trouble stemming from an overeager acquisition strategy, mounting debt and years of earnings shortfalls, according to a Crain’s Detroit Business report at the time. That year Bain took Cambridge into Chapter 11 bankruptcy and sold the company to Meridian Automotive Systems, which slashed more than 1,000 jobs, according to current news reports. In its bankruptcy filing, Cambridge listed debt worth $459.7 million. In 2009, Meridian filed for bankruptcy and liquidated its assets. The Obama campaign said Romney’s firm “went on an ‘aggressive acquisition binge’ racking up hundreds of millions of dollars in debt and laying off hundreds of workers, while paying itself millions of dollars in management fees.” The president said private equity firms, like Bain, are a “healthy part of the free market,” but he dismissed the presumptive Republican nominee’s claims that his private-sector experience qualifies him to be president. “If your main argument for how to grow the economy is ‘I knew how to make a lot of money for investors,’ then you’re missing what this job is about,” Obama said. “It doesn’t mean you weren’t good at private equity, but that’s not what my job is as president.”

· From the Detroit News: Saturday, May 26 will mark the 75th anniversary of the Battle of the Overpass, the infamous encounter between leaders of a young United Auto Workers and Ford Motor Co. security men on a footbridge over Miller Road outside the company's River Rouge complex. It would prove a defining moment in the history of Detroit and American labor. The UAW had won its first major victory in the fight to organize American automakers with its famous Sit-Down Strike against General Motors' operations in Flint that ended in February 1937. By May of that year, all the big car companies had capitulated, except for one. A defiant Henry Ford still vowed that his company would never recognize the union or its right to bargain on behalf of his employees. "Labor unions are the worst things that ever struck the earth," he declared. Ford treated his employees better than his rivals, and many were devoutly loyal to the man and his company. But times were changing, and Ford's Old World paternalism was rejected by a growing number of labor militants. Ford resented what he saw as ingratitude and ordered his private police force, the notorious Ford Service Department, to do whatever was necessary to keep the UAW out of his factories. But the union was undeterred. It redoubled its efforts to organize Ford under the leadership of the young, charismatic labor activist Walter Reuther. Billboards went up near the Rouge declaring "Fordism is Fascism; Unionism is Americanism," and secret meetings were held inside the sprawling factory complex. On May 26, Reuther and other union leaders decided to make what they characterized as a reconnaissance trip to the factory. If it was, it was a reconnaissance in force. They were accompanied by a large group of clergymen, reporters, photographers and even staffers from the Senate Committee on Civil Liberties. Scores of women from the UAW Local 174 auxiliary were on hand to pass out leaflets to workers as they filed out via the Miller Road Overpass outside Gate 4. The footbridge had already been the scene of a bloody battle five years before that had left five workers dead and dozens more wounded. Reuther and the other UAW men knew there could be trouble this time, too. And they were not disappointed: Dozens of Ford Service men were waiting in cars outside the plant.
Detroit News photographer James "Scotty" Kilpatrick was one of the news media on hand to record the event. Just before the 2 p.m. shift change, he asked Reuther and three other UAW leaders to mount the staircase to the overpass so that he could snap a picture with the Ford logo behind them. As the men turned to face Kilpatrick, a group of thugs rushed them from behind. Kilpatrick shouted a warning, but it was too late. The Ford Service men set upon the four union activists and began beating them savagely as the photographer's camera snapped picture after picture. Reuther later described the beating he received. "Seven times they raised me off the concrete and slammed me down on it. They pinned my arms … and I was punched and kicked and dragged by my feet to the stairway, thrown down the first flight of steps, picked up, slammed down on the platform and kicked down the second flight. On the ground they beat and kicked me some more," he recalled. His companion, Robert Kanter, was pushed off the bridge and fell to the ground 30 feet below. The jacket worn by Richard Frankensteen, who headed the UAW's Ford organizing drive, was pulled over his head, and two men held his legs apart while a third kicked him repeatedly in the groin. Ford's thugs then took the fight to the crowd that had gathered to support the union leaders. One man's back was broken, and several of the women from Local 174 auxiliary were also beaten, according to eyewitnesses. The Dearborn police refused to intervene. "The very most we anticipated was that Harry Bennett, then head of Ford security, might order the fire hoses turned on us," Frankensteen told the Associated Press in a 1975 interview. "But we miscalculated." So did Ford. When The Detroit News' photographs went out on the wires, they turned the public against Henry Ford and galvanized support for the UAW. Washington began pressuring Ford to negotiate with the union. "That one incident — the sheer stupidity on the part of Bennett and his men — did more to build the UAW in the auto industry than any other incident in the history of organized labor," Frankensteen said. Four years later, the UAW finally struck the Rouge and forced Ford to recognize the union. And Reuther would go on to become one of the most powerful figures in U.S. labor history.

Tom Brune
UAW/GM Communications Coordinator
Wentzville Assembly
636-327-2119