State of the Union August 21, 2013

August 21, 2013 online at www.uawlocal2250.com

From Chairman Mike Bullock: The United Way kickoff campaign is next Wednesday and a dozen agencies will be in the cafeteria soliciting our help. Among those agencies are American Red Cross, Turning Point, YMCA, St. Louis area foodbank and Girls Incorporated of St. Louis. I want to encourage everyone to speak with the representatives of these agencies and seriously consider supporting them through the United Way. More information will be coming up in the next few days.
Union meeting is today 15 minutes after the longest first shift line time.

Reminder: Production for this Saturday, Aug. 24 has been canceled and is being rescheduled for Saturday, Sept. 14. To clarify, any time over 8 hours on a Saturday is voluntary. Also, 2nd shift line time will change to 5:00 pm next Monday, Aug. 26.

Teams are still needed for Women’s Committee annual golf tournament Saturday, Sept. 7 at Country Lake golf course in Warrenton. It will be a three person scramble with a 1 pm shotgun start. Cost is $70 per person or $210 a team and includes food and beer after the tournament. Prize money will go to the top 3 places in 3 flights and there will be longest drive and closest to the pin prizes as well as an optional skin game. Proceeds will benefit ALIVE (Alternative to Living in Violent Environment). Entry forms are available at the entrances or from committee members. This tournament benefits a great cause and is always a good time so make plans to play. Thanks in advance for your support.

From the Wall Street Journal: More U.S. auto plants are cranking out cars around the clock like never before. As demand for automobiles nearly returns to pre-recession levels, automakers are ramping up production. Ford Motor trains new hires on a simulated factory floor as the company staffs up for expanded factory hours. Nearly 40% of car factories in North America now operate on work schedules that push production well past 80 hours a week, compared with 11% in 2008, said Ron Harbour, a senior partner with the Oliver Wyman Inc. management consulting firm. "There has never been a time in the U.S. industry that we've had this high a level of capacity utilization," he said. The Detroit auto makers closed 27 factories following the financial crisis as GM and Chrysler went through government-led bankruptcies. But U.S. vehicle sales have roared back from the trough of 10.4 million in 2009. In July, U.S. car and light truck sales ran at an annualized pace of 15.8 million, up from a 14.2 million pace a year ago. Auto sales hit a peak rate of 17.5 million in 2005. The industry had 925,700 employees that year. Last year, the workforce stood at 647,600. GM is running six of its U.S. plants through the night on three-shift schedules. Last year, GM produced 3.24 million vehicles in North America compared with 4.52 million in 2007—when it had five more assembly factories.

A Call For America – Bob King, UAW President

It's been 50 years since the March on Washington and though much has changed, what remains the same is the call for America to focus on fairness, racial parity, equality and labor rights for all.
The 1963 March on Washington is remembered greatly for the works and words of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and his famous "I Have a Dream" speech. Behind the scenes labor figured prominently. The UAW helped fund and organize the march and put political muscle behind the legislative and policy goals that changed a nation. UAW President Walter Reuther understood the similarities of the two movements. "The jobs question is crucial," Reuther told those gathered between the Lincoln Memorial and the Washington Monument that day. "We will not solve education, or housing, or public accommodations as long as millions of Americans, Negroes, are treated as second-class citizens."
Charles Euchner, in his people's history of the March on Washington, describes two African-American women listening as Reuther rallied the crowd. "Who is that white man?" asked one. The other replied: "Don't you know him? That's Walter Reuther. He's the white Martin Luther King."
Immediately after the march, its leaders visited the White House to meet with President John Kennedy. After being welcomed in the Cabinet Room, King's first words were to ask Kennedy if he had heard Reuther's excellent speech earlier.
The friendship and mutual goals cemented a powerful relationship. A. Philip Randolph, leader of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters union and the lone black member of the AFL-CIO executive council, sought Reuther's help in advocating the Washington march. Reuther strongly urged the AFL-CIO leader George Meany, to throw the federation's support behind the march, but Meany refused. The UAW chartered trains, buses, and planes to get workers to the event and more. In the 1950s, the UAW donated money for the Montgomery Bus Boycott, and in 1961, paid bail for unjustly arrested Freedom Riders.
Before the march, massive civil disobedience in Birmingham, Ala. resulted in vicious police attacks on demonstrators. More than 800 demonstrators were jailed. The UAW dispatched two officials to Alabama with $160,000 in bulging money belts to free the unfairly detained civil rights activists.
In 1961, King addressed the union's 25th anniversary convention in Detroit where he emphasized the similarities between the UAW's sit-down strikes in auto plants in 1936 with the lunch counter sit-ins waged in the South by black students.
"Perhaps few people can so well understand the problems of autoworkers and others in labor as Negroes themselves," King told the 5,700 UAW delegates and guests, "because we built a cotton economy for 300 years as slaves on which the nation grew powerful, and we still lack the most elementary rights of citizens and workers."
On June 23, 1963, when King previewed his "I Have a Dream" speech in Detroit, more than 125,000 people gathered at the urging of the Trade Union Leadership Council for the "Walk to Freedom." During Washington march, King sounded the call for jobs and a living wage. Black unemployment in 1963 was 10.9 percent -- some 2.2 times the white jobless rate of 5.0 percent. Sadly, African-Americans suffered a similar unemployment rate of 14.0 percent in 2012, compared to a 6.6 percent rate for whites.
With joblessness still far too high, the income gap between rich and everyone else widening, racism and discrimination still festering and cities such as Detroit in the throes of bankruptcy, the words of King and Reutherstill call us to fight harder to achieve the unfinished agenda of civil rights and labor.

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