Democratic Socialists of America
Greater Detroit Local
Our Newsletter
May 2008
UAW AAM
The following updates come from the UAWs American Axle Manufacturing website
March 28, 2008
On February 26, we began an unfair labor practice (ULP) strike over the Company’s refusal to provide the Union with the information it needs to bargain over changes in the profit sharing plan and AAM’s proposals on benefits. We filed a ULP charge over this with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) in Detroit the day the strike began, and – over the last two weeks – have presented evidence to the government in support of our position. The NLRB’s investigation in this case is ongoing.
AAM’s disregard for the law is not, however, limited to the way it conducts itself in negotiations. On February 26, the Company terminated the benefits of workers on disability leave as well as the SUB benefits of those who were laid-off prior to the strike. It also eliminated health insurance benefits for both groups of workers – and for those on Workers’ Compensation leave. Under federal labor law, employers are required to keep these benefits in place, even after a contract expires. The Company’s conduct is particularly outrageous because it’s aimed at harming people too sick or injured to work. These workers earned the right to benefits before February 26, and – because of their health – aren’t even able to participate in the strike. Management cut off these benefits solely because of the strike. On March 14, we filed a ULP charge protesting AAM’s unilateral change in benefits.
Furthermore, since the strike began, management has done all it can to interfere with our right to picket its facilities. One of the worst examples of this is the videotaping and photographing of peaceful picketers by the Company’s security guards in Cheektowaga, N.Y. Around March 2, AAM began taking video and still pictures of picketers during their shift change. The Company uses its cameras only when picketers are coming and going, for the obvious purpose of creating a record of which employees are picketing – in hopes of chilling the exercise of this right. Because there’s no legal justification for this, we filed a ULP charge with the NLRB office in Buffalo, N.Y. on March 13.
It’s becoming increasingly clear that, in its effort to gut our contract, the Company does not intend to play by the rules. AAM’s unfair labor practices – both at the bargaining table and away from it – are making a tough round of negotiations even more difficult. By standing together to protest these tactics, we’re showing management that we won’t tolerate its disregard for the law. Until it gets the message, our strike will continue.
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Feb. 26, 2008
As you know, the UAW’s Bargaining Committee has been meeting with the Company since December 12 in an effort to reach a new collective bargaining agreement. Despite our willingness to work toward compromises on the many issues that separate us, management continues making unreasonable proposals that would erode the wages and benefits that we’ve fought so many years to achieve and protect. Specifically, AAM is seeking: to increase dramatically the co-pays for prescription drugs, to terminate vision coverage, to freeze the defined benefit pension plan and replace it with a 401(k) plan and to eliminate health insurance for future retirees.
Before we can make an informed decision about whether to accept or reject such sweeping changes on matters of vital concern to all workers, we need to understand the Company’s proposals fully. For this reason, we’ve asked for information from AAM. We need this data not only to evaluate the Company’s position, but for the purpose of developing our own proposals. Unfortunately, management has not yet provided us with what we need to move forward in these areas – despite the fact that we requested most of this data weeks ago. Among the things that we have not yet received are:
• The average annual cost of the prescription drug plan;
• The average annual cost of the vision plan;
• A copy of the 2007 pension experience study (which will tell us whether the Company’s assumptions about the cost of the plan are correct);
• An explanation of the Company’s calculations on the per hour cost of retiree health insurance and the pension plan.
Equally frustrating has been the Company’s refusal to provide information that we need to discuss the profit sharing program. There is a large discrepancy between the sales data provided to the public and the sales figures used by the Company for internal accounting purposes (which are used to calculate the profit sharing numbers). The Company has not explained the difference in these two numbers. Additionally, the Company has not supplied us with sales and profit data related to its 11.5 axle operations for 2006 and 2007. They haven’t told us the revenue or pre-tax profits budgeted for 2008 or provided an explanation for how the Company allocates shared costs among different parts of its business. We need all of this information to evaluate how the profit sharing plan has been administered in the past and to determine what the appropriate profit sharing formula should be going forward.
AAM’s refusal to provide information that is critical to resolving the many outstanding issues is an unfair labor practice (ULP) under federal labor law. As long as it continues to proceed in this fashion, the Company’s conduct will cast a cloud over bargaining, and make it more difficult to reach an agreement on all of the issues that separate us. If management does not immediately remedy its ULP’s, we will have no alternative but to strike in an effort to compel AAM to follow the law and begin bargaining in good faith.
On The Picket Line
By Maurice Geary
Whenever Workers lives are on the picket line, The Democratic Socialists Of America support them. The American Axle workers have been on strike since February 26 because the Company wants to cut their wages in half, and the Bosses have threatened to move out of the country for cheaper labor unless the workers accept this cut. Meanwhile, the company is prosperous with 37 million dollars in profits and Richard Dauch, the CEO, was paid 10.2 million dollars in compensation in 2007.
Workers cuts include loss of pensions with a substitution of 401 Ks. I joined the picket line on March 10 and again on March 24. As a DSA member, I felt right at home. Workers were clustered at all the gates of the multi plant buildings, and we walked up and down in front of the gates. I talked with the strikers about the real problems they face. One worker shifted his UAW picket sign from one hand to the other as he spoke about how the workers on strike had made the profits of the company and the CEO’s million dollar compensation and are now walking the street to keep their wages and benefits which they won in Union contracts. Another worker noted that he was glad for any support. Today it is American Axle workers , but tomorrow it will be others, and we must support each other’s struggles. After an hour of picketing, I was invited to the Union Hall(235) on Holbrook. There was coffee and conversation and workers pouring in all day with stories about their experience on the line and at home. Strike pay, whil welcome, hardly met their needs and contributions were needed and made. I went back on March 24 and walked with a growing number of supporters from other unions. Solidarity means victory.
The company is calling for replacement Scabs and we must work with the Union to fight this. .Previously laid off workers were called back, but all of them joined the picket line in solidarity.
MICHIGAN STATE UNIVERSITY YDS UPDATE
By Christina Field
The MSU YDS chapter has been busy with several events the past six weeks. First, following MSU’s Spring Break, YDS held a talk-in on campus with the Michigan Emergency Committee Against War and Injustice, (MECAWI). Two MECAWI representatives discussed the current housing crisis in Detroit and the organization’s work urging Govenor Jennifer Granholm to declare a state of Emergency and a moratorium to help stop foreclosures and utility shut-offs through out the state. MECAWI and YDS discussed the moratorium created in the 1930s for a similar situation and how it can be pushed again today. In the discussion session, groups spoke about how to work to address the issue in Detroit and Lansing as well.
On March 20, YDS joined several other campus groups in an anti-Iraq War march of more than 170 people and attended a rally following the event. The focus of the march this year was capitalism and war. Many flyers posted throughout campus gave statistics relating war funding to healthcare, education, and housing using such facts as “one day of the Iraq War = $720 million, that’s enough for 34,904 college scholarships.”
The community Service Committee had a couple members work at the Rescue City Mission again in Lansing to serve food at their women and children’s shelter. Members also went door-to-door in dorms collecting cans, bottles, and change for Detroit’s Habitat for Humanity to help aid the foreclosure crisis. As they collected items, they also distributes YDS information and flyers regarding the Student Debt Talk-in. Other committees were working hard to promote the talk-in event also. While the Education Committee worked to provide various articles and materials about student debt, the Ministry of Information - as they continued work on the blog - creatted great flyers about the event to post on campus.
The Student Debt Crisis Talk-in was certainly a highlight of the semester. It was held with the Detroit DSA chapter and the panel included speakers David Hecker (president AFT-Michigan), Darrell Tennis (founder of Capitol Service), David Duhalde (Youth Organizer for DSA), and with an introduction given by Gina Rome, a MSU James Madison Freshman and YDS member. the panel discussed the current financing of higher education in America, how it burdens our youth today, and how it threatens the competitivenes in the “Knowledge Economy.” The meeting explored how America’s financing of higher education has made college inaccessible to most poor and working class people. There was discussion of lower education and how lack of funding there can lead to problems for students gaining access to higher education, the effects of working longer hours to try to fund personal education, and how the U.S. should distribute the wealth more towards education to benefit people and our economy.
Doug Fraser remembered as social activist
Former UAW President Doug Fraser was remembered at a memorial at Wayne State University as a vibrant labor leader who combined a vision of social activism and a steadfast commitment to his union members with a gregarious personality.
Detroit DSA, with many members at the memorial service, had honored him with its Douglass-Debs award in 2004.
Doug, as he was known to most everyone, died February 23, 2008 of complications from a long battle with emphysema.
Former Vice President Walter Mondale, who flew into Detroit to pay his respects to a man he said he couldn’t figure out how to say no to, was joined in the tribute by Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm, Congressman John Dingell, UAW President Ron Gettelfinger and others.
Shortly after becoming UAW president in 1977, Doug led a delegation to press President Carter for health security legislation, testified before Congress on energy and health bills, faced reporters on ‘Meet the Press,’ and addressed several union meetings.
At his first press conference at UAW headquarters, Doug endorsed the push by consumer advocates to build safer cars, with air bags and automatic seat belts. “I think the autoworkers,” he said, “are free to take a position on any social question.”
Doug led UAW members in marching for the Equal Rights Amendment, lobbied with Coretta Scott King for the Humphrey-Hawkins Full Employment Act, called for a freeze on car prices, and withdrew UAW funds from banks that provided loans to South Africa, stilt struggling under the weight of apartheid.
In July 1978, furious at a big business campaign to scuttle a modest program of labor law reform, Doug resigned from the Labor-Management Group, a top-level forum for union and Industry Leaders, In a scathing letter of resignation, Doug accused business elites of waging a “one-sided class war’” against workers, the unemployed, the poor and minorities.
Along with Michael Harrington, founder of Democratic Socialists of America, Doug co-chaired the Democratic Agenda caucus at the 1978 midterm Democratic Party convention in Memphis which challenged the centrist and corporate-driven domestic budget priorities of the Carter Administration.
UM GRADUATE ASSISTANT WALKOUT WINS CONTRACT VICTORY
By David Morrill Schlitt
On March 24, despite having reached an agreement on ten out of twelve of the articles in the contract for graduate student instructors (GSIs), the University of Michigan’s bargaining team walked away from the table-three hours before our contract was set to expire. We in U-M’s Graduate Employees Organization (GEO - AFT Local 3550) had already extended the contract twice in a show of good faith, in order to get a deal done. This time, when the University allowed the contract to lapse, our membership had a ready response. Monday, the administration walked out on us. Tuesday, graduate students staged a walkout of their own.
As graduate students, we teach 27 percent of the classroom hours at U-M, yet, by the University’s own accounts, we do not earn a living wage. Close to seven hundred graduate students signed up to walk the picket lines on Tuesday, and we were joined by supportive undergraduates, faculty members (including many from our sibling organization, Lecturers’ Employee Organization - AFT Local 6244), and construction workers, all standing together in solidarity.
Many months of work went into the contract negotiations that culminated in Tuesday’s walkout. And it is thanks to the energy of our membership, the leadership of our cracker-jack bargaining team, and the support of U-M faculty, staff, undergraduates, and workers at U-M construction sites, that we have been able to win a historic contract for Michigan’s 1,700 GSIs.
The three-year contract still has to be ratified by the full membership of the GEO, but if it is approved, GSIs will receive a salary increase of 6.2% in the first year of the contract, and 3.5% for the contract’s second and third years. This wage increase falls just a percentage point short of the union’s initial demands and represents a dramatic departure from the University’s earlier offer of three percent for the first year, and 2.5% for the following two years (which would effectively have been a wage cut, given an inflation rate of more than three percent).
The bargaining team, led by second-year history student Colleen Woods, based its salary proposal on a novel concept: taking the University at its word. According to figures published by the University of Michigan’s Office of Financial Aid, living in Ann Arbor for only eight months out of the year as a single graduate student costs $15,980. The average graduate employee, however, makes only $15,199. With this year’s contract campaign, we intended to close this gap. In the wake of a powerful walkout, with the threat of a second day of striking hanging over the heads of the Administration, we have succeeded.
Our gains were not limited to GSI’s base salaries. A rallying point for this year’s negotiations was parity for low-fraction GSIs-those employees working less than half time (of course, it’s pretty amazing to find out just how many hours “less than half time” ends up adding up to…). Before this round of contract negotiations, low-fraction employees rarely had access to health insurance, they rarely had tuition costs waived, and they actually made less per hour than an equivalent GSI with a 0.5 appointment (the standard appointment in many departments). For decades, the University has refused to budge, confident that they could use low-fraction employees, as a relatively small proportion of our membership, as a wedge to divide us. They would have us choose: either wage increases for the bulk of GSIs or wage parity for the low-fraction employees. This time our membership made it clear that we would not settle for an “either/or” arrangement, and that the rights of low-fraction employees were central to our bargaining platform. As a result, we were able to win zero-premium health insurance for ALL graduate employees, full wage parity for low-fraction workers, and full tuition waivers for all employees working at least 7.5 hours a week. We also were able to expand childcare subsidies for parents and made significant progress toward full mental health parity.
For most of Tuesday, GEO’s membership was sprawled across the University of Michigan; spirited picketers lined most of the campus’s main facilities (including Michigan Stadium, currently under construction-except on Tuesday). At only three points during the day was everyone gathered in the same place: A mid-day rally brought everyone to the campus’s central “Diag”; At an afternoon rally we marched past the President’s House; and at the end of the day, we gathered for a meeting at the Arbor Brewing Company. At each of these events, I was astonished by the numbers, the enthusiasm, the solidarity, and the warmth of our membership. But it was at the last event, at the Arbor Brewing Company, that, despite myself, I couldn’t help but get a little romantic about organized labor. At some time after nine p.m., Colleen Woods returned from the emergency negotiations called by the administration to report on the University’s latest offer. The admin saw our strength, she noted, and wanted to avert another day of striking. We were operating from a position of power and were able to extract some very fair proposals from the administration.
After a question-and-answer period, we voted to give the bargaining team the authority to call off the second day of the walkout. There were cheers, hugs, applause. And then, in the dim backroom of the Arbor Brewing Company, the GEO membership spontaneously broke out into a full-throated rendition of Solidarity Forever. Before I could shake myself out of my sentimentality and go back to being a historian, I looked out over the crowd and saw a scene ripped from a book by John Dos Passos or Upton Sinclair-but one where the good guys actually won.
Visit www.umgeo.org to learn more about Michigan’s Graduate Employees Organization and the 2007-2008 contract campaign.
David Morrill Schlitt is a a GEO Associate Member, a member YDS/DSA, and first year doctoral student in history.
Congratulations to DSA!
By Helen Samberg
We are now 25 years young.
Wisely born out of two groups with similar political activities with many mutual orientations and goals, the New American Movement (NAM) and the Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee (DSOC) merged in March 1983 to form Democratic Socialists of America (DSA).
The merger occurred at a joint NAM/DSOC convention in Detroit. Michael Harrington, author of The Other America and founder of DSOC, joined other nationally prominent participants from literary, academic, union, and political fields for the three day convention. Many of these individuals continue their activism to this day.
We are happy to note that our youth group is growing. Watch for further information and save November 8th for our Douglass-Debs celebration.
Calendar of Events
May 3
DSA general membership meeting on Saturday, May 3 from 10 AM until noon at the Royal Oak Senior/Community Center, 3500 Marais Avenue in Royal Oak
May 6
Michigan Coalition for Human Rights spring film series will show the documentary The Big Sellout on Tuesday, May 6 at 7 PM at St. John’s Episcopal Church at Eleven Mile Road and Woodward Avenue in Royal Oak. The film brings us face to face with the architects of the reigning world economic order, as well as with the little people bearing the brunt of their policies. It demonstrates how ordinary people of both developing and industrialized nations are fighting the commodification of basic public goods.
June 1
DSA Executive Committee meeting on Sunday, June 1 from 10 AM until noon at the home of Helen Samberg, 30785 Hunters Drive, Apartment 23 in Farmington Hills
July 12
DSA general membership meeting on Saturday, July 12 from 10 AM until noon at the Royal Oak Senior/Community Center, 3500 Marais Avenue in Royal Oak
Agenda for May 3rd General Membership Meeting
I. Treasury Report
II. Committee Reports
A. Michigan Universal Health Care Access Network (MichUHCAN)
B. Jobs with Justice
C. Michigan Alliance to Strengthen Social Security and Medicare
D. Detroit Area Peace with Justice Network
III. Nominations for Detroit DSA Executive Board
IV. Contribution to Cranbrook Peace Foundation Student Leadership Project
V. Report on DSA “Student Debt Crisis” Forum
VI. Discussion of Congressional and State House Races—Fall Fundraiser, Canvassing
VII. Speakers: State House Candidates Sarah Roberts (St. Clair Shores) and Vickie Barnett (Farmington-Farmington Hills)
VIII. Video Clip from Bill Moyers’ Journal featuring DSA member Michael Eric Dyson
Resources for Building a New World Ê