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News :: Miscellaneous |
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Nationalize Firestone |
Current rating: 0 |
by Hal Sutton
Email: halinfoto (nospam) aol.com (unverified!) |
26 Aug 2001
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Firestone used scabs to produce the defective tires that cost the strikers their jobs and livelihood. If necessary,
organized labor must use factory occupations supported by a
general strike to force the Bush administration to nationalize all Firestone facilities in the U.S. |
Organized labor must respond to the arrogant refusal of Bridgestone corporate management to reconsider its decision to close the Firestone plant in Decatur by launching a campaign for the nationalization of all Firestone facilities in the U.S. We can't wait for a Labor Party or otherwise "labor-friendly" administration. If necessary, factory occupations supported by a general strike should be used to wrest this action from the Bush administration. After all, it was the general strikes In San Francisco and Minneapolis in 1934, and the wave of sit-down strikes in 1936-37 culminating in the FLint GM sitdowns that established the mighty CIO unions and wrested the Wagner act from FDR.
Back when Chrysler was encountering its brush with bankruptcy in 1979, UAW President Douglas Fraser called upon the U.S. government to acquire an equity interest (less than 50% of the company's stock) in Chrysler Corp., so that the government would have a hand in managing the company in order to oversee the taxpayer's investment. Also, in that period, Sen. Edward Kennedy was suggesting that the energy crisis might necessitate the nationalization of the nation's entire oil industry (things sure were different back in those days).
And, given the behavior of Bridgestone/Firestone corporate management, a good argument can be made that public safety, as well as the welfare of the company's workforce, dictates that complete nationalization is the only appropriate response to the present Firestone debacle. In fact, it might be appropriate to unveil a new concept -- punitive nationalization. Nationalization should constitute the "death penalty" for a corporate management whose reckless conduct compromises public health and safety, or whose incompetence threatens the livelihood of its employees (I use this term instead of workers, because it encompasses management personnel, who also stand to lose their jobs and livelihood if the company fails).
A story by David Barboza in the September 15, 2000, edition of the New York Times contained the following passage about the defective Firestone tires that have endangered the general public
in the U.S., as well as other nations:
"Tires with the highest tread separation rate, (Firestone) company documents show, were produced from 1994 to 1996, during and shortly after the strike, which affected 4,200 employees. About 1,400 workers at the plant went on strike at a time Decatur was also burdened by strikes at Caterpillar and A.E. Staley, two of the city's other large employers.
"The strike began in July, 1994. A month later, Firestone began hiring replacement workers, persuading some strikers to cross the line. Things turned ugly, with some saying that this contributed to defective tires. 'It takes two years to become a good tire builder,' said William Newton, a retired tire builder. 'By the time I got back, I saw a lot of people who didn't know how to build tires.'
"Mr. Boettner, the former plant manager, now retired, defended the work done during the strike. 'We had a lot of technical people at the plant,' he said. 'We were monitoring things.'
"But workers say the number of scrap tires -- those thrown out because of defects -- soared during the strike. Rubber stock piled up and often became too dry to use. And supervisors and newly hired employees were often called on to master highly skilled jobs to keep the plant running.
"When workers returned in May 1995, they said many problems lingered, partly because many seasoned workers retired.
"The company also started operating seven days a week. Employees began working 12-hour shifts, often alternating between days and nights a practice that was scrapped after numerous complaints. 'It made a difference in my workmanship,' Mr. Newton said. 'My production went
down during the last four hours.'"
In May, 1996, during the period of the bitter labor dispute, I obtained the following statements from Firestone workers:
"According to Roger Gates, president of United Rubber Workers (now United Steel Workers) Local 713, which represents workers at the multinational tire company's Decatur Plant, 'production output is 30 per cent lower than it was before the strike, with a workforce that is 30 per cent larger.' He attributed the productivity decline to the inexperience of the replacements, as well as the 12-hour rotating shifts.
"Jerry Ewell has worked at the Decatur plant for more than 28 years. He said that he lost all seniority rights, has no holidays, and described the twelve-hour rotating shifts: 'We work twelve hours a day -- 7:00 to 7:00. One week it's forty-eight hours, the next week it's thirty-six. You work Monday and Tuesday, off Wednesday and Thursday, work Friday, Saturday and Sunday. The next week, you're off Monday and Tuesday, work Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, off Saturday and Sunday. Then, every fourteenth day, you change shifts. It's not much fun; we want a fixed shift. I want to either be on days or nights, so that I can organize my life. It's hard to plan anything; two weeks is all you can plan.'
"Rose Fair, who has worked at Firestone for 20 years, said: 'We have no family life at all; you can't plan anything. You can't adapt; it's physically impossible. Humans are not built to do that.' Fair also said the work schedule was imposed by the plant manager, who submitted the plan to a vote by the scabs, whom she described: 'Those people didn't even know what they were voting for. They don't know what they're doing. They've been there a year, and they don't even know
their jobs.' Ewell added: 'There weren't three hundred people in the plant, in January, 1995, when they voted on it. He got it with just a handful of people. They were scabs, replacement workers. Now, there's almost two thousand of us, and, they won't let us bring it back to a vote.'
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