Following is issue #33 of The Barking Dog, and independent newsletter put out by Caroline Lund, a Trustee of UAW Local 2244, at the NUMMI plant in Fremont, CA. It is dated January 8, 2001.

Democracy?

After this presidential election, I believe the American people are even more disillusioned with our corrupt political system. People around the world are (correctly) laughing at U.S. pretensions of being the beacon of democracy.

Gore won the popular vote by some 500,000 votes, and it seems he even won Florida, according to unofficial counts and estimates by newspapers. Yet we are stuck with Bush as President.

The Congressional Black Caucus tried to challenge the election result in Congress, because of the denial of voting rights to Black people in Florida. But they couldn't find a single Senator -- Democrat or Republican -- who would support such a challenge.

We see now how the Democrats and Republicans have more in common (maintain stability so those profits can keep rolling in) than they have differences.

Question from Conveyance Worker

Looking at the towering piles of overflow stock sitting next to the racks in Assembly: "Do you think the people who designed this new Kanban system are from Florida???

Safeway/Summit Warehouse Strike

The strike was ended shortly after the last Barking Dog came out. Teamsters Local 439 union leader Saul Gomez described the new contract as "a piece of garbage." It was worse than the contract that the union went out on strike over.

Safeway, a multinational corporation, had made clear to the union that they were ready to hold out for a long time. Strikers were only getting $50 a week strike benefits. Support from the Teamsters International and from the rest of the labor movement was minimal.

A Conveyance Team Leader said to me, "I just don't understand it. It seems our union leaders just don't care any more. Our Local should have been buying ads on radio and TV in support of that strike. If the companies keep winning against the unions like this, pretty soon we will have no middle class left. It will only be the rich and the poor."

Good point. Buying ads like that would have helped us, the members, more than another trip by union leaders to Las Vegas. We have our own contract negotiations this year.

But, it was still better that the Safeway workers struck and lost, than if they had just accepted a bad contract without a struggle. At least they put up a fight. They saw the overwhelming support from other working people. They saw the virtually empty Safeway parking lots. They felt the power of unity. They learned something about what will be needed for their next contract struggle.

Caroline Lund

Disgruntled UAW Member

[The following item is from an email list of free-thinking auto workers from across the country. If you would like to get on this list, email me at the address at the top of this leaflet.]

I'm Doug Hanscom. I work for GMTB in Baltimore, Local 239. I haven't always been a disgruntled member of the UAW. It's an attitude that I acquired over the last few years due to changes in working conditions. At first I thought it was my imagination, until my coworkers also noticed a gradual change in our work environment.

A few years ago most of our jobs on the assembly line could be done in a reasonable amount of time. After completing our specific operations, we had time to get a drink of water, unwrap a stick of hum or candy, or blow our noses if need be before doing the next operation.

However, over the last few years the company has been slowly eliminating jobs and taking the work from those jobs and adding it to the remaining jobs.

On some operations a worker has to work so fast that if they were to work any faster they would be in violation of a safety rule about no running in the plant. This is not a joke.

I thought it was a local problem, and so did my coworkers; we were blaming our local's leadership for the changes in our work environment. But, thanks to the Internet, I've found that our problem is not local but national. After spending some time web-surfing union sites and reading union members stories from around the country, I've found that other plants are experiencing the same speedups and overworked jobs as we are.

I've come to the conclusion that it's the UAW International's "We've got ours, to hell with yours" attitude that is to blame for the gradual yet dramatic change in working conditions nationwide.

To my surprise I've also found there are literally hundreds if not thousands of disgruntled UAW members like me all over the country. Some even have set up web sites expressing their displeasure with their unions or their companies.

All of which wouldn't be necessary if the International hadn't lost its primary focus and maintained a stronger relationship with its membership. The International is supposed to oversee the locals and make sure that their officials are acting in the best interest of their members. But in the last few years the International has abandoned locals and left them to fend for themselves. In some cases the International is allowing the corporations to pit locals against each other like two dogs in a fight. . . .

The biggest loser is the membership. What we have left are local unions with no backbone. Local officials give the company the shirts off their member's backs, and then tell committeepersons to keep grievances to a minimum or they may scare off the company. The members are left with very little representation if any. You can file a grievance on a faulty water cooler or a fan, but not on your overworked job, so just do it and shut up. . . .

When I started out in the auto industry, the old dudes who showed me the ropes used to go on and one about how strong the union is and all the good things they've accomplished. You could hear the pride in their voices and it made me feel proud.

Twenty-five years later, us old dudes don't have that same pride, because in the last few contracts the unions have merged with their companies and given up this, that and the other thing.

One old dude summed it up best when he said, "Walter Reuther [longtime UAW President] has rolled over in his grave so many times you can't tell one bone from another."

Doug Hanscom, UAW Local 239

Sounds Familiar, Right?

The above item by Doug Hanscom confirms that we here at NUMMI are not alone!

In his first letter to employees of the new year, President Ishii says that "ergonomic injuries increased by 24 percent" over the year 2000. Is it any wonder, when we are driven by the line speed to work to our top capacity for 8.5 or 9 hours?

Last November, the Occupational Safety & Health Administration (OSHA) adopted new ergonomic standards, which will go into effect on Jan. 16, 2001. The National Association of Manufacturers is suing to block the new regulations, saying it's too expensive to stop injuring workers.

To give you an idea of what these regulations could mean, they say, for example, that any job is ergonomically dangerous if it involves "working with the back, neck, or wrists bent or twisted for more than two hours total a day." (Source: Business Week, Dec. 4, 2000)

Probably 80 percent of the line jobs at NUMMI would fit that description. Our union should publicize these new regulations among the membership, so that we can use them to fight back against unsafe jobs.

Week in Las Vegas

Last December, our union clique-in-power sent around 16 people to Las Vegas for a week of fun and games, all paid for with our dues money.

About six went for a UAW Civil Rights conference -- good, but what will we see from it? A couple days of "ethnic" entertainment in the cafeteria. Meanwhile, black people are being denied the vote in Florida, cops harrass black and Latino people in their cars, and our prisons are bulging with poor, black and Latino youth.

Another ten people or so were sent to staff a NUMMI car show! Why can't the company pay to staff their own car show? Promoting company products is not the purpose of a union. The purpose of a union is to defend and benefit us, the members. Not to protect and promote the company. The Administration Caucus clique in power is so used to being in bed with management that they seem to forget the difference

Is our union leadership going to next start using our dues money to buy ads for NUMMI products?

While the clique was sending 10 people to staff NUMMI's trade show, they refused to send our safety coordinators for training that could help us eliminate dangerous and overloaded jobs.

Caroline Lund

Letter From A Reader

I salute you. Your newsletter is informative and not afraid to speak the truth. I am a member of the Executive Board of a local that has over 120 local appointees who have to walk in lockstep with the President (with whom I am of differing views) or else they receive nothing and would be removed from their appointed job.

Politics is a dirty business for those of us that are there to do the just and honest thing. I often wonder if we are just wasting our time and if things are ever going to turn around for the good of the entire membership when the political system is set up in such a way that it doesn't encourage that.

Keep up the good work.

Suzanne Brown, Vice President, UAW Local 594, Pontiac, Michigan

Cafeteria Blues

Many members are fed up with the new contractor for the cafeterias and vending machines. A Conveyance member passed me a NUMMI "Items of Interest" leaflet with his notes on it:

By eliminating the "to go" packaging, they now give you less food!

NUMMI agreed to let Eurest (the cafeteria contractor) drastically cut their hours, so now people who have to come in early for classes or whatever have nowhere to go to pass the time until work starts.

NUMMI says "we have agreed to . . . allow them [Eurest] to be competitive" -- but at our expense!

Ana from Trucks is circulating a good leaflet, with questions to the company about the deteriorating food service in the plant and also the bad treatment of cafeteria employees by Eurest.

Frustrated With Company and Union

My Committeeman not only won't come when you call, but if he does, he will try to talk to you while you are driving on your route. If you ask him to get you off the line to talk because you are getting in the hole, he might say OK, but then you never see him again. The only time you can count on him to come out is when Management has write-up papers on you.

The Company and union have us exactly where they want us, with absolutely no power at all. Completely sold out by the Local via the International. And I suspect we've had rigged elections from the beginning. I remember one time where 98% of the people I talked to said that they didn't vote for the stooge that they put in.

Ron, Conveyance

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