Dear Friends and Coworkers,

Here is issue #47 of the Barking Dog, dated Aug. 12, 2002, put out by Caroline Lund, member of UAW Local 2244 at the NUMMI plant in Fremont, CA.

Good Worker Fired!

[The following two items concern a termination case. Darrell from Passenger Conveyance was fired for giving a little shove to a coworker who is a jokster and who had played one too many jokes on Darrell.]

One day, six months ago, we got a new guy. He liked to joke, unhooking dollies and coil wires, shutting off gas. All can cause accidents and get people hurt.
I don't like games at work. Management said that if you had a problem, come to them. I did six times to four group leaders. There's got to be some way to get away from these things. I have been putting up with these happening over thirty times before this last one. If this is not provoking, what is?
I have trouble understanding how ten and a half years mean nothing, when getting in an argument gets you fired. One minute you are thanked for good work, then you're fired without a thought.
A push. Why? Because my dollies were unhooked. And then I was lied to, with a smirk! It was just a reaction; there was no more to it. He wouldn't stop. I did walk away.

Darrell.

We Want Darrell Back!

As you know, Darrell was terminated, but not until he was out of work for 6 weeks with no pay and unable to file for unemployment due to his ties with the company.
I finally got a hold of his committeeman and asked him what goes with Darrell? He said they had the meeting about him. I asked him did he call Darrell yet, he said no. I told him to call him. They did, and told him he was fired.
In the meanwhile, this joker that Darrell is talking about has gotten into some run-ins with others, and I had two different people tell me that he flipped off a coworker. The people he works with thought he was wrong doing that, and talked to Labor Relations about him.
We want Darrell back NOW!
Darrell has more admirers than detractors. I have talked to 3 or 4 G/L's who like him and wouldn't mind having him in their group, although they might not say that to their bosses.
One more thing, One of the guys reminded me of the Body Shop G/L that punched out a T/M and got suspended for a month and came back, and he didn't even have a union to "help" him. There have been 2 or 3 other fights where the people have come back after suspensions of a month or so.

Zig-Zag, Passenger Conveyance

Auto Emissions Bill

Our union spent a lot of our dues money recently to join with NUMMI in agitating against a California Assembly bill aimed at cutting vehicle emissions that contribute to global warming. Our union officials even outdid the Company. They used the tried and true scare tactic, telling members that this bill would likely cause our plant to shut down.
It was all lies. Here is the background.
In 1967, California's air was so dirty and poisonous that our state was granted the right to set its own air standards, stricter than Federal standards. Unleaded gasoline and catalytic converters were both first mandated in California, prior to being adopted by the rest of the country.

California is the fifth biggest economy in the world, and accounts for 13 percent of all auto sales in the U.S. Auto makers began to build vehicles to satisfy California standards even before other states adopted those stricter regulations.
Polls showed that 81% of Californians supported the new emissions bill. Global warming is a scary fact. Glaciers are melting in Alaska, and dire changes will affect our children and grandchildren.
From seat belts, to the Clean Air Act, to unleaded gasoline, the auto industry has repeatedly claimed that they would have to shut down and could not possibly conform to new regulations. But nothing of the sort happened.
It was all hot air.
This new law will do nothing to hurt our jobs at NUMMI. It will affect all automakers who want to sell vehicles in California. It gives unions a bad image when union leaders just support their company's line and go against what's best for all of society.

Caroline Lund

To 'The Barking Dog'

God bless you. I wish I could do more to help you but I am struggling just to make ends meet, let alone fight a crusade. The nine plus hours a day and the Saturdays is about all I can get enough energy to do these days.

Tommy, Truck Assembly

401(k) Hoax

There's a new book out called The Great 401(k) Hoax, by William Wolman and Anne Colamosca. According to the July 8 Business Week, the authors "argue that Americans have been hoodwinked by corporations and Wall Street into believing that investing savings in stocks will guarantee income enough for a comfortable retirement.
"But even at the end of the '90s, a decade in which stock prices quintupled, the average 401(k) held just $46,740. "Worse, the authors say, there's strong evidence that stock market returns will probably average less than 2% a year throughout the first decade of the 21st century. . . .

"Along the way, they explain how and why employers wiggled out of long-term commitments to provide pensions based on defined benefits in favor of defined contributions - the essence of the 401(k) system."
The July 29 Business Week continues, "Part of the problem is that employers have sliced the amount they kick in. On average, employers who set up 401(k)s have cut their retirement spending by 14%, according to an analysis of corporate tax filings between 1981 and 1996 by University of Notre Dame economist Teresa Ghilarducci and two colleagues. 'We found 401(k)s are a cost-savings move for employers,' she says."

According to a Dept. of Labor study, employers' spending on retirement has decreased by 22% since 1986. Who Wants Another Boss? Union density has fallen from a third of the worforce in the 1950s to an eighth of the workforce today.
Who wants to join a union that negotiates a two-tier wage structure and promotes speed-ups, multi-tasking, downsizing, the combining of trades, and compulsory overtime?
Who wants to join a union that fosters favoritism over equality; competition over solidarity; bureaucracy over democracy? Who wants to join a union that spends dues money on a resort in Palm Springs, a golf course, a radio station, part ownership of an airline, but deprives locked-out union members of strike benefits?
Who wants another boss?

Gregg Shotwell, UAW convention delegate from Local 2151 (excerpt from a longer article)

Support "Dockworkers!

As The Barking Dog goes to print, a momentous confrontation is taking place between West Coast dockworkers and the shipping companies and Bush administration. The dockworkers union (ILWU) is resisting employer demands to use new technology and eliminate union jobs.
The Bush administration has intervened aggressively, threatening to invoke the Taft Hartley Act to force the delay of a strike for 80 days, or to order the National Guard to work the docks in case of a strike or slowdown. The Taft Hartley was last used in 1978 during a coal miners strike, but the Mineworkers union defied the government and eventually won their strike.

If workers cannot withhold their labor, they have no leverage in the fight to improve their wages and working conditions. If the government gets away with smashing the power of the dockworkers union, it will feel more free to attack other unions as well.

The dockworkers contract fight came up at the July meeting of the Local 2244 Executive Board. One of the leading Administration Caucus in-crowd members said maybe our union should not support the ILWU in this struggle because a strike could prevent NUMMI from receiving parts shipments through the Port of Oakland. And she said maybe the ILWU is "too leftist."

It made me wonder whether we have a workers union here at NUMMI, or a company union. What about solidarity? Does our union stand for what's best for NUMMI, or what's best for working people? The whole labor movement in the Bay Area is joining in rallies in support of the ILWU. Our UAW ought to be there too, with our banners. This is a situation like when Reagan went after the air traffic controllers. We can't let another PATCO happen, or all unions will be in mortal danger.

Let's support the dockworkers!

Caroline Lund

Cannibal Engineers

A while ago, NUMMI hired a group of engineers who were very good at their job except they happened to be cannibals.
During orientation, their boss told them, "You're all part of the NUMMI team now. You can earn good money here, and you can go to the cafeteria to get something to eat. So please don't trouble any of the other team members."

The cannibals promised they wouldn't.

Several weeks later their boss told them, "You're all working very hard and I'm satisfied with all of you. However, one of our line workers has disappeared. Do any of you know what happened to him?

The cannibals all shook their heads no.

After the boss had left, the leader of the cannibals asked the others, "Which of you idiots ate the line worker?"

A hand raised hesitantly, to which the leader of the cannibals replied, "You fool! For four weeks we've been eating Assistant Managers, Group Leaders, and a top union official and no one noticed anything, and then you had to go and eat a line worker!"