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(To understand the first item, you have to know that 3 unapproved absences in 90 days gets you a write-up, and after 4 write-ups you are terminated. Even for illness, with a doctor's note, gets you an absence point, but the doctor's note will get you just one point for several days instead of a point for each day.)
On Oct. 4 Chairman Art Torres informed us in a flyer that management is threatening to unilaterally change the attendance policy, to give us write-ups for 3 absences in 180 days rather than 90 days as it now is.
Art argues very well that this change would be catastrophic and dictatorial on the part of management. He believes, and I agree, that management is doing this in response to the new Family Leave Act just passed by the state legislature.
California is the first state in the nation to pass a law giving up to six weeks of paid leave to care for sick relatives or stay home with a new child. The law will take effect July 1, 2004. Workers will be able to receive 55% of their normal wage. It will be financed totally by employee contributions, averaging about $2.75 per month.
Even though the U.S. is the richest nation in the world, we are very backward when it comes to family leave. According to the Sept. 19 S.F. Chronicle, "After giving birth, a German mother receives 14 weeks of leave at full pay. Italian moms get 20 weeks at full pay. This year, Canadian mothers won the right to take a full year off work after childbirth at 60% pay. Mothers in Norway can take a year off at 80% pay.
"Worldwide, 127 countries -- including virtually every industrialized nation -- mandate some sort of paid family leave."
We can't let NUMMI take away our newly won rights by unilaterally emprisoning us with stricter attendance rules. Let's unite and let management know we won't stand for this!
As this Barking Dog goes to press, Bush has just invoked the Taft-Hartley Act to end the lockout of dockworkers by the Pacific Maritime Association (PMA, the shipping bosses).
The Taft-Hartley has never been used against a management lockout before.
But we can be sure that once the government intervenes, it will be on the side of the corporations, not the workers. On Saturday, Oct. 5, members of our Local 2244 turned out for a rally on the docks with the ILWU and many other unions. President Tito Sanchez, to his credit, spoke from the platform and promised the ILWU that we will be behind them and they can call on us for whatever help they may need. ILWU members were inspired that even though the lockout had caused our plant's production to be shut down, we NUMMI workers were still supporting them with union solidarity.
If the government succeeds in throwing its weight against the ILWU, it will be a blow to all unions, just like when Reagan crushed the PATCO union.
"We fully expect PMA to use all the anti-union provisions of the Taft-Hartley injunction. These 80 days will not be a 'cooling off period.' PMA will start alleging 'slowdowns' by Thursday and will continue that.
Taft-Hartley gives them 80 days of free shots at the union and we expect the employers will be dragging us to court daily, trying to bankrupt the union and throw our leaders in jail."
At the ILWU rally, we made a sign to carry, saying "Safety First, at NUMMI and on the docks." (The dock workers were locked out due to their working more slowly in order to obey all safety rules. Five workers were killed working on the docks over the past year.)
A member of Truck Assembly with less than a year seniority was telling me the other day the kinds of things that new hires are told in orientation here at NUMMI. This is what his group of new hires was told:
1) If somebody passes out while working on the line, pull the cord to ask for help, but don't stop the line.
2) Your hands are going to hurt, more than ever before. You will experience numbness. But don't worry about it. Just keep working and the pain will eventually go away.
This member of Truck Assembly has a friend whose wife applied for a nurse position in Medical. She was told that when someone comes in with hurt hands, you have to be able to tell them it's not serious and send them back to work. She was not willing to do this, so she didn't get the job.
Outsourcing is the main issue in the dock workers negotiations, just as it is a major issue here at NUMMI. The Port bosses want to introduce new technology and give all those jobs to non-union, low paid workers. The ILWU says NO WAY!
Art Torres says in his Oct. 2 leaflet that "Not one job was outsourced in the Conveyance area." But the fact remains for all to see, that work that used to be done by decently-paid NUMMI workers is now being done by lower-paid vendor workers.
Art says when management outsourced six jobs in the tire area, the UAW went in and organized those workers into the union. But, again, the key thing is that the outsourced work is being done by workers getting half our pay. What use is a union if it just works with management to give work from higher-paid workers to lower-paid workers?
Many of you probably saw a leaflet going around the plant, an excuse letter for several people to be off for union business, with some comments on the side.
At the Executive Board meeting Oct. 2, President Tito Sanchez was asked why this excuse letter was written, since the Executive Board had never approved such a trip (to Reno). He said he didn't have to get approval from the Exec. Bd. to give time off for union business.
He was asked what union business these people were doing, and Tito again said he did not have to answer that. He was also asked whether he did in fact send the letter to Labor Relations, and he said he did not have to answer that either.
We members will draw our own conclusions.
In a recent Executive Board meeting, members raised the fact that our union hall, and the big field behind it, now belongs to the UAW International, even though it was paid for by dues money of rank-and-file members of the old GM Local 1364, many of whom went on to work at NUMMI.
Our Local needs to get permission from the International to use the kitchen or to do other things in the hall.
It makes sense that the union hall went to the International after Local 1364 was dissolved, when GM shut down. But after our NUMMI local came into being, we should have gotten our union hall back.
Think of all the wealth that our International must have amassed by taking over union halls when plants have shut down across the country. In addition to all our dues money, the International has reaped millions and millions of dollars worth of real estate paid for by our sweat and blood.
Not having control of our own union hall affects our independence and dignity as a local union. Our members are the life line of our union. The International and Retirees are dependent on us. We should own our union hall.
A coworker needed to go to the front office to take care of some paperwork. He found that he could not go in the front Administration Office door. Only salaried people are allowed to go in by the front door.
"This is discrimination," he said. "If management can go in and out any door, we should all be able to do that. It took me a long time to walk all the way around to the other side entrance."
". . .the attitude of the United States of America is a threat to world peace. "Because what [America] is saying is that if you are afraid of a veto in the Security Council, you can go outside and take action and violate the sovereignty of other countries. That is the message they are sending to the world. That must be condemned in the strongest terms. . . . "It is clearly a decision that is motivated by George W. Bust's desire to please the arms and oil industries in the United States of America. . . ."
"An 8-year-old Senate report confirms that disease-producing and poisonous materials were exported, under U.S. government license, to Iraq from 1985 to 1988 during the Iran-Iraq war.
"Furthermore, the report adds, the American-exported materials were identical to microorganisims destroyed by United Nations inspectors after the Persian Gulf War. The shipments were approved despite allegations that Hussein used biological weapons against Kurdish rebels and (according to the current official U.S. position) initiated war with Iran."
Mine eyes have seen the glory of the making of a Ford.
It is made under conditions that would offend even the Lord.
In a most ungodly hurry, and amidst a wild uproar.
Production rushes on!
Hurry, hurry, hurry, hurry!
Hurry, hurry, hurry, hurry!
Hurry, hurry, hurry, hurry!
Production rushes on!
Be quick my soul to answer, and be quicker still, my feet.
Be fifty different places every time my heart doth beat.
The whip that drives me onward is, my family must eat.
Production rushes on!
Chorus repeated.
Neither My Tongue Nor My Eyes
I speak for the sake of dialogue
Blind to the colors of humanity
As my eyes envisage the beauty
Of the rainbow
With each sunrise and sunset of evolution
The dreams of generations yet to come
Pre-packed by the color-markers of our time
Is the reality of not what we say or do
But, that of what breeds in our hearts
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