Workshop Talks
December 2000

Accuride struggle tests UAW

by Htun Lin

Billy Robinson, president of UAW Local 2036, came to Oakland, Cal. on Nov. 5 to appeal for help for unionists in the ongoing struggle in Henderson, Ky. Local 2036 represents 400 Accuride workers who make 80% of the wheels on American trucks, such as Ford, GM, Navistar and Mack.

In February 1998 Accuride Wheel Corporation demanded draconian take-aways. No union rights in the shop. No way to file a grievance except on your own time. No stewards in the plant. The right to reclassify any job. The right to contract out any work. They refused to include any language prohibiting discrimination. In effect, Accuride demanded that workers destroy their own union.

Not surprisingly the workers voted to strike 370 to 9 and struck, authorized by the regional director of the UAW, on Feb. 20, 1998. The company then locked these workers out after they voted to return to work without approving the company proposal.

Robinson said, "The proposal they gave us in September 1998 contained the same language on their right to subcontract any work and all the other offensive language that was in their first offer. No union rights in the plant. No set classifications. Except this time they threw in another kicker: the unilateral, unrestricted right to change, modify, alter or delete the pension plan at any time. They also demanded the same unilateral, unrestricted rights to change our insurance co-payments. We presented this to the membership who rejected it overwhelmingly."

On Aug. 14, 1999 the UAW International called Robinson at home and told him to have his executive committee meet them that afternoon: "I've been in the UAW for 23 years. My granddaddy sat on the front porch sipping moonshine with John L. Lewis. All of my family is union. What that UAW officer told me that day was that after August the UAW would no longer provide economic support for this strike.

"At a meeting the following Saturday, I got up and said this is the saddest thing in my life to have to tell you. Everybody in that part of the country had heard me tell them how democratic the process was in the UAW. But what Accuride couldn't accomplish the union has done to you in one fell swoop. They deserted you.

"In the parking lot in August of 1999 I found out exactly what a union was. The members said to hell with the UAW. We're not going back till we get what we came out for. They can take their strike benefits and shove 'em. We'll stay on this picket line till hell freezes over."

They showed solidarity and determination, even when the International president came down to their picket line (the only time he came) to tell the workers that he had crushed pickets of other locals much bigger than these Accuride workers. In effect he said he was backing management's take-away demands.

The UAW started a smear campaign against Local 2036. "They put it out all over the UAW that it wasn't an authorized strike. Anytime you take a view that does not endorse the view of the International officers, you're anti-union. Other workers were told we all belong to a communist group or that we are a bunch of KKK-ers. Three of our trustees are Black. A homosexual is the head of the women's division. You have to communicate the truth, not hearsay."

Rank and filers have responded when hearing his story. $7,100 was raised at the gate of a UAW shop in Pontiac, Mich. Retirees and other rank-and-file groups have come to their aid, including picketing the UAW's Solidarity House in Detroit. The rank-and-file pressure eventually forced the International to restore their strike benefits in October of this year.

Still, the toll on strikers was heavy: "We didn't have strike pay or insurance for 14 months. A 62-year-old member had his house paid off and $40,000 in the bank. He had a heart attack and bypass surgery. He had to refinance his house and is now $87,000 in debt. Another lady on the verge of dying Right didn't have the money to buy her medicine for 14 months. We've had two suicides and I don't know how many broken marriages. Right now we have over 300 people on the picket line and they say they aren't going back to work."

There is a universal lesson to be learned in the struggle at Accuride, especially the meaning of a union. The internationals may have all our money, may control our bank accounts and union halls, and may have the legal right to issue decrees to us at the local level. But the real power resides in the average workers who are willing to walk the picket line and stand in solidarity.

They recognize that workers' most basic struggle is to regain control of our own labor on the shop floor, and help each other when a worker anywhere is in need. Only that will resist the ongoing top-down domination and repression of what Marx called the "despotic plan of capital," and the structure set up to carry out that plan, including the labor bureaucracy.

You can send contributions to Henderson Workers Solidarity Fund, c/o Billy Robinson, PO Box 248, Sebree, KY 42455.