UAW rank and file reach out to Delphi workers

After four postponements, the management of Delphi Automotive has set March 30 as the day it will ask a federal bankruptcy court to throw out its union contracts. As workers face this latest deadline with anxiety and uncertainty, the rank-and-file group Soldiers of Solidarity continues to spread its in-plant resistance to Delphi’s threats to slash wages, destroy pensions and health benefits.

Work-to-rule meetings in cities where Delphi operates have become magnets for militant worker-activists.

Close to a dozen SOS organizing sessions have taken place in Michigan, Ohio, New York and Indiana. Initiated by members of the United Auto Workers, these sessions are bringing in members of other unions that represent another 10,000 of the 34,000 Delphi workers in the United States, including the International Union of Electrical Workers/Communication Workers of America.

The process of building inter-union solidarity took a major step forward on March 26 with an SOS meeting here in Youngstown that drew many IUE/CWA members from the Delphi plant in Warren, Ohio. Many were former steelworkers who had witnessed the decimation of the Mahoning Valley by the steel barons in the 1980s and 1990s. Other workers who came to offer their support included letter carriers, bus drivers, government workers and retired and disabled workers—all with their own personal work-to-rule anecdotes about following the orders of typically incompetent bosses.

After strategizing around resisting concessions at Delphi, the other major topic of discussion was the massive number of buyouts offered to GM and Delphi workers. Thousands of workers are being put in a position of either staying at GM/Delphi, where their future is uncertain, or taking a lump sum payment but giving up their health insurance.

“This is a rotten deal,” stated SOS organizer Gregg Shotwell. “It is essentially anti-union. There isn’t a comprehensive, collective agreement.” Every worker is forced to make an individual decision.

The massive buyoff of workers one by one changes the contract. Workers should have the right to vote on it. Contractual changes include allowing the unlimited use by GM of temporary workers and eliminating the company’s obligation to hire one worker for every two that leave.

What to do? Rank-and-file activist Todd Jordan of Kokomo, Ind., said in a recent flier, “The model must be built in the spirit of the great general strikes and mass direct action of Minneapolis, Toledo and San Francisco in 1934, the great sit-down movement of 1936/37 and the great civil rights movement of the 1960s.”

“We have to make a lot of noise,” stated Shotwell. “Workers have power.”

SOS announced future meetings in Toledo and Detroit and plans to picket the Detroit Economic Club on April 3 when Delphi CEO “Steve” Miller will be giving the keynote address.