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30 October, 2006
Global multinational, Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co., has suddenly become protectionist in its US rubber business, or so it would seem from reading the company’s strike weeklies, which are aimed at softening 15,000 American workers into giving back more of their hard-earned incomes.
The strike by ICEM affiliate, United Steelworkers (USW), of 16 Goodyear plants in the US and Canada passed the three-week mark on 26 October. The company has expressed its scorn at striking union members, who are trying to protect their livelihoods, by very publicly pronouncing that 300 auxiliary workers will get the sack due to the strike. These workers are USW members that were only recently organised at a steel-thread plant.
The same scorn is heard in the truth-defying words of North American Goodyear President Jon Rich, in his weekly missives.
His message is clear: loyal “associates” of Goodyear are invited to abandon the strike, abandon the USW as the last front on job protections, and join the corporatist mindset in which security, retirement, and hope will not be part of any equation. “As the strike continues,” Rich wrote last week, “it’s tempting to start shifting the focus from ‘what are we trying to achieve?’ to ‘when will this be over?’”
It’s abundantly clear what Goodyear is trying to achieve: the flexibility to slash jobs, cut incomes, and play the hand that it so quickly played at the steel-wire plant just days into the strike.
When will it be over? It is becoming evident by the strikers’ resolve and their anger at being asked once again to concede to the company’s agenda, that it will be over once Goodyear retreats from its concessions and begins treating the last stakeholder in a resounding three-year success story with the dignity and respect it deserves.
“Hasn’t everyone but our members benefited from the turnaround since 2003?” asks a USW spokesman. “Despite the innovations we brought to the table and the sacrifices we made, the company is demanding more closures and more concessions.”
USW made contract concessions and agreed, in 2003 negotiations, to one US plant closing in exchange for job security and job-retention policies at the other North American plants. This occurred with Goodyear teetering on bankruptcy. Now, with a 17% global market tyre share and nearly one-half of the company’s 2005 revenues, totalling US$19.72 billion, derived from North American operations, Goodyear seeks to unravel those 2003 job-security guarantees, as well as proposing that salaries be cut and retirement benefits slashed.
Rich said in last week’s report that Goodyear is “trying to save American manufacturing.” In an earlier one, in describing that negotiations are not about “labor versus management” but rather “Goodyear versus the competition,” he supplies deplorable protectionist rhetoric, aimed at driving a wedge between US workers and Goodyear workers worldwide.
“Let’s not lose sight of the bigger flag – the stars and stripes – as we are fighting to preserve American jobs and American manufacturing,” said Rich in a 13 October letter to striking workers.
Current bargaining proposals to close two US tyre plants that provide liveable incomes for nearly 15% of the 15,000, and ripping the living standards out from under the rest is not preservation, but rather, destruction of quality American jobs. “How can you talk about saving American manufacturing when you look to close plants and downsize domestic production?” adds the USW spokesman.
Goodyear and Rich lay a heavy burden on US workers in these anti-worker messages. In order to gain the requested givebacks, the company continually uses terms such as “global competition” and “competitive disadvantages” to describe the global marketplace. But truth be told, Goodyear has been a global leader in driving down labour costs and attempting to achieve bottom-piercing labour precedents by attacking all workers’ gained rights.
In Turkey earlier this year, it was Goodyear which forced a lockout of its workers in a failed effort to get work-rule concessions from all Turkish rubber workers, including those at two of its competitors. Union members, behind ICEM affiliated union Lastik-Iş, resisted the cuts, and retained their work rights by getting workers to stand shoulder to shoulder at all three tyre-makers.
In Thailand, Goodyear continues to resist placing long-term contract workers in full-time positions, something that the ICEM affiliate pushes as a matter of fairness and dignity for the contract workers. In Malaysia, Goodyear has broken quota levels by employing low-wage foreign nationals in order to drive down Malaysian labour rates.
Goodyear’s protectionist cry to American workers rings hollow when the company is busy steering the competition on this downward spiral.
The strike by USW members in the 12 US plants and four in Canada is strong. Strikers see past the company’s fear-based rhetoric, and know in their hearts that since they figured strongly in Goodyear’s great turnaround, they deserve to be rewarded, not punished.
That sentiment also stands with the people who live in the middle-class towns and communities surrounding the Goodyear plants. They know of the hardships and despair that come to all in the race to the bottom.
Support also came from members of the United Automobile Workers (UAW), who turned out in mass on 25 October to boost USW picket lines at a Goodyear plant in Tonawanda, New York. The same occurred a day later when 100 union members from across Canada gathered at a Goodyear picket line in Owen Sound, Ontario.
Goodyear can wax on all it wants about “serving our customers,” hinting endlessly that this strike must be broken, and then openly wondering when it will happen. But with steadfast resolve only mounting, and with Goodyear losing production revenues at a rate of US$38 million per day (as estimated by one rubber analyst), an end to this strike appears to be Goodyear’s call.