Metalworking union actions and responses

IMF affiliates in all regions are fighting to protect workers, their families and communities through collective negotiations with employers, by mobilizing for government actions to defend and support employment and incomes, and pushing for industrial policies to advance the sector's recovery and progress towards a lower carbon future with good jobs. Affiliates have put forth programs and positions on what needs to be done economy-wide and for the automotive sector. Metalworking union demands and actions call for:

• Prompt adoption of stimulus programs that benefit and protect workers economy-wide. This should include and be based on broad public investments to renew and expand transport and technology infrastructures, strengthen public education and universal health care, and expand training and upgrade skills for workers. Support should be coordinated regionally and provide needed resources at both national and local levels.
• Full implementation of measures to prevent redundancies and retain workers in jobs with company and government-financed benefits that secure workers' income and purchasing power. Coverage should include not only large companies, but SMEs as well. When needed, allowable time periods for such benefits should be extended. At the same time, safeguards should be in place to ensure that employers do not abuse short-time work, temporary downtime, or partial and administrative unemployment as preludes to permanent redundancies.
• All alternatives should be considered and if any restructuring is unavoidable, it must be done in a sustainable and socially acceptable manner. Regardless of ownership and enterprise structure, it is essential that companies negotiate with and governments involve unions from the outset to ensure a long-term commitment and employment safeguards for workers and their communities. Trade unions strongly oppose layoffs and plant closures.
• Effective restoration of access to credit lines for automotive and metalworking companies across the sector's production chains, as well as loans for households and enterprises to finance the purchase of new cars and trucks and other final products. Regulatory protections should ensure that no publicly provided or guaranteed capital is used to fund payouts to shareholders, to pay excessive executive compensation, or to subsidize the outsourcing or shifting of production to the detriment of workers.
• Acceleration of investments in R&D, design and production of advanced motor vehicle and fuel technologies that lower emissions of carbon dioxide and other pollutants. Government policies that support reducing the industry's carbon footprint over time should do so via means that generate and maintain high quality jobs for metalworkers.
• Rejection of attempts by employers and government to exploit the crisis to undermine trade unions and workers' rights.

With challenges for workers and their unions as great as any time in decades, it is imperative to strengthen solidarity. Effective actions are needed to broaden and deepen trade union efforts to organize workers across metalworking enterprises, to block attempts by companies to substitute precarious jobs for permanent ones in the aftermath of the crisis, and to mobilize for coordinated and concerted policies that protect and advance the interests of workers, their families and communities.