UE Convention Resolutions
Fight Workplace Closings
The financial crash and recession of the past two years has accelerated the loss of jobs and workplace closings. Unemployment has reached its highest level in a generation. The 2008 bank bailout made things even worse. Banks that received bailout funds can escape the limited regulations imposed by the Troubled Assets Relief Program if they repay the money. This has encouraged major banks, such as Wells Fargo, to horde capital by withholding credit from viable employers – forcing plant closings such as that of Quad City Die Casting. Taxpayers were told that the $700 billion bank bailout was needed to keep credit flowing and save jobs, but to a large extent it has done the opposite.
The successful occupation of Republic Windows & Doors in December 2008 by the members of Local 1110 set a proud example for all workers facing plant closings and theft of their pay and benefits. Their courageous actions not only got them the money they were owed but led to the reopening of the plant under a UE contract. The brave, persistent struggle of Local 1174 to prevent the closing of Quad City Die Casting also set a high standard for unions. In both of these fights, UE members went toe-to-toe against banking giants who bear heavy responsibility for the economic disaster.
Even before the current crisis hit, both private and public sector management – and too many public officials – were fixated on downsizing jobs. Slashing jobs and throwing workers into desperate straits is called "streamlining," "rightsizing," or "adjusting to the global competitive environment," and is applauded by Wall Street. Politicians who slash public sector jobs are praised in the corporate media as "fiscally responsible" and "willing to make the tough decisions."
No workers are safe. While some closings and layoffs result from years of mismanagement and decline, others are dropped on perfectly profitable plants like a bolt of lightning. Manufacturing employers methodically shift production to overseas plants that pay a fraction of the wages and benefits paid here. When lacking a viable offshore source, bosses shift production work to the vast array of unorganized sweatshops within the U.S.
Public sector workers at the state and local level are laid off as budget crises come to full bloom. Jobs that once provided family wages and supported the municipal tax base are replaced by new jobs in the low-wage service and retail sectors. Frequently these new jobs are subsidized by taxpayers, as the workers find themselves unable to meet their basic daily needs on poverty wages. Public-sector workers are also threatened by a variety of privatization schemes, resulting in lower wages for the smaller workforce that takes their place. In virtually every case companies bribe lawmakers outright, or by using bribes disguised as campaign contributions, to win the right to substitute a low-wage private workforce for the existing staff.
Technical, medical, financial, professional and other highly skilled jobs are also under attack, as employers and politicians promote the "offshoring" of American jobs formerly considered immune to globalization. Tasks now performed electronically from outside the U.S. includes completing tax returns, reading medical scan results and other medical diagnoses, and customer service calls. Corporate tax deductions and cash incentives by federal, state, and local governments that reward plant closings and layoffs are a national scandal.
Members of UE Local 767 at Antioch College learned that even workers in academic institutions aren't safe from workplace closings. The college "suspended" operations in 2008, causing layoffs of most employees. The members of new Local 768, employed by a program established by Antioch alumni working to reopen the school, and the remaining members of Local 767, are working with a range of allies to restart Antioch College.
U.S. "free trade" policies encourage the flight of capital and export of jobs. At the state and local level, lawmakers try to outdo one another in incentives for companies to abandon one state or locality for another. There is little or no monitoring of the results of these handouts to companies, measurement of the jobs promised, gained and lost, or the harm to education and local government from letting big companies out of their responsibility to pay taxes. These policies have contributed to a multitude of problems, including high unemployment, reduced opportunities for young people, and budget deficits at all levels of government that in turn cause job losses for public-sector workers. In the end, taxpayers are left to clean up the mess that is left in the wake of the job loss storm. Most politicians conveniently forget or ignore the pain and suffering that unemployed workers and their families endure.
UE insists that decisions about investments, credit, workplace closings, and mass layoffs are too important to be left exclusively to managers, directors, shareholders, bankers, or politicians. Workers and communities have a large stake in these debates. Workers and communities have a right to more than an early warning of closures and mass layoffs. The loophole-ridden Worker Adjustment Retraining Notification (WARN) Act is in dire need of improvement and strong enforcement, since bosses routinely ignore it with impunity. Our union demands sweeping legislative solutions, including controls on capital investment and credit, and penalties for the wanton destruction of good jobs.
Until the day that we achieve meaningful action by the government, we are forced to rely on solidarity with our fellow workers and communities in the struggle against workplace closings and mass layoffs. UE has been a leader in developing innovative approaches to fighting closings and saving jobs, through eminent domain campaigns, workplace sit-ins, building broad alliances, political action, alternative forms of ownership and other means. While we have not found a surefire formula for saving jobs, we must continue to struggle and to explore new solutions. We have no other choice. No boss can be allowed to fire or lay off workers without a struggle.
THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED THAT THIS 71st UE CONVENTION:
- Demands that Congress and state legislatures take action against plant closings by forcing companies to reveal their reasons for closing to the public; if the closing is intended to push up their stock market values, run away to escape labor or other regulatory issues, or due to mismanagement, the company should be put in receivership until the problems can be worked out and a new owner found;
- Demands that the union or workers in a viable business be given an opportunity and time to locate new investors with an interest in buying the enterprise and continuing operations in the same location. The company should be forced to sell at a reasonable market value rather than close. The company should not be allowed to close until a reasonable amount of time has been given to the workers to identify investors and assemble the necessary financing;
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Demands strong action by the Obama administration and Congress to prevent banks from destroying jobs by cutting off credit to viable employers. Banks that force workplace closings and sabotage the U.S. economy should be nationalized so that their assets can be redirected to promote healthy economic growth;
- Demands that Congress and state legislatures impose a moratorium on all plant closings and layoffs;
- Demands that Congress renegotiate the job-killing North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA), and General Agreement on Tarriffs and Trade (GATT), and encourages the union at all levels to participate in actions to prevent further extension of corporate-led trade agreements;
- Demands that Congress strengthen the WARN Act by passing the Forewarn Act (SB 1792), introduced by Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown (D), to eliminate current loopholes, and require earlier notice of a plant closing or product line move, and provide for enforcement of real penalties against bosses who ignore this law;
- Enact a Job Destruction Penalty Act that requires companies to pay severance and health benefits to laid-off workers, make payments to affected communities and states to offset lost tax revenues and the cost of retraining displaced workers, and repay any tax breaks and any financial incentives;
- Remove any and all tax breaks or incentives for companies to close down a plant or move work out of a plant;
- Calls on locals to bargain aggressively for strong contract language to prevent or delay plant closings or product line movement and for good benefits in the case of a plant closing;
- Encourages all UE locals to develop "contingency plans" in the event of a closing, including, but not limited to, researching which political bodies have authority to exercise eminent domain and, if there is no such body, campaigning for the creation of one;
- Insists that public-sector workers and the communities they serve be given a voice in matters of public employment and service provisions;
- Encourages all locals faced with a closing to analyze the circumstances of the shutdown, and to pursue whatever strategy is necessary to keep the workplace operating or provide a sufficient closing settlement for the workers, including taking private-sector workplaces by eminent domain if the owner is unwilling to sell at a fair market price to people who will keep the workplace operating;
- Demands that law enforcement agencies routinely prosecute corporate leaders whose unjust actions result in the loss of workers pay and benefits, such as the successful prosecution of the former owner of Wisconsin Die Casting and the recent felony charges lodged against the former management of Republic Windows & Doors;
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Encourages locals to enlist support from the local community and government to pressure employers to keep plants open and members employed.