Hour of the power: Labor Council calls for one hour protest action

by Fred Gaboury

This article was reprinted from the March 23, 1996 issue of the People's Weekly World. For subscription information see below. All rights reserved - may be used with PWW credits.

The 100,000-member Buffalo AFL-CIO Council issued a call for a nationwide "simultaneous one-hour demonstration," including work stoppages, to protest the wave of corporate downsizing and plant closings that have destroyed 43 million jobs since 1979. Experts predict that another three million jobs will disappear this year.

The Buffalo resolution came as the strike by UAW Local 696 against General Motors over contracting out and union demands for the hiring of additional workers entered its third week. The strike was provoked when GM refused to abide by a previous agreement and contracted with an outside supplier to produce brake parts. The strike has forced GM to close 26 of its 29 assembly plants in North America, idling more than 150,000 workers in the United States, Mexico and Canada.

The Buffalo resolution, approved unanimously March 13, said "plant closings, downsizing, privatizing, and re-engineering are destroying people's jobs and reducing their standard of living in order to feed the greed for profit." The council said such a demonstration will "send a message to those who are destroying jobs and decent wages that the working people of our country will not take it anymore."

John J. Kaczorowski, Buffalo AFL-CIO Council president and a member of the United Auto Workers Union, said, "If we don't do this, we are going to be in desperate trouble."

George Wessel, outgoing president of the council, agreed and recalled that the Buffalo council was in the forefront of efforts to organize Solidarity Day I that brought 400,000 trade unionists and their allies to Washington, D.C. on Sept. 19, 1981.

Emanuel Fried, a delegate to the Buffalo AFL-CIO Council from United University Professions Local 2190 and a member of the group's education committee, told the World the resolution was a reflection of the "growing anger and frustration" among workers. He said it is time for working people to demand that business be held accountable for the wholesale destruction of jobs.

"Neither business or the government is going to do anything unless we make them." Fried said the demonstration could take many forms, ranging from work stoppages and informational picketing to rallies and the wearing of buttons and T-shirts.

Nurses United, an affiliate of Communications Workers of America Local 1178 which represents 3,200 health care workers in the Buffalo area, was one of the initial sponsors of the resolution. Debbie Hayes, president of the group, said they took that action because nurses are "particularly vulnerable" in the era of downsizing that has accompanied the takeover of health care delivery by HMOs and insurance companies. "Their managed care is more a concern for managing profit margins than for quality care," she told the World. Nurses United, whose members range in skill from nurse practitioners to housekeeping personnel, has to fight on two fronts: contracting out non-professional jobs on the one hand and the downgrading of skills and training on the other.

Commenting on the drive to replace registered nurses with three and four years of college and years of experience with unlicensed personnel who have only six month's training, Hayes said: "And Labor Secretary Reich says the answer to good jobs is training! Are these nurses going to train for these jobs? That's why we endorsed the resolution and worked to get it adopted by the council."

Copies of the resolution are being sent to central labor councils throughout the state and to all 50 state labor federations. Fried said a similar resolution had been adopted by a national meeting of Workers Education Local 189, an affiliate of the Communications Workers of America.

Although negotiations to end the GM strike were underway as the World went to press, the strike, the longest by the UAW since 1970, is the most effective of the eight UAW strikes against GM since 1994.

The industry journal Wards Automotive Reports said the strike and plant closings will result in the lost production of 93,000 GM cars and trucks each week. Other analysts estimate that the virtual shutdown of GM's North American operations has cost the auto industry nearly $2.5 billion in lost output per week. In a retaliatory move, GM has taken steps to deny unemployment compensation to laid-off workers.

Economists at the Commerce Department say that GM accounts for slightly more than 1 percent of the nation's economic activity. In the fourth quarter of 1995, GM sales were 19 times the sales of Microsoft Corporation, the nation's largest computer software company.

The Dayton strike has captured the interest of workers everywhere because it is about job security and comes at a time when there is growing anger about layoffs and downsizing. Most observers say that these issues will be major bargaining points in the 1996 round of negotiations between the UAW and the Big Three Auto makers. Contracts expire on Sept. 14 and serious bargaining talks begin in mid-summer.

Resolution adopted by Buffalo AFL-CIO: Protest plant closings and downsizing

Whereas working people in our country - those not represented by unions as well as those so represented - are insecure today, and

Whereas those who are working know that their jobs may be destroyed by people who place greed for profit before concern for working people and their need for jobs paying decent wages to provide for themselves and their families, and

Whereas the time has come to fight against plant closings, downsizing, privatizing, re-engineering, and all the other catch-phrases for destroying people's jobs and reducing their standard of living in order to feed the greed for profit, and

Whereas our government in Washington is supposed to have the responsibility to carry out legislation presently on the books to provide full employment, it now quite clear that we must act to compel our government to live up to this mandate,

Therefore, the Buffalo AFL-CIO Council calls upon the national AFL-CIO to organize a simultaneous one-hour demonstration of all working people in our country - union & non-union - employed and unemployed - blue collar, gray collar, white collar - to send a message to those who are destroying jobs, and decent wages that the working people of our country will not take it anymore, and

Further be it resolved that this simultaneous one-hour demonstration throughout the country take whatever form the working people in each place of employment and/or each area decide for themselves: stoppage of work, slowdown, work-to- rule, plant gate meetings, informational picketing, wearing of buttons and/or ribbons, special meetings, rallies, etc., and

Further be it resolved that copies of this Resolution be sent to President Sweeney, National AFL-CIO, President Cleary, New York State AFL-CIO, and all other Central Labor Bodies and State Federations,

Be it further resolved that the Chair of the Buffalo AFL-CIO Council's Committee on Education be authorized to include the names of those Unions & their Chief Officer in a listing of supporters of this demonstration for publicity purposes connected with contacting labor organizations across the country to join with us in organizing support to bring about this demonstration.