In 1999, General Motors spun off its parts division and created the Delphi Corporation. Most workers retained the wages and benefits of General Motors workers. On October 8, 2005, Delphi filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, the largest manufacturing bankruptcy in U.S. history.

Bankruptcy

Delphi’s bankruptcy was one of several in the auto parts industry this year. With $28 billion in sales Delphi is the biggest parts supplier. But Collins & Aiken ($4 billion), Tower Automotive ($3 billion) and Meridian Automotive Systems ($1 billion) have also all filed for Chapter 11. Other parts suppliers, such as Lear, plan to close 20 plants and eliminate 7,700 jobs. Dana will eliminate 600 jobs. Visteon, the parts spinoff from Ford, will probably be closing plants too.

Bankruptcy is the latest in a series of legal maneuvers that companies can use to tear up union contracts, reduce salaries of other employees, and rip off small businesses that supply them. Bankruptcy, once an embarrassment for business owners, is now another mechanism to increase profits.

The Delphi bankruptcy is a maneuver. Only the Delphi operations in the U.S. (employing some 50,000) are involved. Delphi wants to eliminate as many as 24,000 of the 33,650 hourly jobs in the U.S. or drastically reduce wages and benefits. Delphi employs 185,000 world-wide. It is the single largest private employer in Mexico with over 70,000 workers, mostly on the U.S.-Mexico border.

Factory closings, demands for huge wage cuts, longer hours without overtime, reduced benefits, have been cancers spreading throughout the communities of unionized workers since 1979 when the owners of Chrysler closed the Dodge Main factory in Hamtramck, Michigan.

Since then, there have been major local struggles to stop these attacks on worker’s rights: at the Hormel meatpacking plant in Austin, Minnesota in 1985; the Greyhound bus strike from 1991-93; at the Staley, Caterpillar and Firestone plants in Decatur, Illinois in 1993 where at one point, 1/3 of the city’s residents were either on strike or locked out; at the Detroit newspapers in 1995 and many others. While these struggles did not end in victory, in each one a small group of workers were radicalized and became labor activists. Some became sympathetic to the various socialist or radical groups, some joined the Labor Party, and some -- seeing the inability of the union bureaucracies to halt managements attacks on workers -- became sympathetic or active in union opposition groupings like Teamsters for a Democratic Union.

However, these small groups of radicalized workers were unable to spread the lessons they learned to the broader sections of the working class. The next struggle will always prove to be a re-education and these are its lessons:

1. For the owner, profits override workers’ rights

2. The Democrats and Republicans are parties that represent the owner’s concerns

3. Top union leaders cannot be trusted to stand by militant workers

4. Workers need to engage in radical, militant action involving thousands to stop attacks or win significant concessions.

From here to there

In this issue of Critical Moment there is a report on the first international gathering of worker-recuperated factories in Venezuela [see page 8]. Workers who have taken over hundreds of abandoned factories throughout Latin America met for the first time to discuss common issues; they are even beginning to trade goods, services and knowledge internationally.

Most of the factory occupations are taking place in countries with governments more favorable to workers than the one we have here in the U.S. In Venezuela, the Chávez government uses the money from oil sales to not only pay oil workers decent wages, but to build schools, hospitals, and combat illiteracy. The Chávez government has taken abandoned factories away from the owners and placed them in the hands of workers.

The government in Brazil is partly a Workers Party government. Lula, the president of the country, is a former autoworker who was once jailed for union activity. In Argentina, the virtual collapse of the economy, along with a long tradition of powerful trade unions and radical political parties, has created conditions for successful factory occupations.

For many U.S. labor activists, factory occupations to save jobs and communities, to protect wages, to enforce workers’ demands, are among the “good ideas” whose time has come. U.S. workers, however, are not ready to seize factories.

So, what needs to happen for U.S. workers to be able to push back against these vicious attacks? What might be some of the roads to factory occupations in the United States?

First, all workers need to support the actions that the unions and workers are taking to impede the plans of Delphi’s owners.

On November 2, the union leadership began to put pressure on the owners of General Motors and Delphi by a “work to rule,” strategy, that is, to do on the job exactly what one is expected to do, no more. On November 29, the Delphi Coalition of unions called for informational picket lines at Delphi plants across the country.

Second, we need efforts to organize and mobilize the rest of the United Auto Workers union to put pressure on GM.

The threat of a strike voiced by Delphi workers and some local union leaders in November, meekly echoed by the top leadership of the UAW, was sufficient to get GM CEO Rick Wagoner to pressure Delphi CEO Steve Miller to postpone Delphi’s request to the bankruptcy judge to tear up its union contracts. A Delphi strike could hurt GM’s ability to produce cars and open a space for union negotiators to resist some of the company’s demands for concessions from workers. During the month delay, negotiations between the UAW and Delphi are supposed to occur.

Because all communities in southeast Michigan will be affected, reaching out and mobilizing the communities in southeast Michigan is vital to the success of any effort to turn back Delphi’s onerous proposals.

The Lenawee County Board of Commissioners has called on the bankruptcy judge to consider Delphi’s Adrian, Michigan, workers’ many contributions to the community as the judge develops the company’s reorganization plan.

Community organizations can assist retirees in coping with reduced benefits and help workers who lose their jobs with food, dealing with utility cutoffs, schooling and all the community issues raised by closed factories. As part of this effort, union members and community residents should run as independent candidates for office in 2006 using this public forum to oppose Delphi’s draconian measures, the plant closings and build support for workers and their communities. An election platform could include: a minimum wage of $10/hour with benefits; a shorter workweek by law to employ the unemployed; repeal of “free” trade agreements (NAFTA, CAFTA); fight for laws that prevent unilateral devastating economic impacts on communities by the actions of the owners of corporations without the approval of local authorities.

These are some steps to re-energize, re-vitalize, and reconnect hundreds of thousands of union workers and communities to push back against these attacks. They will help create more favorable conditions for broader, more radical actions such as factory occupations. In any case, workers cannot go back to the past when U.S. companies promised its workers better conditions as a benevolent gesture of their magnanimity. We must go forward to a world of more cooperation among workers, a world where rights are fully recognized and secured for all.

Fred David has worked for auto companies and suppliers for nearly 30 years.