UE Convention Resolutions
Fight Workplace Closings
Both private and public sector management – and far too many elected officials – remain fixated on downsizing their respective workforces, if not eliminating them altogether. News reports of job cuts are welcomed by Wall Street investors as proof that management is serious about running a "lean-and-mean" operation. The job cuts are also labeled as "streamlining," "rightsizing," or "adjusting to the global competitive environment." Politicians who promote this downsizing mantra are applauded by the media as being "responsible," "hard-nosed," or "businesslike" lawmakers. While bosses and politicians have profited greatly from this trend, the impact on working people has been catastrophic.
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 only 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, the tax base eroded by the loss of productive jobs. Jobs that once provided family wages and a supported 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 the poverty wages provided. 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 work with politicians to promote the "offshoring" of jobs formerly thought immune to globalization. The list of tasks now being performed electronically from outside the U.S. includes completion of tax returns, reading of medical scan results and other medical diagnoses, and customer service calls. The list of job occupations considered "safe" from this trend is dwindling. Adding insult to injury, the corporate tax deductions and cash incentives by federal, state, and local governments that reward plant closings and layoffs are a national scandal.
By promoting an expansion of our failed national trade policies, President Bush seeks to further speed the movement of jobs and capital investment abroad, allowing ever-faster destruction of our nation’s manufacturing base. All recent U.S. trade policies have worked to encourage the relocation of U.S. jobs to offshore locations, conveniently bolstering the corporate desire to reach this goal as well. Recent attempts by the Bush regime to renew the discredited and corrupt "fast track" supported by the Clinton administration, which allows for the wholesale ramming of trade legislation through Congress with almost no debate and no amendments, gives further encouragement to the job-killing bosses. At the state and local level, lawmakers seek to outdo one another in offering incentives to companies willing to abandon one state or locality in favor of another. Little effort is expended to monitor the results associated with these government handouts to companies, or to ascertain if the jobs promised and subsidized actually ever materialize. These federal, state, and local policies have contributed to a multitude of problems, including high levels of unemployment, reduced opportunities for young people, and huge budget deficits at all levels of government that then translate into job loss 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 closings or mass layoffs cannot be left exclusively to managers, directors, shareholders, or politicians. Workers and communities have a large stake in this debate. It’s our right to have a say in the future of our industries, public services, and facilities. Workers and communities have a right to more than an early warning of closures and mass layoffs. In fact, the too-weak Worker Adjustment Retraining Notification (WARN) Act is in dire need of reinforcement and improvement, since bosses routinely ignore it with impunity. Our union demands sweeping legislative solutions, including controls on capital investment and penalties for the wanton destruction of good jobs. Congressional refusal to address this crisis can no longer be tolerated.
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, 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 70th 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;
- 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 UE at all levels to participate in actions to prevent the further extension of corporate-led trade agreements
- Demands that Congress strengthen the WARN Act by passing the Forewarn Act (S.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 UE 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 UE 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.