Memo to Labor Movement: Follow UE’s Lead and Fight Corporate Outsourcing

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.inthesetimes.com/working/entry/6485/memo_to_labor_movement_follow_ues_lead_and_fight_corporate_outsourcing/

Tuesday September 28 12:22 pm

By Roger Bybee

This Saturday's “One Nation” rally in Washington, D.C.—organized initially by the AFL-CIO and NAACP—has been badly needed to outline a bold program to re-generate hope and activism among people worn down by today’s terrible economy.

But what will labor folks be asked to do once they get back to their hometowns after the rally? With the AFL-CIO finally applying some “street heat” in the nation’s capital, will labor’s leaders also recognize the need for ongoing mass protests at the local level?

Understandably, the AFL-CIO will be assigning highest priority in the next month to firing up other union members and their families to vote for Democratic candidates and prevent Republicans from gaining control of the House on November 2. A GOP takeover the House would blot out any and all hope of more forceful steps to heal the economy. This effort makes sense—if labor doesn’t stop there. Specifically, there is a badly-missing and vital component to the AFL-CIO strategy: forcefully and visibly taking on the forces that are destroying jobs and foreclosing working families’ homes en masse.

That’s why battles like the United Electrical workers Local 204 is waging against the Haskon plant closing in Taunton, Mass., is so crucial. Haskon’s parent company, Esterline Technologies, is moving to shut down a profitable plant and relocating the jobs to lower-wage facilities in Tijuana, Mexico (where wages in border-area plants are about 10% of manufacturing jobs in the United States) and Brea, Calif.

Struggles like the Taunton battle offer working people an alternative to the pervasive mindset of utter hopelessness and powerlessness. Workers finally get an outlet for the suffering, humiliation and insecurity that they have suffered since the recession turned their lives inside out. The Great Recession, occurring in a context of easy and rapid capital mobility unimaginable during the Great Depression, has magnified Corporate America’s power to threaten them with job loss unless they capitulate to more and more concessions.

FULL story at link.

[jwirr]

1. Hopefully this is the beginning.