Ford Strike Action Preparation - Version 2

[Energised Activator]

The last couple of years have been unbearable, made possible by your side: the company bosses, the union brass and the Bush government. Are you now down to the short strokes writing up the fraudulent contract yet? Here's a concept for you to ponder as you put the finishing touches on that 2007 collective agreement - Whatever you want, we don’t want!

 

It was the workers love of justice that you have squashed under your jackboots as you stole away with our futures. Your desecration of our side is most inefficient and wastefull, as for each million dollars that you add to your takings, you must plunder and despoil the lives of forty workers. You are a predator, akin to the shark fin hunters that destroy many creatures leaving them to die an agonizing and horrific death, all for the sake of a few tasteless morsels. Your ill-gotten gains are completely undeserved but now the time has come and you must give it all up. Even so, this episode will still end unhappily for you, consummating with our widespread awareness in your levelling down and atonement. The secret is out now and your unhappiness is in sight.

 

Since the 2004 round, it's as if we've been forced to consume toxins from many sources, through our many senses. We have had enough of your force feedings. We'll no longer ingest the expressions of your anger and frustration that you force upon us. The tables have now been turned. Now you have become the diner, eating what we secrete. Get set, take a very deep breath, and ready yourself as we lavish your gullet on the non-stop, feeding frenzy of our purges and leavings. You might choke on our past collective sorrow and suffering that we now must disgorge into you. At the end of it all you shall be stuffed on the final course that is best eaten cold.

 

You have stolen our wealth and honors, and you have tarnished our ideals. You are unlikeable simply because of the extent of your greed, your intent on our defilement, and the manner in which you exploit your position. Nothing more about you needs to be known now. The cascades of sour emotions lead many of us to swerve our career paths down the road to push ahead to your career's collapse at a new kind of Burning Man Project theme park featuring a patriotism based upon a love of company and workplace culture. In that afterglow, your limited future prospects will dim and flame-out. Our side will move forward from your decommodification.

 

Don't dismiss this message as a passing flush of schadenfreude . That would involve some kind of enjoyment that's reserved for musing at the failings that befall legitimate acquaintances, friends, and even family member who are blessed with outstanding levels of: flawless beauty; flexibility and co-ordination; intelligence and spark. Oh no, what we got here is justice hunger, plain and simple. There is no joy here, we have been used up. This is a class war issue, a moral war battle driven by the intense distaste for your worldview, your inherent meanness, and your fraudulent manipulation of peoples lives. There will be no real joy in the spectacle of you being dragged down, seeing you fall from your high place, regardless of how unpleasant it will might be for you. There won't be any quiet delight in your comeuppance. There can be no suppressed joy, no silent satisfaction. There won't be anything warmhearted here, nothing that warms the cockles, no place for scorn, irony or sarcasm. From here on in, our role consists only in the cold-hearted observation and itemization of your justified downfall and your separation from your ill-gotten gains.

 

There has and always will be great distance and difference between us and you. These voids between your side and our side have grown more clear and discrete. The bitter feelings began when you started your bullying. The sensations kind of snuck up on each one of us, first as a twitch or a spasm, growing to feelings of generalized stress and tension as you strutted about flaunting your latest possession, all the while sneering and castigating and degrading the workers. As news of the failing of the company grew more frequent, many of us were left feeling an emptiness in the pit of the stomach area. Sharing our misery, we learned to identify one another in the aisle ways and dining areas, at worship and at community socials, but slowly we came to intensely crave the creepy, twisted, mis-shapen camaraderie that only covert chat roomies share. We are all in this together. We know that this has become a class action event. We know that your intents are to dominate and control our class. You provide no way forward for our happiness to advance, only a way for our spitefulness to expand exponentially. There is now an ease and calmness while waiting for mentions of you in the media - you are the embodiment of our resentment and contempt. There are no longer unpleasant feelings and emotions of hostility, sadness and anger. Thinking of you now brings a sense of complete inner emptiness and a pang of self-shallowness in ever having had believed in any of your many communications. But none of us ever wish we had what you have. We've spread the word of how you failed the country, the company, and the workers.

 

We are offended by your maliciousness greed and now wait for the next few days to pass when your aggressions will be neutralized.

Edited September 19, 2007 by Energised Activator

[Harry Bennet]

The last couple of years have been unbearable, made possible by your side: the company bosses, the union brass and the Bush government. Are you now down to the short strokes writing up the fraudulent contract yet? Here's a concept for you to ponder as you put the finishing touches on that 2007 collective agreement - Whatever you want, we don’t want!

 

It was the workers love of justice that you have squashed under your jackboots as you stole away with our futures. Your desecration of our side is most inefficient and wastefull, as for each million dollars that you add to your takings, you must plunder and despoil the lives of forty workers. You are a predator, akin to the shark fin hunters that destroy many creatures leaving them to die an agonizing and horrific death, all for the sake of a few tasteless morsels. Your ill-gotten gains are completely undeserved but now the time has come and you must give it all up. Even so, this episode will still end unhappily for you, consummating with our widespread awareness in your levelling down and atonement. The secret is out now and your unhappiness is in sight.

 

Since the 2004 round, it's as if we've been forced to consume toxins from many sources, through our many senses. We have had enough of your force feedings. We'll no longer ingest the expressions of your anger and frustration that you force upon us. The tables have now been turned. Now you have become the diner, eating what we secrete. Get set, take a very deep breath, and ready yourself as we lavish your gullet on the non-stop, feeding frenzy of our purges and leavings. You might choke on our past collective sorrow and suffering that we now must disgorge into you. At the end of it all you shall be stuffed on the final course that is best eaten cold.

 

You have stolen our wealth and honors, and you have tarnished our ideals. You are unlikeable simply because of the extent of your greed, your intent on our defilement, and the manner in which you exploit your position. Nothing more about you needs to be known now. The cascades of sour emotions lead many of us to swerve our career paths down the road to push ahead to your career's collapse at a new kind of Burning Man Project theme park featuring a patriotism based upon a love of company and workplace culture. In that afterglow, your limited future prospects will dim and flame-out. Our side will move forward from your decommodification.

 

Don't dismiss this message as a passing flush of schadenfreude . That would involve some kind of enjoyment that's reserved for musing at the failings that befall legitimate acquaintances, friends, and even family member who are blessed with outstanding levels of: flawless beauty; flexibility and co-ordination; intelligence and spark. Oh no, what we got here is justice hunger, plain and simple. There is no joy here, we have been used up. This is a class war issue, a moral war battle driven by the intense distaste for your worldview, your inherent meanness, and your fraudulent manipulation of peoples lives. There will be no real joy in the spectacle of you being dragged down, seeing you fall from your high place, regardless of how unpleasant it will might be for you. There won't be any quiet delight in your comeuppance. There can be no suppressed joy, no silent satisfaction. There won't be anything warmhearted here, nothing that warms the cockles, no place for scorn, irony or sarcasm. From here on in, our role consists only in the cold-hearted observation and itemization of your justified downfall and your separation from your ill-gotten gains.

 

There has and always will be great distance and difference between us and you. These voids between your side and our side have grown more clear and discrete. The bitter feelings began when you started your bullying. The sensations kind of snuck up on each one of us, first as a twitch or a spasm, growing to feelings of generalized stress and tension as you strutted about flaunting your latest possession, all the while sneering and castigating and degrading the workers. As news of the failing of the company grew more frequent, many of us were left feeling an emptiness in the pit of the stomach area. Sharing our misery, we learned to identify one another in the aisle ways and dining areas, at worship and at community socials, but slowly we came to intensely crave the creepy, twisted, mis-shapen camaraderie that only covert chat roomies share. We are all in this together. We know that this has become a class action event. We know that your intents are to dominate and control our class. You provide no way forward for our happiness to advance, only a way for our spitefulness to expand exponentially. There is now an ease and calmness while waiting for mentions of you in the media - you are the embodiment of our resentment and contempt. There are no longer unpleasant feelings and emotions of hostility, sadness and anger. Thinking of you now brings a sense of complete inner emptiness and a pang of self-shallowness in ever having had believed in any of your many communications. But none of us ever wish we had what you have. We've spread the word of how you failed the country, the company, and the workers.

 

We are offended by your maliciousness greed and now wait for the next few days to pass when your aggressions will be neutralized.

AWESOME!

I can tell you are just gonna love the VEBA

If the UAW is good enough to negoiate for you, they should be even better at insuring you

maybe next contract, the UAW will start running its own workers' comp

AWESOME!!

[06StangAwesomecar]

AWESOME!

I can tell you are just gonna love the VEBA

If the UAW is good enough to negoiate for you, they should be even better at insuring you

maybe next contract, the UAW will start running its own workers' comp

AWESOME!!

 

 

Nope not in favor of Veba, also dont believe the big 3 is in any dire straits either with all the waste I see at work, And the daily management blunders. A third party other then the Uaw is suppose to run it anyway. I am glad that it bothers you that I may agree with SOME of what EA writes. If you dont like it dont click it, ok mr pushover.

[Energised Activator]

THIS IS THE FIGHT OF THE WORKERS TO GET THEIR FAIR SHARE OF FUTURE PROFITS.

 

NOTE: Although suppressed by the union officialdom, there were numerous GM and Chrysler tentative contract documents, leaflets, and explanatory notes that appeared online during the ratification process of those deals last month. Apparently, the two dissident websites Soldiers of Solidarity SOS and the Future of the Union FOTU are extending this service and are to be hosting the documentation during this 3rd tenetative agreement ratifcation drive.

 

The pre-strike committee leadership can begin to instruct its branches about organizing the basic element of the fightback, namely the general assembly of workers. These general assemblies are needed to allow for the voice of the workers to be heard, to prevail, and to dominate in the participation of what comes next. By their very nature, there is no place in the general assemblies for official union-like bureaucracy or for domination by the union officialdom, whose influence must be ignored. These general assemblies must be open to all potential contract voters. During any discussion, anyone who attends that meeting gets to vote on each and every item put to a vote - stuff like what the leaflet should contain, where congregations should occur, how much and what type of supplies are needed etc. Interest and participation in these alternative worker collectives will grow steadily and rapidly. A telephone tree and an email tree must be developed so that rapid communication can be ensured. Each tree participant should call-back to confirm the message just received hasn't been sent by a message channel hi-jacker.

 

Wildcatting and milling about are two direct action techniques used by the rank and file to signal to both the union officialdom and the employer that the real source of authority is with the general assembly of workers. There might be 10 or more general assembly of workers within an assembly facility. These different general assemblies can share the burden of direct action. These agile groups must be able to change modes within minutes in order to produce generalized dislocation of the inplant operations as required. The individual branches decide for themselves whether to go activate. Sometimes the unrest spreads and hardens in response to retaliations orchestrated by the managers. Any general assembly of workers can take on the payback job sparked by actions of the bosses, and they don't have to wait to be asked. Momentum grows quickly so there's no need in backing off when others join in either.

 

There will be many detractors that will side against the general assembly of workers at any given time, this is to be expected and encouraged. Only then will all worker voices be heard. Every worker can get in this game, doing whatever it takes. Just like two rival teams, squaring off for the first time, there is no plan available. Talk is cheap, planning is for the birds. Strategies fall apart when they come face to face with reality. But instead of the play of the week being completed in 30 seconds before our eyes on TV, it will actually take about a week of personal involvement for this 'NO' vote action to complete favorably. The single, whole, slow-motion play to achieve a massive 'NO' vote turnout will take that long, and it will be tough. It won't be pretty, you might loose some friends, but you'll make new ones. The victorious must always feel their way, head down, arses up, driving, driving, driving that scrum over the goal line. Voices of deception and imminent collapse will signal others in the ruck to alter their course, realign their wedged intensity, to push on through to success. This ever so slow moving phalanx of workers, pushing the 'NO' vote forward cannot be deceived, misdirected or re-routed. Let those cries of weakness, failure, fear and despair act as guiding beacons away from the no-go zones and onto worker dominance.

 

The worker 'NO' vote movement will spread from the big cities and their suburbs into small towns and remote areas and the situation will become serious. Once the defiance hardens and the fightback becomes more radicalized some unusual formations will develop. These are to given a wide berth and counter-efforts to blunt their protests will fuel them to more physical expressions moving the other side closer to the verge of implosion. Some members will be uncomfortable being in the thick of dangerous, agitating forces and find the entire week long episode extremely tense. Since the employer has moved to pull out the rug form each and every worker, most workers will find that worrying aloud won't cut it and that they will be swept up in the conflict that threatens the cohesion of the social fabric.

 

Some statements of uneasiness will be expressed by the union officialdom as they experience disruptions to their chain of command. They will make every attempt to mobilize their minions to reverse the blockages and direct actions. This hypocracy will further fuel the mounting anger and frustration among working class.

 

Little time should be spent on coordination of the escalating struggle, because like any natural force, it has its own internal mechanism that ensure its survival. Calls for this or that action will be met with acceptance or rejection based upon the power left within the particular general assembly of workers. Inspiring speeches, showboating and grandstanding are stuff and nonsense of the cinema, not worker fightbacks. Engagement will consist of a step forward, disengagement will consist of a foot firmly planted.

 

The professional media will focus much of its coverage on denouncing destructive forces from within the rank and file. We're sure to hear all about the 'shocking' defiance and 'selfishness' of the working class who participated in confrontations with their 'masters' and the powers that be. The popular press will play up the relatively few instances where workers expressions are physicalized. This denunciation of the active components is clearly aimed at weakening the fightback by promoting class warfare hysteria. No doubt the union officialdom will be in the thick of it, spreading their intense hatred and disrespect for workers. Some of these goons might provoke ugly incidents in despair as they sense the loss of control and ability to exploit the rank and file.

 

Many different calls to end the dispute will come, and with each suggestion there will be an associated cost. Most of the calls will be meaningless and many members will be attracted to these efforts to pull the plug on the struggle because their personal sense of uncertainty, fear and frustration will be uncomfortable. This is how the union officialdom was able to overcome opposition at GM and Chrysler. This time however it is expected that their half-assed solutions will only be met with more enraged workers, and the direct actions will continue to spread. Some of the more conservative workers will begin their solemn appeal for calm, lamenting they are no longer to support worker anarchy and defiance. Likewise, their anxiety that events might escape their control will be ignored. Their calls for another go round at the bargaining table that were to enrich the tentative contract as it is by several percentage points across the board will be shunned. After several read throughs of the current offer, the more radical elements will push harder away from that conservative faction and its inability to grasp the gravity of the situation in which the membership has been plunged.

 

As with Chrysler, there is high expectations for deceit and misdirection from the combined forces of union officialdom & management. A cascade of secret, here-to-fore unannounced special deal will appear. These claims for special dispensations will be hailed as 'evidence of genuine representation and concern for workers and their plight' despite the fact that the rest of the agreement holds provision that remove the activation and compliance of these specials. Some disconnected workers will try to gain support from the broader labor movement and undoubtedly some messages will appear. However, the rank and file alone are the owners of this fight, it's to be conducted by them, on their own turf, and for their own benefit.

 

The phony politicians, business hacks and mouthpieces will be out in force to chastise workers and their families with diagrams, graphs, charts and stats and other props. They will offer some kind of phantom solidarity, a ghost like helping hand, redeemable after a settlement is reached, that dissolves on impact. There will be calls to blame workers elsewhere instead - other automakers employees or other industries like steel and plastics, calls to solve this crisis later at the ballot box, call to stop the insanity. But this is not their fight either. This is the fight of the workers to get their fair share of future profits.

 

The parts sector bosses will chime in with their fears that the workers' action and fightback could explode and threaten the 'unity of the auto sector', spiralling it out of control. Of course, the recent announcements of layoffs by Chrysler and GM after their deal was ratified, were made to stick it to this automaker, hopefully wounding their chances for a quick settlement. So much for automaker solidarity or industrial solidarity, or capitalist solidarity. The general assemblies will be accused time and time again of acting as though they didn't want to resolve the crisis.

 

The twenty some years in which workers spent cooperating has come to an end. The automakers have shut the door on jointness, unity, progressives industrial relations and all that other crud which enriched the union officialdom and destroyed worker solidarity. The automakers still believe they can get through this period of change by depending on worker compliance using union bosses conditioned to control the rank and file all the while their profitting from their pro-capitalist agenda.

 

The rank and file struggle will also be recast and dressed up in many ways: as a struggle for democracy, a fight for the middle class, yet another round where globalists kick the living shit out of America, an attack against the working class, a growing movement to mobilize the entire working class to rise up and shut down services, production and transportation etc and so on. This fight, here and now, is an economic dispute between this employer and this workforce, plain and simple. This is the fight of the workers to get their fair share of future profits.

 

Trade union leaders never tire of pushing the lie that the main enemy of workers are foreigners rather than business owners. The general public will join in and conduct a general strike of its own accord, autoworkers are only a small part of that larger whole. There is no amount of directing, or cajoling, or wishing or wanting from within an autoplant that will bring about the launching a general strike at this time. Yes, it could happen rather quickly, and somewhat violently, but the autoworkers won't be in charge and at the control helm directing each and every facet of that struggle. This union leadership has convinced themselves that since they don't have a concrete, workable, do-able plan before them that they are unable to commit to fighting the employer on any terms. The reality is that workers are moving in a direction that they are bound, without a plan of any kind, and the union brass is just tagging along. That movement of workers is unstoppable. The general uprising will bypass the union officialdom, just as the rank and file have done countless times before. It's the workers who are fighting the employer, it's not the union brass, not the politicians, not the community leaders and not the power of goodwill or the sense of what's right. The workers are enforcing their claim to a fair share of future profits.

 

The union officialdom will attempt to lead the workers to victory only in an effort to maintain control over the rank and file. Like everything else they touch, even that will turn to shit. The union brass has inevitably sabotaged each and every serious struggle at the first opportunity. They can only justify their existence where there is a weak and frightened workforce. The general assemblies of workers arranged at each unit of every workplace of the employer are there to carry out an effective fightback. The influence of the union brass must be cut off at the knees. We have seen this defiance sprout somewhat at GM, and recently, the defiance at Chrysler was almost enough to sink the tentative deal there, almost. Workers now must form and access the power of general assemblies to fight of the poisonous political influence of the union bureaucrats. Workers must expand their own influence by putting forward the measures necessary to win the 'NO' vote. Again, every effort to publically expose the defeatist, give back mentality of the union brass must be made loudly, clearly and often to further disgrace their worthless concepts and frightened, powerless emotional frailties.

 

An effective 'NO' vote may bring down the top of the union officialdom and might trigger a coup at the master negotiations table. The kernel of this type of insurrection was present at Chrysler last month as seen when Bill Parker, President of the Sterling Heights Local, came out all elbows, fists and knees against the Chrysler deal and its promoters. But while there was immense opposition to the UAW-Chrysler assault on job security, there was never any serious prospect of an immediate revolutionary challenge to the rule of the UAW Caucus. All of that may or may not take place somewhere down the road, but for now there is one goal and that is the fight of the workers to get their fair share of future profits. One possible way forward to that objective would be, after the 'NO' vote, to reformulate the existing national bargaining committee with members that will start from scratch and generate a completely new tentative agreement that’s acceptable to the membership.

 

That replacement tentative agreement might appear in six months from now, maybe sooner, maybe longer. Meanwhile, there is no rush to get it done. The workers have waited nearly two months without a deal being offered, they can work for many months to come without a contract. During that time the company can being growing their profits, reaping in the benefits of the business plan, and the workers could keep tabs on how much less they would be asked to concede.

 

A class-struggle leadership will emerge this week in some form or other. Management and the union brass will join as one and argue that the workers must accept, without struggle, whatever the tentative agreement spells out for them. You''l hear from the company and the union that the workers class-struggle leadership are 'socialists' and socialists are un-American, and defiance of union brass say so is un-American, and on and on. This current tentative agreement does not enforce the workers claim to a fair share of future profits, so it has no value. The union officialdom is promoting a deal that is worthless.

 

The general assemblies of workers must make every effort to place demands on the union leaders in order to expose the contradiction between the worker's militant demands for their fair share of the future profits and the officialdom’s cowardly and craven actions to give it all away. The union bureaucrats will be openly seeking to demobilize the 'NO' vote action and any effort to attack the control of their base. By using agitation and direct action, the workplace general assemblies must also seek explanations of why the bureaucrats refused to undertake any serious preparations for a strike.

 

Each and every class-war militant must prepare to fight attempts by the bosses and the union brass to erode living and working standards. This is the fight of the workers to get their fair share of future profits.

Edited November 5, 2007 by Energised Activator

[Harry Bennet]

what are you going do with all the strike money you were hoarding?

buy a couple barrels of crude oil for $100?

[xr7g428]

This is the fight of the workers to get their fair share of future profits.

 

What a catch 22 this is... Will there be any future profits?

[DetroitDriver77]

I see Energized Masturbator is still spouting his usual socialist, workers-of-the-world unite drivel. Wonder if he'll take a buy out and go the fuck away.

Edited November 6, 2007 by DetroitDriver77

[Harry Bennet]

What a catch 22 this is... Will there be any future profits?

The CAW traded profit sharing for job security, seen the results?