St. Paul Ford workers discuss the latest threat to their jobs Layoffs hit.  Black auto workers hardest
By: Chris Nisan Minnesota Spokesman-Recorder Originally posted 2/1/2006

Ford worker Azariah believes the St. Paul plant¹s end may be near.
Photos by Emmett Timmons
 ³I don¹t see Ford going under, but they are sure going to be small,² said auto worker Azariah of Ford Motor Company¹s future in the aftermath of the company¹s recent announcement of massive layoffs and plant closures in an interview with the Spokesman-Recorder. Azariah, who goes by the single name, is a 20-year member of the United Auto Workers union at Ford Motor Company¹s Twin Cities Assembly Plant in St. Paul.

The local facility is under consideration for closure by the auto manufacturing giant, along with a number of other plants across the country. ³There is a wide range of opinion among workers,² said Azariah, ³but the common denominator is that no one wants to see it close.²

Ford announced several weeks ago that it would slash up to 30,000 jobs within the next four years and shut down 14 factories. Last week, the automaker made public the first plant closures that included facilities in St. Louis, Atlanta, and Wixom, Michigan. In total, the proposed cuts amount to 25 percent of its North American payroll.

The Twin Cities plant was on the original short list of factories to be closed, but it dodged the bullet in this first round of shutdowns.

 Crisis in the auto industry

Confronted with steadily declining sales and profits, the two other U.S. auto manufacturers, General Motors (GM) and Daimler-Chrysler, have taken similar actions to confront the profit crunch and intensifying competition.

GM announced several months ago its intent to cut 30,000 jobs in the U.S. and Canada, cuts that amount to 17 percent of its labor force. Last week, Daimler-Chrysler said that it would eliminate 6,000 white-collar jobs, 20 percent of its administrative work force around the world.

In all, the so-called Big Three U.S. auto companies have cut or declared plans to cut almost 140,000 jobs since 2000. That is about one-third of the entire North American payroll. ³This may not be the end, but it is certainly the beginning of the end of the automobile industry as we knew it,² said Gary N. Chaison, a professor of industrial relations at Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts, in an article in the New York Times.

The source of the problem for the ³Big Three² is the worldwide crisis of overproduction in the manufacture and sale of automobiles. The result of this has been intensifying competition and declining profit rates.

As this competition has intensified, Ford and GM in particular have lost a significant portion of the U.S. market. At the same time, automotive manufacturing monopolies based in Asia have increased their share of the U.S. market to 31 percent last year.

All together, the share of the market owned by U.S. auto companies dropped to 58.7 percent last year, according to Autodata Corp. Chrysler ‹ which is majority-owned by German automaker Daimler ‹ is the only U.S.-based auto manufacturing company that increased its share of the market last year, with a four-percent gain.

Azariah explained the impact this has had on production in Ford¹s Twin Cities plant: ³With a line speed of 50 jobs per hour and a 40-hour work week, we produce 8,000 trucks a month per shift. We have two shifts, which equal 16,000 trucks per month. Over the last two months, Ford has only sold in the area of 8,000 trucks.²

 Concession demands on workers intensify

In making these big job cuts and plant closures, in addition to demands for wage and benefit concessions, the auto companies have announced their intention of taking this profit crisis out on their workforce.

³These are some difficult times working people will have to go through for the next decades,² said Azariah. ³They are going to come after everything they think they can get.²

Mark Fields, Ford¹s new point person for their restructuring program euphemistically titled ³The Way Forward,² confirmed Azariah¹s predictions in comments made two weeks ago. Fields said that his goal is to put workers ³in a crisis mode.²

In the face of these attacks, autoworkers across the country have begun to speak out and take the first steps toward organizing resistance to the attacks. ³For the first time in a long time, I see workers reaching out,² said Tom Laney. Laney, who retired from Ford several years ago, worked at the Twin Cities plant for 31 years and served as president of the United Auto Workers union (UAW) local 879 from 1984-87.

³Workers at Delphi have organized a national slowdown,² said Laney, referring to workers at GM¹s auto parts subsidiary, who are currently fighting against concession demands from the company.

In order to convince union members to accept their massive concession demands, auto companies make the argument that workers should take cuts in wages, benefits, and working conditions to save the company and thus save jobs for some. However, Laney argues, ³Our job as workers is not to save the corporation, but to save these poor people on the street!²

Laney explained what he considers necessary for working people to confront the crisis: ³What¹s happening is that they are waging a war abroad and at home against working people. The only answer for the Auto Workers union is to build connections within the union and solidarity between the union and the working people in the communities. The old idea of the labor movement was to fight for a job for everyone; I think the old idea is a good idea.²

For Ford retiree Desi Arnaz Scott, confronting the challenges facing the union means finding a way to organize the unions in plants where it does not exist to take away the auto bosses¹ ability to drive wages, benefits, and working conditions down. ³I want the UAW to come down here [in Mississippi] and organize Nissan,² said Scott in an interview with the Spokesman-Recorder.

Scott was the second Black woman hired at the Twin Cities plant in 1973. She was also the first Black woman to retire from the plant, an accomplishment of which she is proud. She now lives in Bentonia, Mississippi, with her husband, who is also retired recently from Ford.

Scott discussed some of the problems she has in attempting to convince workers she knows who work at the Nissan auto plant in nearby Canton, Mississippi, to organize a union. ³They make $12 to $13 an hour without many of the benefits I enjoy as a UAW member. When I tell them to get the union in the plant, they tell me, ŒNo. The company says that they will close the plant if we get a union.¹²

 Industry crisis hits Black workers harder

The industry¹s crisis is having a disproportionately negative impact on Black workers. A study recently released by the Center for Economic and Policy Research, ³The Decline in African-American Representation in Unions and Auto Manufacturing, 1979-2004,² presents figures that outline the sharp decline in Black employment in the auto industry.

In 1979, says the report, ³2.1 percent of all African-American workers were employed in automobile manufacturing. By 2004, this share had fallen by more than one-third to 1.3 percent. By contrast, the share of white workers employed in auto manufacturing fell just 0.2 percentage points from 1.3 percent to 1.1 percent. The share of Hispanic workers also fell by 0.2 percentage points, from 0.8 percent to 0.6 percent.²

This decline has taken place despite the fact that Black workers still maintain a higher percentage of union members based on their numbers in the workforce. Says the report: ³In 2004, African-Americans were still more likely to be in a union (16.6 percent) than whites (13.9) and Hispanics (11.4 percent). Nevertheless, the decline in union membership for black workers between 1983 and 2004 was sharper for blacks (down 15.1 percentage points) than it was for whites (down 8.3 percentage points) and Hispanics (down 12.8 percentage points).

 Elected officials try bargaining with Ford

Local elected officials have negotiated with Ford in an effort to convince the company to keep the Twin Cities facility open. The main proposal officials have made to Ford has been to reconfigure the plant to make hybrid cars, with the state and city government picking up a good deal of the bill in the form of research and development monies, tax breaks, and other incentives.

Governor Tim Pawlenty proposed that the State and Ford build a ³Center of Excellence in Renewable Fuels.² In his proposal, Pawlenty promised that the state would make ³significant investments in this effort.²

Azariah is not optimistic about the prospects of the plant staying open. ³I think the fact that the Twin Cities plant was not mentioned [in the first round of closures] does not mean that we are out of the woods. All of the reasons that they gave for closing the other facilities all apply here, too.²

And if the State gives Ford some money to stay? ³All they¹ll do is buy some time,² Azariah said. ³Ford will take the money, keep the plant open for a little while, and close it anyway.²

 Chris Nisan welcomes reader responses to cnisan@spokesman-recorder.com.

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