Vehicle sections employees at Dana, Inc. in Warren, Michigan have proven a rank-and-file committee to carry out a battle versus the company and the professional-firm United Auto Workers. The transnational company and the UAW are conspiring with each other to drive by a deal on staff by now laboring under incredibly exploitative circumstances. Their deal expired August 18. The UAW has declared that a tentative settlement has been reached but has furnished no even more information and facts.
The Dana Workers Rank-and-File Committee can be contacted by electronic mail at [email protected] or textual content at (248) 602–0936.
Dana Brothers and Sisters:
We, the Dana Employees Rank-and File Committee (DWRFC), are ill and weary of being kept in the dark by the UAW about the deal that will ascertain the upcoming several years of our life. It has been two days considering the fact that our contract expired and 24 hrs because the UAW introduced a tentative arrangement, but we have been told almost nothing.
Allow us be distinct: this indicates the contract is a whole sellout that ought to be rejected. If there were being any gains for staff in the tentative settlement, the UAW would have instructed us proper absent. In truth, they probable agreed on the deal a lengthy time ago. They have not been “negotiating” about the terms, but conspiring from us and arranging how to force as a result of a rotten deal.
We as a result simply call on Dana staff in all places to be a part of us in demanding the subsequent:
1. The immediate launch of the full settlement and all the facet letters and memoranda of knowledge.
2. At the very least a single week to study and discuss the agreement right before any ratification vote.
3. Rank-and-file oversight of the voting system to prevent any fraud.
Not the moment has the UAW requested us, the employees of Dana, what we require. Dana and the UAW’s only desire is serving to the company make as a great deal income as doable, no issue the charge to our life and bodies. We have been working through the pandemic below backbreaking conditions, jeopardizing our life as Dana’s profits soar.
Dana posted $2.2 billion in gross sales for the 2nd quarter of 2021 with an operating funds move of $67 million above that same time. Dana’s CEO created over $10 million final 12 months. The enterprise is planning to make even much more dollars off our labor beneath the subsequent deal.
In a public assertion on July 30, Jonathan Collins, Dana’s chief money officer, mentioned: “Sales will probably be at the bigger close because of to the solid current market need in the initial half of this calendar year and our outlook for the remainder of the year. Our reliable performance and encouraging demand from customers fundamentals maintain us locked on a trajectory toward our extended-term economical goals.”
In the meantime, we are laboring below problems that are the same or even worse than staff in the 1800s confronted.
We do the job 19 days in a row—8 or 10 several hours a day—before we get a single unpaid working day off. We have to have a perfect attendance document for a total quarter in advance of we get a paid working day off. Quite a few of us get the job done 60 or 70 several hours a 7 days. There is no air conditioning at the Warren plant, and temperatures get to 110 degrees in the summertime. One particular of our coworkers died of COVID. The devices are aged, and there are perilous chemicals in the air we breathe, but there is no true cleaning. There is a severe attendance policy that penalizes us if we are even a moment late. Some of us phone the plant a “slave ship.” These are the circumstances that exist in our “union shop” whilst the UAW executives make six-determine salaries.
It is time we communicate about what the personnel will need, not what the corporation would like. There is loads of revenue to secure a great residing standard for all of us.
Therefore, the Dana Workers’ Rank-and-File Committee proposes the pursuing minimal requires for a contract we will settle for, for workers to discuss and consider:
- A 75 percent wage maximize for all workers. This is what we have to have to make a dwelling wage and make up for all earlier concessions.
- Abolition of the multi-tier program and restoration of the theory of “equal pay back for equal perform.”
- A 40-hour operate week and the guaranteed suitable to a weekend.
- A reversal of all earlier attacks on our wellbeing care.
- An finish to velocity-up and harassment by administration. We are self-respecting personnel, not inmates in a prison.
- Experienced cleaning of the devices and rapid tests of the air high-quality to assure we are not respiratory poisonous air.
- Abolition of the factors technique for attendance.
- Satisfactory air conditioning.
- Workers’ oversight of safety protocols and social distancing to halt the distribute of COVID-19. The proper to halt output and close the plant for total cleansing, with confirmed compensation to employees for all skipped time, if there are COVID outbreaks.
It is time to get ready for a genuine struggle, but this needs obvious facts and a common approach. The UAW threatens us by stating if we strike, we will be out for 90 times and we will shed. They attempt to pit older and youthful personnel from each and every other, even although Dana has a lot more than ample funds to give employees of all working experience levels a substantial raise.
We know that a strike is serious business, that it requires organizing, preparing and, most importantly, unity.
Dana employees have immense probable energy. We occupy a crucial role in the world wide vehicle offer chain, and a well-ready strike would deliver huge shockwaves throughout the entire world. We have potent allies amongst Dana employees internationally as well as autoworkers much more broadly. Dana is a massive intercontinental corporation with 36,000 employees on every continent. It has manufacturing plants in Thailand, China, India, South Africa, Argentina, Ecuador, Colombia, Mexico, Canada, Spain, France, Germany, Italy, the United Kingdom, Hungary and Sweden wherever personnel make parts just like we do.
We are section of a globally advancement of operating class opposition to company dictatorship and massive degrees of social inequality. There are important strikes getting put among the Warrior Satisfied miners in Alabama, Rio Tinto miners in Canada, railroad staff in the United Kingdom, Nabisco employees in Oregon, midwives in New Zealand, instructors in Sri Lanka, and quite a few a lot more staff of all races and ethnicities in a wide variety of industries speaking quite a few different languages.
Specially critical is the strike of 3,000 Volvo personnel earlier this year in Virginia. These workers established up a rank-and-file committee to carry forward their battle from the firm and the UAW and set a model that we must comply with.
To unite with us in a prevalent battle, we urge our brothers and sisters to be part of the Dana Personnel Rank-and-File Committee. E-mail us at [email protected] and text us at (248) 602–0936.
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