As voting moves into the final stages of the first-ever direct election for United Auto Workers national officials, statements of support for Mack Trucks worker Will Lehman continue to pour in. Lehman is running for UAW president, demanding that power be transferred to the workers in the factories and that the corrupt union apparatus be abolished.
Will Lehman supporters continue to alert workers to the campaign, countering the UAW’s efforts to keep turnout low. The UAW officialdom wants union members to be ignorant of the election, the right to vote of all due-paying UAW members—temp workers, retirees, and full-time workers—and their right to information about candidates. In particular, the UAW machinery fears that Lehman will gain strong campaign support from younger, temporary, and lower-wage workers. Low wages, the denial of basic services and job protections are imposed on them.
A team of Will Lehman supporters recently visited the Ford Kentucky truck plant outside of Louisville. The plant builds the highly profitable Ford Super Duty pickup, the Ford Expedition and the Lincoln Navigator SUV. The plant will also invest $700 million to produce a modified version of the Super Duty. As part of the transition to electric vehicles, Ford is also building two new battery plants in Kentucky.
However, the company’s nearby Louisville Assembly Plant (LAP) assembly plant has not scheduled a vehicle to replace the Ford Eclipse and Lincoln Corsair crossover currently being built at that plant. This leaves the possibility that the plant will be closed or that Ford will use the fate of the jobs in LAP as leverage in the 2023 collective bargaining agreement.
General Motors threatened to close five plants ahead of 2019 wage negotiations, three of which eventually closed, including the historic Lordstown assembly plant in northeast Ohio.
An analyst told Automotive News that the closure of LAP cannot be ruled out as Ford is building a new electric vehicle assembly plant in Tennessee as part of its Blue Oval complex outside of Memphis. The company has not publicly stated whether it plans to recognize the UAW at the new plant.
Lehman has issued a statement calling for full mobilization by UAW members, including a US-wide strike, to confront threatened job cuts at LAP and other plants.
“When you add capacity, you always jeopardize an older plant,” said the analyst. “Louisville is a large facility and has an established workforce. But the downside is that it will soon be 70 years old.
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“I’m voting for Will because he’s not establishment,” a longtime KTP worker told campaigners. “The team of [UAW-Präsident] Ray Curry and Team United are part of the establishment and will not do anything for us. We need pretty much everything [Will] wrote in this leaflet: cost of living, abolition of the two-tier wage system, wage increases and pensions for all.
We need the things we lost. Someone has to fight for us and help us get it back. We must help each other. People who are homeless work at Ford. I know people who are going through a tough time and we need better pay, equal pay… I have relatives who are losing their homes… It’s breathtaking, especially here in Louisville.
Ford is a multibillion-dollar company, and it’s not a company for anyone who’s homeless or going through a difficult financial period. We need a 50 percent wage increase and COLA [gleitender Inflationsausgleich]. If that’s what we want back, then it is [Will] a good man who should be in charge.”
A young worker at the Kentucky Truck Plant said: “The biggest problems for me are the work overload and the pay scale system. The UAW has given up so much for second-tier workers, e.g. B. the pension funds. There are no real workplace safety regulations. I was injured because of the overload at my workplace.
I agree with Will’s call for wage increases and inflation compensation [COLA] match. Amazon workers earn more than a new Ford worker. In the last collective bargaining agreement, even Level 1 workers didn’t get a pay rise.
Attendance is bad too. People work even if they have Covid because they can’t afford furlough. The point system is used to discourage workers from taking a day off.
I’ve been chasing the railroad workers. They fight for higher wages and paid sick leave. They had to work during the pandemic. Now management and Biden are trying to stop them from going on strike. They all refer to us as ‘essential workers’, the railroad workers, the truck drivers, the health care workers and the manufacturing workers. After the short lockdown they say it is now ok to go back to work and catch Covid.”
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Will Lehman’s campaign has also received a great response from Ford workers in Detroit.
“Ed,” a young worker at the Dearborn Truck Assembly Plant outside of Detroit, has been working there since October 2021. He told Lehman’s supporters that he only makes $18 an hour despite working full-time.
He’s already been pushed back and forth between different teams and jobs three times. He started on the A shift but was then moved to the C shift where he lost his previous job because it was already filled. After some time, he asked to be transferred back to the A shift, where his old job was again taken over by another worker.
Ed said he’s considering voting for Will Lehman: “My biggest concern,” he said, “is that they don’t give you a proper education to do a job. You just get let loose on a job. There is no communication with the workers, either from the company or the union.”
Carl, a worker at Ford’s Michigan assembly plant in the Detroit suburb of Wayne, said he works full-time, on the second shift and the third shift. He had received a ballot and was going to mail it in last weekend.
“I’m all for what Will is saying, including building action committees and putting power in the hands of the workers. No one will do that for us,” he said.
“One of my buddies recommended me for this job at Ford. I’m not from a Ford family. I thought great! A job at Ford solved my problems. In the past, auto workers set the standard for the middle class.
But that is no longer the case. Wages are too low. People with families have a hard time staying afloat. You must be thinking about getting a second job.
I just switched to the paint shop. You never know when you’re working and when you’re free.”