 International
solidarity helps save British auto jobs
International solidarity helped persuade General Motors March 5 to reverse
its decision to shut down an assembly plant and eliminate 2,200 jobs in
Luton, England, north of London.
“You can count on the solidarity of the UAW in the fight to win
a just and fair solution for the workers at Luton,” UAW President
Stephen P. Yokich and UAW Vice President Richard Shoemaker, told British
trade unions.
Yokich and Shoemaker said successful rallies in Luton and across Europe
in recent weeks have been an inspiring demonstration of the unity of the
unions at Luton, in the United Kingdom labor movement and in the GM European
Works Council.
A one-day protest strike by 40,000 members of the German metalworkers
union, IG Metall, supported protests three days earlier at the Luton and
Ellesmere Port plants called by the British Transport and General Workers
Union (TGWU).
Cross-border support from the German metalworkers union was all the more
remarkable because production from a closed Luton plant would have been
shifted to Germany and the Netherlands.
Claus Zwickel, president of IG Metall, sees cross-border cooperation
between unions as the way of the future.
“The trade union structure in Europe has got to change. First it
will happen on a national level, but the changing structure of our economies
means that it will also happen on a wider basis,” said Zwickel.
The terms of the TGWU-GM agreement calls for continued production at
the Luton plant of the Frontera and the addition of a new product called
the Vivaro.Management agreed to take all reasonable steps to avoid layoffs
during a period of restructuring. To achieve this goal, part-time work,
transfers to other national or international GM locations, voluntary separation
and early retirement may be instituted.
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