CAROL SIMPSON DESIGNWORKS

Congrats, GM workers!

To my UAW brothers and sisters at the big table:

Good job on reaching the tentative agreement with General Motors, and thanks to all who did their part for all of us workers and retirees.

Now go home and get some rest – and remember to have GM sign with ink.

Randy Burlison
UAW Local 174 retiree
Novi, Mich.

Historical perspective

On Sept. 24 when the UAW strike against GM began, the day brought two conflicting frames for understanding the situation. Throughout the day, most commentators framed the situation in strictly economic terms.

Then much later in the day, PBS aired “The War,” which inconveniently framed the whole automobile sector in national security terms. With the nation’s security unarguably threatened, it recounted how Michigan’s Willow Run plant was converted from producing cars and trucks to producing bombers (at the amazing rate of one every 63 seconds!).

This conversion demonstrates the shortsightedness of a strictly economic view of the UAW GM

situation. The parties are more than automakers just-in-time; they are also bombermakers just-in-case. And “The War” might have had a different outcome to report if today’s advocates of globalization had had their way back then.

Robert A. Letcher, Ph.D.
Columbus, Ohio
Drive American

Drive American

As “snowbirds” driving back and forth from Florida each winter, my wife and I noticed that most of the lightweight pickups, medium-sized delivery and heavy-duty trucks were “made in America.”

Sometimes we purposely took back roads to see what we’d find.

Sure enough, most of the trucks we encountered along the way – new and old – were GM, Ford and Chrysler products. Amen!

I truly believe whatever the secret is that keeps generation after generation of Americans buying most of the U.S.-made trucks remains alive and well in the good old USA.

Some things about America need no explanation.

David Metzler
UAW Local 1714 retiree
Milton Township, Ohio

Talk up union cars

I urge all my fellow UAW members to congratulate all those buying American- and union-made cars. Make your message known when relatives and friends drive those foreign cars into your driveway. Explain what they are doing to your job.

The future is up to all of us. Get involved.

Milford C. Walker
UAW Local 923 retiree
Pico Rivera, Calif.