Locked-out Cooper Tire workers in Findlay, Ohio

On the picket lines in Findlay, Ohio, important political questions are emerging as Cooper Tire workers grapple with the issues posed by their nearly two-month struggle.

A question frequently put to reporters from the World Socialist Web Site by the workers, who are resisting the company’s wage-cutting demands, is: “How can the economy function if wages are driven so low that workers can no longer afford the commodities they produce?”

Workers approach this question very practically. The lowering of wages leads to falling demand and lower sales. Why would the corporations cut off their noses to spite their faces? It seems to defy common sense.

The first thing to be said is that the experience of the parents and grandparents of the Findlay workers, whereby a manufacturing worker, especially at a unionized company, could expect to earn a decent wage and have decent benefits, is by no means the historical norm in America. The ability of American industrial workers to have a reasonably secure and even comfortable existence was entirely the result of bitter, bloody and protracted struggles involving millions and spanning decades.

The Detroit Library Commission has voted to re-open the Monteith Library on Detroit’s eastside. The motion was carried at a January 17 commission meeting, which gave staff 20 workdays to draw up a plan to re-open the branch.

The Monteith branch was shuttered in December along with three other branch libraries in the city: Lincoln, Mark Twain Annex and Richard. The closures sparked protests by community residents, determined to prevent a further decimation of services in neighborhoods ravaged by decades of cuts.

The library commission ordered the closures citing severe staff shortages due to the layoff of 82 library personnel last year. The commission originally slated six branches for closure. Following a series of protests by Westside and eastside Detroit neighborhoods they later reduced the number to four.

While residents of the Monteith neighborhood are understandably pleased that their library is scheduled to reopen, there are many issues left unresolved. There are presently no plans to recall laid off staff or reopen the three other closed libraries. Jo Anne Mondowney, executive director of the Detroit Public Library, said that they might readjust library hours and share staff with other libraries to facilitate the reopening of Monteith.

Contract negotiations between the United States Postal Service (USPS) and two of its unions, the National Association of Letter Carriers (NALC) and the National Postal Mail Handlers Union (NPMHU) ended last Friday with the USPS rejecting any further extensions to bargaining.

According to the NALC web site, “The USPS declined to extend collective-bargaining negotiations with the NALC, triggering an impasse that will automatically send the matter to mediation.” If mediation proves unsuccessful the next step is arbitration under a supposedly “neutral” arbitrator. Postal employees are legally prohibited from striking.

Both unions’ contracts expired last November without a new agreement after several months of negotiations failed to arrive at a replacement. Since then the parties have extended negotiations three times.

Three postal unions’ contracts have now expired without new agreements to replace them. The National Rural Letter Carriers Association (NRLCA) reached an impasse in its negotiations in November of 2010 and, after the failure of mediation efforts, is currently in arbitration.

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney released his tax returns Tuesday morning, revealing that he collected income of $21.7 million in 2010 and $20.9 million in 2011, nearly $42.6 million over the two-year period. Not a penny of this income was from salary or wages reported on a W-2. Nearly all of it was investment income, including capital gains, dividends and interest.

Most of the media attention has focused on how much Romney paid in taxes—about $6.2 million over that two-year period—for an effective tax rate of 13.9 percent in 2010 and 15.4 percent in 2011, well below the effective tax rate for many working people. This is certainly an important question, and demonstrates the role of the US tax system in redistributing income from the poor to the wealthy.

But the sheer scale of Romney’s income and the social distance between the multimillionaire and the vast majority of the American population deserves attention. Romney’s annual income of $21.7 million in 2010 comes to nearly $60,000 each day—more than the annual median household income in the United States, just over $50,000.

In other words, the former private equity CEO rakes in more every day from clipping the coupons on his past investments than the typical American household with two working parents makes in an entire year.

The struggle by Cooper Tire workers in Findlay, Ohio is being deliberately isolated by the United Steelworkers union, which is blocking joint action with workers also facing concessions at the company’s Arkansas plant.

The local union in Texarkana, Arkansas—USW Local 752L—reached a deal for a new four-year agreement shortly before the contract expired January 20. Workers there will meet and vote on the agreement Thursday. The union has refused to reveal the terms of deal, which covers 1,500 workers.

The sellout in Arkansas comes as the struggle by 1,050 Cooper Tire workers in Ohio enters its ninth week. The workers were locked out on November 28 and scabs brought in to replace them after they rejected the implementation of a new “flexible” pay system that would lead to wage cuts of up to 40 percent.

Industry insiders have pointed to the significance of the USW action. “Cooper Tire & Rubber’s fears of concurrent production stoppages at two of its major US plants have been allayed with the reaching of a tentative agreement for workers at its Texarkana facility,” stated Tyre Industry Publications Ltd, a European tire industry publication.

Local Democrats and pro-Democratic Party organizations staged a rally in Ann Arbor, Michigan on Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, January 16, to oppose the Emergency Manager (EM) law passed by Republican Governor Rick Snyder.

The demonstration at Snyder’s home was a continuation of efforts to divert popular opposition to the attack on the working class behind political forces that are no less committed to this attack than Snyder himself.

Snyder has threatened to name an EM to run Detroit, as has been done in four other Michigan municipalities. The EM would be given essentially dictatorial powers to abrogate contracts, enforce pay cuts, sell off city assets and take other measures to resolve the city’s budget deficit on the backs of those least able to afford it. A final decision will come after the recommendation of a financial review team due at the end of February.

Last week’s demonstration was staged by a coalition comprised of a section of the affluent Democratic Party elite, the trade union bureaucracy and middle class pseudo-left organizations. The protest had the support of the self-proclaimed civil rights leaders and millionaires, Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson. The media, amplifying the event’s size and significance, sent three news helicopters and half a dozen trucks to broadcast via local radio, TV and print.

On January 19, over 800 students at the University of California, Riverside were met by 200 police as they demonstrated outside a regents meeting. The university officials were discussing plans for another hike in tuition in response to cuts imposed by Democratic Party Governor Jerry Brown.

Students chanted “peaceful protest” while confronted by campus police officers in riot gear and with batons. Students and workers attempted to participate in a sit-down demonstration like those who were brutally attacked at UC Davis on November 18th. (Video of the conflict at UC Riverside can be seen here).

Towards the end of the video one can hear the sound of projectiles being fired, which participants said were paint-filled pellets. An image of one person’s injuries can be seen here.

Two people were arrested in the protests and charged with assaulting a police officer, one by using a handheld sign.

Administration and authorities alike sought to justify the police action by noting the entry of 18 protesters into the meeting room. Participants engaged in a nonviolent sit-in as they attempted to hold their own assembly. Eventually the regents were escorted out of the room into another one and were later spirited from the meeting under police escort.

As the lockouts of workers at Cooper Tire in Findlay, Ohio and Caterpillar’s Electro-Motive Diesel plant in London, Ontario enter their ninth and fourth weeks, respectively, the unions involved are working deliberately to isolate the struggles and ensure defeat.

In the US, the United Steel Workers (USW) reached a tentative four-year agreement covering the 1,500 workers at the Cooper Tire plant in Texarkana, Arkansas over the weekend. The move, hailed by the company, is aimed at preventing any unified struggle of the workers at Cooper’s two main US plants.

Confident in its ability to crush the Findlay workers with the help of the USW, Cooper announced that it is beginning to ship out equipment from the Ohio plant, an initial step toward shutting it down altogether.

The 1,050 Findlay workers were locked out November 28 after they rejected massive concessions. They have been strung out by the union without strike pay, subsisting on meager food card rations.

The United Food and Commercial Workers Union (UFCW) has reached an agreement with the Food 4 Less supermarket chain in Southern California. The deal increases wages for some while increasing the amount grocery workers are required to contribute to their own health care, effectively cutting wages.

Workers at Food 4 Less voted on January 10 to ratify the new contract. The chain, owned by parent company Kroger, has 11 stores in the San Diego area, with about 1,000 local workers.. Full details of the contract have not been made available, and the union did not release the vote tally. It is likely workers were asked by the union to vote on a contract without having complete information about it.

The new contract was ostensibly necessary to close the hourly wage gap between Food 4 Less workers and those at Ralphs. However, the contract includes up to a week worker contributions for health care. This increase mirrors that of the recent UCFW contract with Southern California supermarket chains Vons, Ralphs and Albertsons, which requires workers to pay a week for individual insurance, and a week for families. This amounts to a 5 percent pay reduction for a minimum wage worker. Previously, newer workers paid up to a week for health insurance, while other workers had no paycheck deductions.

The push for charter schools in Washington started in earnest with the reconvening of the state legislature.

Initiatives to allow charter schools in Washington have been voted down by the public three times in the last two decades—the last time in 2004. The bipartisan proposal to bring charter schools up for a vote within the legislature—thus avoiding a public vote—comes in the wake of the state Supreme Court’s ruling earlier this month that Washington is in violation of the state constitution’s Article IX, Section 1, which states, “It is the paramount duty of the state to make ample provision for the education of all children residing within its borders, without distinction or preference on account of race, color, caste, or sex.”

Proposed by Rep. Eric Pettigrew (D-Seattle) and Sen. Steve Litzow (R-Mercer Island), House bill 2428 would allow charters into the state for the first time and set up a statewide “transformation zone district” to oversee the implementation thereof. Section 101,6 also opens up the possibility of current public schools being converted to charter schools. In such cases, the charter schools would be “entitled to the rent-free use of its existing facility,” with the school district responsible for its general maintenance.