Bring Down the Hammer! Strike to Win!
Open Letter to UAW Workers from the Strike to Win Committee:
Our strike is making history-and we are so proud
We are so happy to be on strike. It has gotten increasingly suffocating to be UAW members working in a tiered wage system working overtime every week to make ends meet, all while watching our supervisors strut around the plant cocksure that they have all the power, thinking that they can down to us like we are children or inferior. Most UAW members celebrated the day we went on strike. We are in charge now. Our anger, outrage, and desire to stand up and fight now have purpose and direction.
We are proud to be making history by striking all big three automakers at once. We have the power to shut down whole sectors of the US economy and to bring more workers who can’t wait to join us into the fight. We can pledge to every worker who is fighting with us that because of our strike, none will lose their home or car and all our families will have a hearty Thanksgiving dinner.
We know that depleting our strike fund or running out of money are not real issues. The UAW has contributed tens of millions of dollars to support any strikers who have ever needed our help, including the Detroit Newspaper strike. We know the Teamsters, SEIU, AFSCME and that miners, steelworkers, teachers, postal workers, and other unions will all have our backs. Members of other unions are marching with us side by side on our picket lines. Everyone understands our strike is too important to fail. If we win decent contracts, we will set the standard for every other union in America.
We are taking a stand for the youth and the whole American working-class
We now have the real independent power to play a decisive role in American politics, which makes just casting individual votes seem like peanuts. We know electoral politics are run by corporate donors and billionaires. But we are changing the balance of power by taking a stand for the whole American working class and saying loud and clear that we are the people who create all that wealth and we demand our fair share. We can cut off the gravy train of corporate bonuses and make a dent in the growing wealth inequality that is wiping out the American middle class and spiraling the American working class into poverty. We are fighting for the future of our sons, daughters and children; sisters, brothers and siblings, and all of those who come after us.
The majority of Americans support our strike, and our local communities want to find more ways to express their support. We need to be urging community members, most importantly young people, to join our pickets and to picket car dealerships and other secondary targets. This is a moment for us to give the youth, who are proud of belonging to the working class and hate corporate greed and understand that our picket lines are one of the few integrated institutions in this racially and ethnically polarized society, a real chance to fight for their futures. Our union was born out of civil rights, immigrant rights, and women’s rights struggles. Our actions building the UAW made the terms equality and solidarity actually mean something.
If we want to win, we must welcome everyone who supports us
One of the most reprehensible policies of some picket captains is to drive away community supporters, young people and other trade unionists, and to treat them like the enemy. Anyone who supports our strike should be welcomed on our lines. We are fighting enormous corporations with trillions of dollars worth of resources. If we want to win we better welcome everyone who supports us.
Picket captains who act like we can’t think for ourselves and so give flyers back are insulting fools who do not deserve to be our leaders. We owe it to the tens of thousands of workers we are inspiring to fight, including the strike of 75,000 unionized healthcare workers of Kaiser Permanente, 60,000 members of the Culinary Workers Union, Nevada’s largest labor union, and Detroit casino workers who voted 99% to strike when their contract expires this month, to show them how to fight and win. We are the people who have the experience to show through our actions and example what a Union must be.
Everyone knows that the current policy of only striking at some plants and facilities will fail to win our demands. Every UAW plant needs to be out now
We need every UAW member to raise Cain with their local officers and start fighting to go all out now. UAW members should stop being treated by our leadership like pawns on a chess board. The slow dribble of lottery style plant closings will only prolong our strike. It is disproportionately hurting the incomes of the longest striking workers, it makes us look weak when we are actually strong, and more than anything it is putting the companies in charge of our strike. Each company gets to play “good cop” for a while to get the other two “bad cop” companies’ plants shutdown, and then the three of them change their hats continuing in a ridiculous cycle. At best, this failed policy makes us look naive and clueless. If our current leaders continue to act timid, weak and scared of what they started, we will have to put in new leaders to lead our strike. Every day on the picket line we are learning who the most resolute and fearless leaders are. Those that want our strike to win need to step forward with our backing because losing this strike is just not an option.
This scab-on-your-own-strike policy is insane and demoralizing. It must end now.
Some members of the same striking local are being asked to cross their own local’s picket lines and to keep working. Other locals are being told to let bus loads of managers and or scabs who are nothing more than paid thugs to enter the plant. This policy makes our pickets into nothing other than a symbolic waste of our time. Those of us on the picket lines get more frustrated each time we are told we have to let these scabs cross our lines. In order to win, we obviously need to prevent anyone from crossing our lines. Some of the bus drivers or cars going in don’t want to be scabs, but are scared of repercussions if they don’t try to get in. We have seen as few as three picketers turn vehicles around because we provided the drivers with an excuse to do so. UAW leaders must stop telling us to act like flower children on drugs. Our picket lines should do what they exist to do.
If one local demands that we conduct a winning strike: bring every plant out now, end all scabbing on our strike, stop anyone from getting in or out of the plants, call on other unions to contribute financial resources and additional picketers and bring the community and youth into our struggle, other locals will follow their lead.
We call on the IUAW leadership to expand the strike to all plants at all Ford, GM and Stellantis facilities and adopt the strike to win policies described above. We can be the leadership history demands we become and wield the power of the mighty union that we are. Solidarity forever!
Strike to win! All out, All together
Stay Out Until We All Have Ratified Contracts that Meet All of Our Demands!
- End all tiers immediately for current and future workers – Equal Pay for Equal Work!
- Convert Temporary Part Time (TPT) workers to full time status with benefits. Eliminate TPT!
- 40% increase to wages and pensions
- Restore COLA
- Full Pensions for All with Health Insurance for all retirees
- Implement COVID Safety protocols at all locations
- Paid Sick Leave for workers and for workers who must care for sick children or family members
- Train workers for EV manufacturing, Union representation at all new EV plants
- Better work/life balance- more paid time off, no mandatory overtime
Strike to Win Committee is made up of rank-and-file UAW members, community supporters, and the civil rights organization the Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action, Integration, and Immigrant Rights and Fight for Equality By Any Means Necessary (BAMN). We have members in unions in the US and in the UK.
