UAW keeping workers at Ohio Ventra parts plant on the job without contract during pandemic

Zac Thorton
10 hours ago




https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/12/03/flex-d03.html?pk_campaign=newsletter&pk_kwd=wsws




[To learn more about forming a rank-and-file safety committee at your plant, contact autoworkers@wsws.org.]




The United Auto Workers (UAW) has kept auto parts workers at a plant in northern Ohio on the job for five months without a contract during the pandemic. Autoworkers at the Sandusky, Ohio plant operated by Flex-N-Gate subsidiary Ventra overwhelmingly voted down a sellout deal two months ago, brought forward by the union, which contained cuts to starting wages and extended the period for new hires to reach full pay. Since the rejection, the union has kept workers completely in the dark about the status of negotiations.

Ventra, which produces headlamps for Ford, employs 2,200 workers at its 1.2 million square foot Ohio facility. Contract negotiations with the company are being led by UAW Region 2B Director Wayne Blanchard, along with UAW Local 1216 officials.

Even without a contract, the UAW is keeping workers on the job in the midst of a major COVID-19 outbreak inside the plant. Dozens of autoworkers have been confirmed infected, most within the past few weeks. Meanwhile, workers have voted overwhelmingly to authorize a strike, by a 98 to 2 margin.

Expressing the thinking of the Local 1264 leadership, former bargaining committee member Clifford Loomis told the World Socialist Web Site Autoworker Newsletter, “Our bargaining team is still meeting the company, working towards a new tentative agreement. We have our ability to strike should things go that far, and our strike authorization passed with tremendous force.” When asked by this WSWS reporter how “far” things are supposed to go before a strike is called, given the spread of coronavirus, Loomis responded, “I don’t believe COVID-19 has any part in our negotiations.”

In fact, since the reopening of the auto industry in May, the UAW has worked with management to keep workers on the job and prevent a repeat of the wildcat strike wave which shut down the industry in March. At many key plants, the union has only recently been releasing any figures on the spread of the disease. However, a leak from Fiat Chrysler’s Jefferson North Assembly Plant demonstrated that the union has been given detailed statistics on infections and deaths from the beginning by management.

Determined to take matters into their own hands, autoworkers at plants throughout the country are forming rank-and-file safety committees to break through the UAW information blackout and coordinate a joint struggle in defense of workers’ lives, including a shutdown of all nonessential industry, with pay guaranteed by the billions in profits which the Detroit automakers made in the third quarter. This includes not only assembly workers at major plants like Fiat Chrysler’s Sterling Heights Assembly Plant but parts workers at Faurecia’s Gladstone and Saline plants.

The blackout on negotiations has prompted a number of workers to reach out to local media to denounce the union. Many more have taken to social media to do the same.

In comments to the Sandusky Register, one worker said, “We’re not hearing anything from anyone. A lot of us are asking ‘Where is [Local 1216 President] Brett Whyde?’” Whyde, the report states, has been silent “for months.”

While staying silent on negotiations, on November 20 Whyde issued a finger-waving letter to workers decrying quality issues at the plant. “We currently have 17 [quality rejects] for the month of November ... we had 17 QR’s in total for the entire month of October with a goal of single digits,” Whyde stated in language which may as well have been ghost-written by management. “The other big offender for everyone’s knowledge is that we have ... accumulated over $140,000 in scrap on Monday alone, which more than doubled our target.”

After chewing out workers for their poor performance, Whyde noted casually that the plant had seen 11 infections over the previous week, with 46 workers in quarantine. In a letter the following Wednesday he admitted to seven infections and 56 workers in quarantine.

The November 20 letter, which was posted on the union’s Facebook page, prompted an outpouring of anger from workers. One worker wrote:

“WHAT’S GOING ON WITH THE CONTRACT? THAT’S WHAT WE WANNA KNOW! Are we getting our little $300 ($500 taxed) ‘bonus’? Are you all even meeting with them? Or just hanging out up there? Meanwhile your plant and members who voted for you guys are getting sh---ed on daily by management! This is just unbelievable!”

On November 22 the union’s Facebook published the November 20 letter from UAW President Rory Gamble announcing the suspension of “all local union meetings and events” until April 15, 2021. While workers are being forced to risk their lives in the factories, the UAW is taking measures to safeguard the health of the bureaucracy and shield it from the criticisms of its membership.

The response from workers has been scathing. “Still can’t have membership meetings, still can’t have a new contract, still can’t have a raise, still can’t get management to quit signing off on bad parts,” wrote one worker. “We can, however, have meetings in the plant on the floor where we are encouraged to stand close together so we can better hear management tell us we suck.”

The mounting anger from workers forced Whyde to issue a second letter on November 25. In it, he refused to take any responsibility for keeping workers in the dark or for continuing to allow contract negotiations or lack thereof to carry on indefinitely. Instead, he presented the union as completely subservient to the company, writing, “In regards to Collective Bargaining your bargaining team is and has been ready and able to participate when the Company provides their availability.”

Whyde also shot down any suggestion of a strike, claiming that any strike “has to be authorized by Detroit for legality reasons.” This is the same bogus excuse given to Sterling Heights Assembly Plant (SHAP) workers in Detroit by UAW Local 1700 President Louie Pahl, who said workers “have to be given permission” from “the International and the IEB.” In the course of the same podcast where he made these statements, Pahl threatened workers not to read the World Socialist Web Site .

As every autoworker knows, UAW President Rory Gamble and the coterie of gangsters in Solidarity House will never call a strike. Instead, they are doing everything possible to keep production going at full capacity to fuel massive profits for the automakers.

The workers at Ventra and all autoworkers must draw the necessary conclusions. The struggle to defend their livelihoods and their lives must not rest in the hands of the corrupt UAW. Instead, workers must form rank-and-file safety committees to appeal to autoworkers, teachers and other workers across the country for support and to organize a struggle to shut down the auto plants. To learn more about forming a rank-and-file safety committee at your plant, contact the World Socialist Web Site at autoworkers@wsws.org.

AskProfWolff: Capitalism's "Economic Growth" Fetish

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T8qW2K344Yk&ab_channel=DemocracyAtWork

Police department in Mississippi pilots program linked to home security cameras

Scott Burris

10 hours ago




https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/12/03/amaz-d03.html?pk_campaign=newsletter&pk_kwd=wsws




In an expansion of the relationship between big tech and the US military-police apparatus, new software has been developed by Fūsus that allows police to register locations of home security cameras and livestream footage, including Amazon Ring doorbells.





Taking advantage of design features in Amazon Ring, such as local “crime and safety” neighborhood networks, Fūsus has gone one step further and integrated home security products with police in “Real-Time Crime Centers” (RTCC) that combine feeds from public and private security cameras.

Fūsus advertises itself as the “first company to unify live video, data and sensor feeds from virtually any source ... that enhances the situational awareness and investigative capabilities of law enforcement and public safety agencies.” It is already testing pilot programs in Jackson, Mississippi and West Palm Beach Florida, and has other contracts with police in Minnesota, Georgia, California and Illinois.

Police departments and home security companies are required to obtain agreements from users to allow their camera footage to be accessed in this way. However, the tech companies typically market the feature as a system to provide police with helpful information to reduce local petty crime, like package theft.

Once a homeowner signs the agreement, law enforcement can tap into users’ security cameras at any time through the Real-Time Crime Center, without notification. Thus, law enforcement is able to access, share and store vast amounts of private data collected from homes and businesses without oversight. The fact that this activity is largely unregulated opens the door for unconstitutional invasion of privacy and violations of other democratic rights, including free speech and restrictions against unreasonable searches and seizures.

A look at the Fūsus website and how they market to law enforcement is revealing. The company writes, “We create a public safety ecosystem that includes a registry map of all the public and private cameras in your region, a multi-media tips line for the public, and a cloud-based digital evidence vault for investigators.”

The company is also promoting the solution as a means of responding to the decline in police recruits and early retirements which have resulted in a “shortage” of officers. Fūsus’s solution to this “problem” is an Orwellian scenario with a vast array of relatively inexpensive cameras blanketing society, allowing police to respond more efficiently with the aid of real-time information.

On top of the expanded access to live footage of every neighborhood, the new program would free up money for police departments to spend on other things like crowd control equipment or hiring more officers. “It would save [us] from having to buy a camera for every place across the city,” said Jackson Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba in a statement reported by the local network WLBT. “If someone says, 'I want my Ring door camera to be used,’ we’ll be able to use it.”

Matthew Guariglia of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) stated, “We’re concerned with pretty much all of this.” He explained the intrusive nature of these programs. “The footage from your front door includes you coming and going from your house, your neighbors taking out the trash, and the dog walkers and delivery people who do their jobs in your street. In Jackson, this footage can now be live streamed directly onto a dozen monitors scrutinized by police around the clock. Even if you refuse to allow your footage to be used that way, your neighbor’s camera pointed at your house may still be transmitting directly to the police.”

Amazon Ring already has partnerships with roughly 1,300 police departments across the United States, according to Guariglia, an increase from 400 in July of last year. Amazon Ring video footage and snapshots can already be accessed by those police departments through cloud storage databases, often without any oversight or needing to request a warrant.

In 2019, Democratic Party Senator Ed Markey of Massachusetts launched an investigation into the partnership between police and Ring that was widely reported in the corporate media at the time. He said, “the lack of privacy and civil rights protections for innocent residents is nothing short of chilling,” and “Amazon Ring’s policies are an open door for privacy and civil liberty violations.” However, nothing ever came of Markey’s investigation.

In some cases, free devices are now being offered to police departments as an incentive, and some cities have even subsidized the purchase of these devices, a clear sign that they are more beneficial to the police and authorities than they are to homeowners.

This is not the first time Amazon has partnered with law enforcement under the rubric of public safety. In 2016, Amazon Web Solutions (AWS) released the artificial intelligence software Rekognition, providing access to photos by law enforcement. But by 2017 AWS incorporated facial recognition, video tracking algorithms and law enforcement databases to allow the identification and tracking of individuals in real-time.

A particularly chilling video demonstrating Rekognition’s capabilities shows a policeman walking down a crowded street with facial recognition automatically “boxing” faces and “identifying” a missing person, which automatically flags nearby officers to respond. Such technology could easily be used to target and collect information on undocumented immigrants on the streets, protesters in a crowd, or specific workers at a picket line or protest.

After the meaning of these systems came to public attention—along with an open letter from Amazon employees opposing their company’s cooperation with police, US Immigration, Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP)—Amazon attempted to publicly distance itself from the project, although it continues to further enhance and refine its surveillance capabilities.

The integration of the major technology corporations with the state has developed in tandem with the growing inequality and instability of the capitalist system. Whatever marketing tools are used to encourage users to sign misleading agreements, the real aim of “Real-Time Crime Centers” is to develop more advanced systems of tracking that will be used to target the poor and working class, especially those engaged in oppositional and socialist political activity.

Technology, which carries immense potential for the progressive development of society, cannot be left in the hands of the ruling class for its interests in defending profits and suppression opposition. Tech workers, united with the whole working class, must demand these corporations be transformed into public utilities, and that the scientific and technological resources available be democratically directed to meet the urgent needs confronting humanity.

Death by eviction

Judd Legum and Tesnim Zekeria
Dec 3



As the pandemic rages, landlords across the country continue to kick tenants out of their homes. In Milwaukee County, Wisconsin, for example, 244 families have been evicted from their homes since September 4. Just last week, landlords filed 2,358 eviction cases in 27 cities tracked by the Princeton University Eviction Lab.

It's killing people.

A new study by public health researchers at Johns Hopkins, UCLA, and other institutions looked at the impact of "the expiration of state-based moratoriums during the summer of 2020." The researchers "tested whether lifting eviction moratoriums was associated with COVID-19 incidence and mortality."

The results are chilling. The study concluded that "lifting [eviction] moratoriums amounted to an estimated 433,700 excess cases and 10,700 excess deaths" between March 13 and September 3. The infections and fatalities occurred across "27 states that lifted eviction moratoriums" during the study period. In Texas alone, the study found there were 4456 excess deaths after the state lifted its eviction moratorium on May 18. The researchers "accounted for stay at home orders, mask orders, school closures, testing rates, time trends, and other state characteristics to better isolate the impact of eviction moratoriums."




Evictions result in crowding, as families consolidate homes to make ends meet, or homelessness, forcing families to live in shelters or other congregate settings. This increases the chances of contracting COVID. Further, the impact of COVID on this population may be more severe because "poor health and costs associated with healthcare may drive eviction risk."

"Looking to 2021, policymakers should consider extending federal, state and local moratoriums alongside rent relief, and other legal and supportive protections to prevent future evictions, COVID-19 transmission, and associated harms," the study's authors conclude.
What about the federal moratorium?

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) instituted a national eviction moratorium starting September 4. The moratorium doesn't expire until the end of 2020. So why are thousands of people still getting evicted?

The moratorium is not universal and not self-executing. To qualify, tenants must fill out a declaration stating that they have tried to obtain rent assistance from the government, earned no more than $99,000 in 2020 ($198,000 for couples), are unable to pay because of loss of income, and would likely become homeless if evicted. If tenants fail to fill out this form, evictions can proceed normally. Many tenants are not represented in court and don't even know the moratorium — or the declaration — exists.

Further, judges in some states, including North Carolina and Missouri, have refused to recognize the federal moratorium. Even if a court does recognize the declaration, it does not prevent eviction cases from being filed. In court, according to the CDC, landlords can challenge "the truthfulness of a tenant’s declaration." The CDC also warns that tenants that complete the declaration "in bad faith" will be subject to criminal prosecution for perjury.

In many cases, the filing of an eviction case itself is enough to get a tenant to vacate. Eric Dunn, director of litigation at the National Housing Law Project, explains:


Because tenants often value their ability to obtain other rental housing over remaining in one specific property, the fact that such cases are being filed likely has a chilling effect on tenants who would otherwise assert the moratorium. Tenants who receive eviction notices will move out to avoid the creation of an eviction record, rather than stay in their homes.

The eviction moratorium also does nothing to stop landlords from evicting tenants for criminal activity, property damage, or building code violations.

So it's easy to see how, despite the moratorium, thousands of people continue to face eviction every week. But, as bad as things are, they are about to get much worse.
The eviction cliff

Despite the holes in the CDC’s moratorium, it has had an impact. According to the Eviction Lab, more than 150,000 evictions have been filed across 27 major cities during the pandemic. But evictions are still well-below average. In Phoenix, for example, eviction filings were more than 50% below average in November.

But at the same time, unpaid rent continues to accrue — once the moratorium expires in January, renters will be expected to pay back their rent in full along with any late fees. In other words, without rental assistance, the moratorium will end with an avalanche of evictions. Come January, many may find themselves homeless in the middle of the still-raging pandemic.

According to a report prepared for the National Council State Housing Agencies, an estimated “8.4 million renter households, which include 20.1 million individual renters, could experience an eviction filing” in January.

This especially impacts Black and Latino renters who face a higher risk of eviction than white renters. These are the same populations who are already disproportionately impacted by COVID.

There is also a large group of people who have been paying for rent using credit cards, either because they did not qualify for the moratorium or were unaware that they could remain in their homes without paying rent. The Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia recently found that there has been a “70% percent increase from last year in people paying rent on a credit card,” reports NPR.

“If you're putting your rent payments on to a credit card, that shows you're really at risk of eviction. That means you've run out of savings; you've probably run out of calls to family members to get them to loan you money,” said Shamus Roller, executive director of the Housing Law Project, to NPR.
Congress goes AWOL

The last time Congress passed a COVID relief bill was over seven months ago. With evictions set to resume in January, the deadline for lawmakers to act on this impending crisis is quickly approaching.

This week, a bipartisan group of senators revealed a new $908 billion stimulus package proposal. The new proposal includes $25 billion in rental assistance. But it is unclear if this will be enough. Experts are estimating that “renters will owe close to $70 billion in unpaid rent...in January, or $5,400 for the typical family that has fallen behind.” Diane Yentel, the President and CEO of National Low Income Housing Coalition, told Vox that “it’s going [to] take at least $100 billion in rental assistance.”

“For nine months, this tsunami on the horizon has been completely predictable and entirely preventable; we’ve known the solution to this for months, [the problem] is the lack of political will,” said Yentel.

House Democrats passed a $2.2 trillion relief package in October that provided $50 billion in rental aid for those at risk of eviction as well $5 billion in homeless assistance grants. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, meanwhile, is pushing a $500 billion “targeted relief bill” that does not provide any rental aid or any “continuing eviction protections.”

Workers in a co-op are safer than employees in a capitalist workplace - Richard Wolff

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R4IaeXOZvFs&ab_channel=DemocracyAtWork

Capitalist inefficiency during covid-19 is deadly - Richard Wolff

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bbQ94CRDNl4&ab_channel=DemocracyAtWork

Joe Biden’s Neera Tanden Pick Is Even Worse Than You Thought

Joe Biden’s likely nominee to head the powerful Office of Management and Budget, Neera Tanden, called for cuts to Social Security, saying, “we need to put both entitlements on the table as well as taxes.”




December 1, 2020 Walker Bragman JACOBIN




https://portside.org/2020-12-01/joe-bidens-neera-tanden-pick-even-worse-you-thought




President-elect Joe Biden will reportedly nominate a White House budget director who has been one of the country’s most prominent critics of US Sen. Bernie Sanders and who has previously backed Social Security cuts.

Biden — who has repeatedly pushed for Social Security cuts throughout his career — announced his selection of Center for American Progress (CAP) president Neera Tanden as his choice to run the powerful White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB). A longtime aide to Hillary Clinton, Tanden touted her think tank’s 2010 proposal to reduce Social Security benefits in 2012, as Biden was pushing for such cuts in the Obama administration.

Tanden’s Social Security push followed the 2010 midterms, during the deficit reduction negotiations between the Obama administration and the new GOP Congress. Republicans drew a hard line, but Obama sought a middle ground. Central to the administration’s efforts, which were led by Biden, was a plan called the “chained CPI” that would have slowed the rate at which Social Security benefits increase over time.

Sanders led the fight in the Senate against the chained CPI, while outside groups were divided over whether to line up behind the president. Some, like the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, vocally opposed the cuts.

The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a liberal think tank, found that the chained CPI “would cut Social Security retirement benefits by about 2 percent, on average.” The organization, nevertheless, said it would support the concept under certain conditions.

Tanden’s CAP, at the time considered to be the largest liberal think tank in Washington, also supported the idea and was a significant voice in favor of the administration’s plan.

Tanden explained her views in a February 2012 C-SPAN interview. Asked by a caller about entitlement reform, she named Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid as targets for possible cuts, noting that “the president has $300 million in his budget in cuts in Medicare.”

“That comes on top of cuts in Medicare for the Affordable Care Act. So he has put specific cuts in the budget in Medicare,” she said. “And they had savings in Medicaid in the past. I think the question really is: If we’re going to have a deal to address long-term deficit reduction, we need to put both entitlements on the table as well as taxes.”

Tanden became more explicit in her support for cuts to Social Security as she went on.

“We should have savings on entitlements, and the Center for American Progress has put forward ideas on proposals to reform the beneficiary structure of Social Security — some of our progressive allies aren’t as excited about that as we are,” she explained. “But we’ve put those ideas on the table. We think that those are legitimate ideas that need to be part of a proposal where everyone’s at the table. We don’t just ask middle-class Americans to sacrifice. We ask all Americans.”


Indeed, in a report on Social Security solvency CAP released two years earlier, the organization cautioned that “Social Security . . . is showing its age,” and warned that progressive ideas like lifting the payroll tax “without addressing other problems in Social Security’s benefit design would be a mistake.” One of the solutions it proposed was the chained CPI.

“We recommend that benefits instead be tied to the chained Consumer Price Index, which is sometimes referred to as the ‘superlative’ Consumer Price Index,” the report said. “This index is a more accurate measure of inflation than the current measure. The Social Security Administration’s actuaries estimate the difference will amount to an inflation measure that will show inflation that is 0.3 percentage points lower than the currently used inflation measure.”

In 2016, Tanden wrote on Twitter that the chained CPI would “help Social Security’s solvency,” but she said she disagreed with the policy.


During the Democratic primary, Biden faced scrutiny and criticism over his four-decade record of pushing cuts to Social Security. The Sanders camp seized on resurfaced videos of Biden promoting cuts and spending freezes over the years. Biden responded to these attacks by supporting an expansion of Social Security and by falsely claiming that he’d never sought to cut the program.

“I’ve been fighting to protect — and expand — Social Security for my whole career,” the president-elect tweeted in January. “Any suggestion otherwise is just flat-out wrong.”

At the time, Tanden tweeted that she did not see Social Security cuts as part of any Democratic administration’s plans, writing: “This whole debate is a farce.” However, in August, Biden faced criticism from progressives after one of his advisers suggested that in a Biden presidency, spending would be limited by budgetary constraints.

If Democrats manage to win the two Georgia Senate runoff races and retake control over the chamber, Sanders is widely expected to chair the Senate Budget Committee, having served as the ranking member since 2015. The Budget Committee is tasked with approving the OMB director.

Republicans are already warning that Tanden won’t win approval from GOP senators. A spokesperson for Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) tweeted that she “stands zero chance of being confirmed.”