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Last updated: 3 January 2022
B.J. Widick Archive | ETOL Main Page
From Labor Action, Vol. 14 No. 14, 3 April 1950, p. 2.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
DETROIT, Mar. 28 – Caught flat-footed and exposed by its second phony pension offer, the Chrysler Corporation was blasted this week by the United AutoWorkers (CIO) in a manner calculated at long last to turn the bitter feeling of the 89,000 strikers against the company.
When Walter P. Reuther, UAW president, and the negotiating committee stormed out of a meeting with the company officials and explained the fraudulent character of Chrysler’s offer, it was the first time that the UAW leadership really ripped into the company’s preposterous claims.
The issue which broke the camel’s back, as far as the Reuther leadership was concerned, was the new offer of Chrysler which the UAW had first proclaimed as a step in the right direction.
Chrysler last Friday announced it was ready to put $30 million in a special fund to finance the proposed pension plan for employees with 25 years of seniority at the age of 65.
Then the UAW made its “final” proposals, and it appeared on Monday that prospects for a settlement of the nine-week strike might be better. Of course, the $30 million offer amounted to less than five cents an hour per man, and this was way below the minimum standard of an pension plan, but the UAW leadership hoped this could be changed.
On Monday, when the UAW negotiators walked into the conference, Chrysler told them they did NOT intend to set up a trust fund, but rather the $30 million could be used by the company in any way it saw fit. It would “guarantee” the payment of the pensions.
The UAW negotiators exploded at this fake, and Reuther called a press conference to tell the world what was wrong with the Chrysler offer. Chrysler admitted the truth of Reuther’s charges at its own press conference.
Thus the UAW and Chrysler are as far apart today as they have been since the beginning of the strike. The interesting thing is that it was the company last week which began to weaken and found it necessary to go through the motions of making a second and “better” offer.
Meanwhile the active union militants are constantly putting pressure on the UAW negotiators for a real victory settlement and the situation has now been reached where it will take a first-class selling job to get the active unionists to support any settlement which is not truly satisfactory.
The UAW has begun to pour out strike relief and the ranks are getting food orders, emergency doctor bills paid and other vital necessities cared for, so that morale in the strike is slowly reaching a better level.
Chrysler’s stupid maneuver has helped the spirit of the strikers considerably, for the hatred for the corporation as the source of the suffering is growing.
This week Local 7 is holding its first major mass picket line and strike rally in front of the Chrysler plants. This proposal was unanimously approved upon presentation to the ranks, indicating how the character of the strike may change in a sound militant direction.
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Last updated: 24 January 2024