Remarks of Bill Parker, President of UAW Local 1700
Monday, May 11, 2009
Keep It Made In America Rally, Sterling Heights, Michigan
My name is Bill Parker, and I am the President of UAW Local 1700, representing the hourly men and women at Chrysler’s Sterling Heights Assembly Plant, or SHAP, right here in Sterling Heights.
Along with our counterparts at other facilities, we were outraged by Chrysler’s announcement of plant closings in their bankruptcy papers, not even 24 hours after ratification of a concessionary agreement intended to keep our plants open. So today, to our members, keeping it Made In America is a very real question.
Keeping it Made In America means keeping open the factories, mills and offices where we have worked. It is easy to see that the impact of plant closings goes far beyond the wrenching effects of the actual jobs lost.
Closed plants impact the communities where we live and work, they reduce the tax base for those communities, weaken our ability to provide strong public schools, and reduce property values for hard working American home owners.
On a more personal basis, plant closings undermine each individual family by reducing our standard of living and halting the steady progress that has secured for each generation of working class children a better position than that of ouir parents. For the first time in a century, Americans face the prospect that our sons and daughters will do worse than we’ve done.
In fact, plant closings have historically lead to a much more serious impact on society through increased violence in the streets, increased illness and suicides, increased domestic violence and divorce. In all these many ways, plant closings lead to the uprooting of lives, the breakup of families, the weakening of communities and the destruction of the American dream.
In the past, jobs worked under the collective bargaining agreements of unions like the UAW and the Steelworkers have enabled members to send our kids to college and pursue broader dreams through higher education, for the first time in the family’s history. Taking these opportunities from us is not just an unlucky break, it is theft of what we’ve worked for; it is a criminal act, and we’re not going to sit back and take it.
Since 2003 the UAW has agreed to concession after concession with the promise of keeping our plants open. Labor has come to the table to keep it Made In America, and we demand management join us there.
Over the years, the great industrial plants, such as the one that I have the honor of representing, have done a lot more than just provide jobs. They were the arsenal of Democracy sixty years ago, retooling for the needs of the country during World War II. They were the crucible for the melting pot of American society, providing a way up for immigrants from overseas as well as from our own south. They were the engines moving generations of Americans out of poverty, black or white, immigrant or native born, male or female. Keeping it Made In America means keeping hope and opportunity and dreams alive for generations to come.
Our membership, the men and women who work at Chrysler, are highly appreciative of the efforts that prevented the liquidation of the company and the wholesale destruction of all our jobs and pensions. Nonetheless, we were shocked and outraged by the addition of five more plants to the list of those closing.
Five more American plants are closing that must not close. And I say that not because I have an issue with Mexican or Canadian workers seeking to provide for their families. I say that because I have an issue with the free flow of money and jobs across borders simply to find the cheapest labor, blind and uncaring to the impact of their decision on workers and communities here.
The City of Sterling Heights, like Warren and Detroit, Centerline and Trenton, and the State of Michigan itself, have come to the pump over and over again to provide assistance and incentives to Chrysler and GM and others to build factories here. Our governments, communities and citizens made sacrifices in other areas in order to secure the jobs and tax base from new investment. It is despicable that a company can simply abandon its communities, not because the company is ceasing production, but because they can produce it cheaper elsewhere.
If you will, look with me at four of the eight plants on Chrysler’s hit list.
St. Louis South had a parallel minivan plant in Windsor and St. Louis South has already closed, despite our efforts to say no.
St. Louis North has a parallel truck plant in Saltillo Mexico, and St. Louis North is closing this year, and to that closing we say no.
Kenosha Engine in Wisconsin was slated to get the Phoenix engine. Instead, it will be closed while Chrysler pushes forward with a parallel Phoenix plant in Saltillo, Mexico. To that decision we say no.
And right here in Sterling Heights, Chrysler has a D-segment, or mid-size vehicle plant at 16 Mile Road and Van Dyke that they have announced to close, while the parallel D-segment plant in Toluca, Mexico remains open. And we say, no.
The impact of this announcement goes far beyond our plant. There are dozens of supplier plants located within a twenty-five mile radius of SHAP. There are scores of restaurants and stores, bars and services that depend on the spending habits of our members. And there is the incalculable loss of hope within each family when the breadwinner is thrown to the curb making a lie of the promise that hard work in America lets you and your family move up.
Ten billion dollars in US taxpayer money is slated for Chrysler and in each and every case where there are parallel plants, the US plant is closing. There’s something terribly wrong with that picture. And beyond the plants I’ve named, Newark Assembly has closed, the small Conner Assembly in Detroit is closing, the Detroit Axle plant is closing with significantly fewer jobs at their new plant in Marysville, and the Twinsburg Stamping Plant outside Cleveland is closing.
But there is not one single Chrysler plant shutting down outside our borders.
In the course of two years Chrysler will have closed 4 of its 13 assembly plants, and every shuttered factory, every uprooted life, every displaced worker and every impacted community is in the US. The plants outside our borders remain untouched, while corporate decisions decimate the metropolitan areas around our great industrial cities like Detroit, St. Louis and Cleveland. What is the impact on our diverse workforce when the full burden of global economic crisis falls on us, while Mexico and Canada are guaranteed production.
In 1963, Dr. Martin Luther King addressed the great March on Washington, saying he had a dream, a dream deeply rooted in the American Dream. And that American Dream was formed, fed and fostered by great industries and great trade unions which allowed a worker to work hard and provide for our family and raise our standard of living. They allowed the immigrant family a place at the table, not the crumbs from the table. They allowed the African-American family and the southern white family access to American institutions, all the way up to the classrooms of Harvard and Yale. They allowed the single mother the ability to successfully provide for her family on her own terms.
We have worked too long, and we have worked too hard, to see those promises ripped from the outstretched fingers of our children’s hopeful hands.
Again, I want to thank the organizers of this rally for your campaign this week and your hard work to draw attention to the fight to keep it Made In America. And I want to thank each of you for coming today and urge you to take further action, reaching out to family, friends and neighbors to enlist in this righteous battle to protect our jobs.
Today, I ask you to commit yourselves to yet one more battle in the war for the security of workers in America, and join us from Local 1700 in our commitment to keep SHAP open.
sg/opeiu#42meg.aflcio
PRINT/SAVE 
