UAW hides details of new tentative agreement from Indiana Lear workers
By
Marcus Day
17 November 2018
The WSWS urges workers interested in forming rank-and-file committees at their plants to contact us.
The United Auto Workers is again seeking to force through a sellout agreement at Lear Corporation’s auto parts factories in Hammond and Portage, Indiana. The latest maneuvers come a little less than one month after workers defied the union and decisively rejected, by 74 percent, a UAW-backed contract proposal that would have maintained the hated multi-tier system. Workers are determined to conduct a struggle against poverty wages, starting as low as $12.10 an hour at the Portage seating “sub-assembly” plant, and decades of declining living standards and working conditions.
On November 9, a UAW Local 2335 committee member sent an official notice to workers reporting that a new tentative agreement had been reached. Incredibly, the notice provided no information about the deal or when it would be released.
“Thank you for your patience throughout these negotiations,” the announcement stated. “After several days and many late nights, the Union and Company have reached a Tentative Agreement late last night – November 8, 2018.”
“Details (dates, times, locations) where the ratification meetings and voting will be held; will be available soon.”
Aside from the notice quietly sent to Lear workers, the union and the company have given no public indication that a deal has been reached, seeking to keep news of it out of the press and away from the attention of workers at other plants.
There is every reason to suspect that the UAW is trying to hide that it is pushing essentially the same agreement that workers already…