Original article via World Socialist Web Site:
With votes tallied at factories employing more than a third of Ford’s 41,000 US workers, the concessions contract being pushed by the United Auto Workers appears headed for defeat.
If the deal is defeated, it will be the first time auto workers have turned down a national agreement recommended by the UAW since 1982.
Let's hope that Ford workers do turn down the contract. Think of it this way: Since 1982 (and actually earlier), the Big Three have been shedding jobs at an alarming rate. Concessions have been the byword for most (if not all) of their contracts with workers. The concessions didn't help and the industry is on it's knees.
The opposition among Ford workers to the cuts in pay and benefits and the no-strike provision being demanded by both the company and the union is an expression of growing resistance in the working class as a whole to the drive by big business and the Obama administration to make workers pay for the failure of the profit system.
Needless to say, someone has to pay for the failure of capitalism. Perhaps it should be those who've profited the greatest from it. Fat chance when both major parties are beholden to particular special interests who hold the money strings.
It is the culmination of decades of job cuts and concessions in auto, combined with outrage over depression conditions for growing numbers of workers, on the one side, and record pay and profits for Wall Street on the other.
It's going to be workers who lead us out of this economic mess. The workers have a choice as to how they do this. Will they end up as little better than slaves working at the whim and for the handouts of the bosses, bankster frauds and corporate frauds? Or will they stand up and say what we all already know: The country works when we all work.
I'll let you read the rest of the article. It gives me hope that at least some workers are ready to stand up to the monstrosity of an economic and social system we currently have in place. Should Ford's workers carry their battle to the picket lines, we should all be prepared to support them in whatever legitimate ways we can!