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2005 June/July Flipbook PDF
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STEEL
COBRA
Volume 1, Issue 1 Local Union No. 207L 1130 Summit Street Findlay, Ohio 45840 Phone: 419-422-4224 Fax: 419-423-4442
July 2005 Sun
3
10 Vice President Rod Nelson
Secretary Dennis Dukes
Treasurer Billy Nelson, Jr.
Financial Secretary Rick Maag ————————————
Mon
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Tue
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Wed
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Thu
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Fri
Sat
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S H U T D O WN
———————————————— Officers President Frank Cline
Inside this issue:
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11
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26
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Tire Imports
3-4
Steel Cobra’s Viewpoint
5
New Employees
6-7
Scholarships
7
Trade Policy
8
Social Security
9
Mitch Stahl
10
Organizing
11
16
23
30
Executive Board Members 31 Bob Brumbaugh Ron Coldren Ron Rettig —————————————— Trustees Jim Blake Jeff McDaniel Greg Jacobs ———————————— Guide Terry McBeath Guard Tim Smith Guard Todd Best —————————————————— Co-Editor Jeffrey A. Fuhrer _________________________ International Officers President Leo W. Gerard Vice President (Administration) Andrew V. Palm Secretary—Treasurer James D. English Vice President (Human Affairs) Leon Lynch
Volume 26, Issue 1
(L –R,
standing) trustee Jim Blake, trustee Jeff McDaniel, trustee Greg Jacobs, executive board member Bob Brumbaugh, executive board member Ron Coldren, executive board member Ron Rettig, guard Tim Smith, guide Terry McBeath and guard Todd Best; (seated) treasurer Billy Nelson, Jr., secretary Dennis Dukes, president Frank Cline, vice president Rod Nelson and financial secretary Rick Maag. Page 2
Offshore tire imports pouring into America By Bruce Davis Rubber & Plastics News Staff AKRON-Imports of tires into the U.S. from offshore sources have doubled in the past five years and continue to grow at double-digit rates. Simultaneous with "offshore" importsfrom countries where North American-based tire makers have little if any manufacturing presence-employment by U.S. tire makers has fallen six straight years, and the U.S. tire trade deficit has grown to more than $3 billion. An analysis or data from the U.S, Department of Commerce and the Rubber Manufacturers Association clearly indicates the changing face of the American tire industry. The figures show: . Imports from offshore sources-from countries such as China, South Korea, Taiwan or India-accounted for more than 35 percent of the U.S. replacement market last year. . U.S. tire makers and distributors imported 89.2 million tires from overseas, valued at. $3.68 billion in 2004. At the same time, American tire makers exported about 10 million tires to nations outside of NAFTA, worth $483.5 million and" representing about 4.5 percent of production. . Employment in the tire industry fell to 68,700 in March 2004, according to the latest Department of Labor statistics. It stood at 87,100 in 1997, RMA data show, compared with a peak of 120,000 in the mid-1970s. Imports of tires are on pace this year for another double-digit increase, ac. cording to Saul Ludwig of KeyBanc Capital Volume 26, Issue 1
Markets' Equity Research. Demand is particularly keen for tires from Asia, especially China, he said, because of the cost differential. "If a production worker makes $25 an hour in the U.S. and that same worker in China makes 25 cents, it's not hard to see why imports are growing," Ludwig said Every 100,000 tires imported represents about 15 hourly jobs at a U.S. tire factory, according to available industry data. Made in America Preserving U.S. jobs was a top priority in the United Steelworkers 2003 labor contract talks with Goodyear, a union spokesman said. That contract gave 12 of Goodyear's 14 USWorganized plants in North America precedence for tires designed for sale in North America, while allowing Goodyear to source those same tires overseas if the North American factories are operating at or above their August 2003 capacity levels. Michelin North America Inc. made similar pledges in a contract signed last year with workers at its BFGoodrich plants in the U.S. and Canada. Committing to North American production has been a point of contention in the long- running Bridgestone/Firestone-USW contract talks, for which a tentative agreement was reached June 9. Goodyear won't say what percentage of tires it sells in North America are made on the continent. The company had declared its intention to double the number of tires it Sources from overseas to 10 million units annually. Michelin said 80 to 85 percent of the tires it sells in North America are made on this continent. "Michelin's approach is to manufacture the majority of our tires in the geographic zone where they are sold," the firm said. Among the major U.S.-based producers, Cooper traditionally has had the highest domestic content, importing less than 1 percent of (Continued on page 4)
Page 3
tire imports (Continued from page 3)
its tire needs. The company, however, has made major commitments to source tires from China, while converting an increasing share of its U.S. capacity to highermargin performance tires. The China factor China has grown the past few years to become a power in the U.S. tire trade venue. Its rise has been aided by the relative strength of the yuan, which has traded at a fixed exchange rate of about 8.28 yuan per U.S. dollar for the past 11 years. China has benefited from this currency policy, Ludwig said, keeping the value of its products affordable and consistent. The issue is about to take on political implications, with a bill pending in the U.S. Senate calling for action against China if its doesn't revise its policy. Raising tariffs on tires is not really part of the equation, several industry sources said, since all of the domestic companies import tires from their overseas subsidiaries as part of their business model. The U.S. import duty on most passenger and commercial tires is 4 percent of the declared value. On the tire export side, the U.S. tire industry never has been particularly strong. Instead, most U.S. companies interested in selling internationally went into those markets with investments. Throughout most of the 20th century import tariffs in most countries were significant enough to compel foreign companies to invest there. Today the industry's exports are relatively specialized. Several companies said they ship specific size
tires to Europe or Japan for OE fitment on vehicles to be exported to the U.S. or Canada. Hurting the U.S.? One concern about the growing use of offshore production is it represents an exporting of technology and know-how, said Alan Tonelson, research fellow at the U.S. Business & Industry Council, a non-profit business association. He said the tire industry's pattern of investment the past several years reflects the "product cycle theory" of business development. That theory maintains a company's decision to supply foreign markets with manufacturing in those regions eventually leads the firm to supply its home markets with goods made overseas. Such a strategy is tied to increased overseas investment and transfer of technology, he said. This trend is one that could lead to the bankruptcy of U.S. manufacturing, Tonelson said, as companies here lose their best customers-their own employees. To suggest that companies not invest overseas or use their overseas assets is naive, according to Frank Vargo, vice president for international economic affairs for the National Association of Manufacturers. Instead, the future of manufacturing in the U.S. will depend on the country's ability to develop a highly skilled work force and put more emphasis on technology, investment and innovation, Vargo said. Government must help with incentives, and it must work to reduce the rising non-wage costs that concern all manufacturer, he said.
“Should any political party attempt to abolish social security, unemployment insurance, and eliminate labor laws and farm programs, you would not hear of that party again in our political history. There is a tiny splinter group, of course, that believes that you can do these things. Among them are a few Texas oil millionaires, and an occasional politician or businessman from other areas. Their number is negligible and they are stupid.” -President Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1952
Volume 26, Issue 1
Page 4
The Steel Cobra’s Viewpoint Passing the Health Care Buck The United States spends far more on health care than other advanced countries. Yet we don't appear to receive more medical services. And we have lower life-expectancy and higher infant-mortality rates than countries that spend less than half as much per person. How do we do it? An important part of the answer is that much of our health care spending is devoted to passing the buck: trying to get someone else to pay the bills. According to the World Health Organization, in the United States administrative expenses eat up about 15 percent of the money paid in premiums to private health insurance companies, but only 4 percent of the budgets of public insurance programs, which consist mainly of Medicare and Medicaid. The numbers for both public and private insurance are similar in other countries - but because we rely much more heavily than anyone else on private insurance, our total administrative costs are much higher.
Isn't competition supposed to make the private sector more efficient than the public sector? Well, as the World Health Organization put it in a discussion of Western Europe, private insurers generally don't compete by delivering care at lower cost. Instead, they "compete on the basis of risk selection" that is, by turning away people who are likely to have high medical bills and by refusing or delaying any payment they can. Yet the cost of providing medical care to those denied private insurance doesn't go away. If individuals are poor, or if medical expenses impoverish them, they are covered by Medicaid. Otherwise, they pay out of pocket or rely on the charity of public hospitals. So we've created a vast and hugely expensive insurance bureaucracy that accomplishes nothing. The resources spent by private insurers don't reduce overall costs; they simply shift those costs to other people and institutions. It's perverse but true that this system, which insures only 85 percent of the population, costs much more than we would pay for a system that covered everyone. And the costs go beyond wasted money. First, in the U.S. system, medical costs act as a tax on employment. For example, General Motors is losing money on every car it makes because of the burden of health care costs. As a result, it may be forced to lay off thousands of workers, or may even go out of business. Yet the insurance premiums saved by firing workers are no saving at all to society as a whole: somebody still ends up paying the bills. Second, Americans without insurance eventually receive medical care - but the operative word is "eventually." According to Kaiser Family Foundation data, the uninsured are about three times as likely as the insured to postpone seeking care, fail to get needed care, leave prescriptions unfilled or skip recommended treatment. And many end up disabled - or die because of these delays.
According to the health organization, the higher costs of private insurers are "mainly due to the extensive bureaucracy required to assess risk, rate premiums, design benefit packages and review, pay or refuse claims." Public insurance plans have far less bureaucracy because they don't try to screen out highrisk clients or charge them higher fees.
Think about how crazy all of this is. At a rough guess, between two million and three million Americans are employed by insurers and health care providers not to deliver health care, but to pass the buck for that care to someone else. And the result of all their exertions is to make the nation poorer and sicker.
And the costs directly incurred by insurers are only half the story. Doctors "must hire office personnel just to deal with the insurance companies," Dr. Atul Gawande, a practicing physician, wrote in The New Yorker. "A well-run office can get the insurer's rejection rate down from 30 percent to, say, 15 percent. That's how a doctor makes money. ... It's a war with insurance, every step of the way."
Why do we put up with such an expensive, counterproductive health care system? Vested interests play an important role. But we also suffer from ideological blinders: decades of indoctrination in the virtues of market competition and the evils of big government have left many Americans unable to comprehend the idea that sometimes competition is the problem, not the solution.
Volume 26, Issue 1
Page 5
New Employees
Left to right: Gary Goble and Dale Koenig
Bret Gallo
Eric Johnson
Volume 26, Issue 1
Steve Healen
Randy Johnson
Left to right: Andrew Boyer, Mark Gilbert and Kevin Shanks
Carl Vaughn
Charles Haning
Mark Bricely
John Wall
Bill Bricely
Page 6
New Employees
Dawn Engler
Left to right: Thomas Mizer, Tim Hackworth, Jeff J. Jolliff and Todd Welch
$$$
Scholarships $$$
United Steelworkers Local 207L awarded scholarships to three area high school graduates.
Kendra Thomas the daughter of Kendall and Joyce Thomas will receive $1,000 scholarship to help her in attending Wright State University. She is a 2005 graduate of Vanlue High School. She will be studying to become a surgical nurse.
A 2005 graduate of Liberty-Benton, Tracie Hudson, will receive $1,000 scholarship to help her become a nurse. She will be attending Wright State University. She is the daughter of John and Sherry Hudson.
The daughter of Mark and Sheryl Mullholand, Amy Mullholand, was awarded $1,000 scholarship to help her pay for classes at Owens Community College. She will be studying to become an X-ray technician. She is a 2005 graduate of Carey High School. Volume 26, Issue 1
Page 7
An Unbalanced Trade Policy By Sherrod Brown The writer is a Democratic representative from Ohio and author of "Myths of Free Trade. "You can set your watch by it.” Whenever a trade pact comes to Congress, its supporters warn the American people that if we don't pass the agreement our economy will be hurt and our trading partners will be devastated. An annual U.S. trade deficit that has gone from $38 billion to $617 billion in a dozen years makes those claims hard to believe. And since Congress passed President Bush's trade promotion authority three years ago, we have lost one-sixth of our manufacturing jobs. When the proponents of trade agreements have nothing left to sell, the name-calling and misrepresentations begin. Now that the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) has been sent to Congress, its supporters are calling its opponents isolationists, or protectionists, or even anti-democratic. They claim that those who oppose this trade agreement are simply special interests opposed to trade, that they don't care about the poor in the developing world, which they want to pull up the ladder and keep out foreigners. For a change, let's look at the facts. The combined economic output of the Central American countries is about $62 billion, equivalent to that of Columbus, Ohio or Memphis, Tenn. Annual per capita income of a Nicaraguan worker is about $2,300, less than onesixteenth of an American's. CAFTA will not enable Central American workers to buy cars made in Ohio, or software developed in Seattle, or prime beef from Nebraska. CAFTA is about U.S. companies moving plants to Honduras, outsourcing jobs to El Salvador and exploiting cheap labor in Guatemala. Opposition to CAFTA is deep and broad in the United States: workers who are anxious about their jobs, their pensions, their health care; school districts that lose revenue with every plant shutdown; small Volume 26, Issue 1
businesses that can't compete with corporations using cheap labor to undercut the market. Opposition is just as deep and broad in Central America. More than 8,000 Guatemalan workers protested against CAFTA in March; the police responded with tear gas. In El Salvador, tens of thousands protested the agreement; the Salvadoran legislature responded by passing it in the middle of the night with no notice and little debate. In Costa Rica 30,000 protesters took to the streets last fall. And Costa Rican President Abel Pacheco announced this month that his country would not ratify CAFTA unless an independent commission could determine that the agreement will not hurt the working poor. What really makes sense is a trade policy that lifts workers up in rich and poor countries alike while respecting human rights and democratic principles. Workers' rights should enjoy the same guaranteed protections as CAFTA provides to prescription drug companies. Environmental and food safety laws deserve the same legal standing that CAFTA extends to CDs and Hollywood films. The United States, with its unrivaled purchasing power and its enormous economic clout, is in a unique position to help empower poor workers in developing countries while promoting prosperity at home. When the world's poorest people can buy American products, not just make them, and then we will know that our trade policies are finally working.
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How the Wealthy Rip Off the Social Security System Nathan Newman points out that amid all the rhetoric about Social Security, the Bush Treasury Department yesterday essentially admitted that the wealthy are regularly ripping off the system.
shareholder 'S' corporations received no salaries at all despite each having operating profits of more than $100,000. As a result, there were no employment taxes paid on $13.2 billion in profits.
Specifically, Treasury's J. Russell George, who is the inspector general for tax administration, testified that high-income citizens were using the "S Corporation" designation to officially pay themselves low/no salaries to escape social security tax. They then declare all that income as "S Corporation" profit.
That's $13.2 billion being stolen each year from the Social Security system as President Bush runs around the country saying we need to cut people's benefits. Then again, what do we expect? Bush, after all, let us know he has no interest in making people pay their fair share. As he said flippantly, trying to make people pay their fair share was wasted effort because "rich people figure out how to avoid taxes anyway."
How much is this scam costing Americans? According to George, in the 2000 tax year, the owners of 36,000 single-
Sources: Nathan Newman's post: http://www.nathannewman.org/log/ archives/002987.shtml Bush proposes Social Security benefit cuts: http:// www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A457262005Jan3.html Bush dismisses efforts to make people pay their fair share: http:// www.americanprogressaction.org/site/pp.asp? c=klLWJcP7H&b=138068
Attention: All committee people, officers and stewards. When ever there is any lost time due to union business, make sure you fill a lost time sheet weekly and turn it into the union hall.
Volume 26, Issue 1
Page 9
The following essay was written by Local 207L member Jell Stahl’s son, Mitch Stahl, as part of an application process to receive a scholarship from District 1’s Women of Steel. We thought that it deserved some recognition, therefore we decided to print it in this month’s edition of the newsletter.
Re: How I Use the Values of Unionism in My Life For many years my family has been actively involved with unions in the United States of America. My great grandfather a Teamster, grandmother and great grandmother, United Automobile Workers, father and grandfather United Steel Workers. The unions have touched my life and the members of my family with fair wages, the opportunity, for job advancement, a safer work environment, health, vision and dental care benefits, paid vacation and holidays, and then in the "golden years" providing retirement benefits. It is difficult to imagine what my life would be like without the comforts that the unions have fought to provide through the years. I have been fortunate to have a wonderful family, a warm and comfortable home to live in, food, clothing, medical care and the opportunity to receive my high school education. Now a new chapter is beginning for me, the opportunity to receive a higher education. Without the support of unions I often wonder if I would be able to consider a college education. In hearing and seeing media coverage about "sweat shops" in China and many third world countries it becomes more prevalent what a group of employees has had to overcome to make living in the United States what it is today. My thanks go out to the people who fought against human right abuse, and organized the strong labor unions yesterday, to provide a better work environment for the American work force of today With over thirteen million workers united in labor unions, working to keep the standards of quality in the work place, requiring employers to provide strong benefits to make the employment security better for the laboring men and women today. I have often heard my grandparents and retirees of Cooper Tire & Rubber Company discuss with my father the values that the union stands for. They tell him to stand strong, believe in each other and force the company to respect the workers that keeps the laborer of today employed. They often fear what will happen to America if the jobs continue to go over seas. Who will be here to protect the American laborers in the future? As a small boy I recall when Cooper Tire & Rubber Company went on strike, I remember my father picketing one cold November in 1991 What is apparent today is my father and the others working at the factory were all standing up for what they felt was in the best interest of their future employment, and how they could best provide for their families. Every few years the contract at my fathers company comes before the eyes of the labors. Often the company wants to take more benefits. The union allows for the work force to stand strong, to make sure families have medical insurance, retirees receive their retirement payments and employees are treated fairly. It also assures that the workers of today continue to make corporate America responsible to share proceeds with its work force instead of reeking in all the profits. Unions play a part in many areas of my daily life. Not only do many of my family members belong to a union but so do the teachers that teach my classes, the postal workers that bring the mail, the truck drivers delivering goods to the local market, and of course the steel workers providing the metals needed in so many construction businesses. A strong union is truly the voice of the people allowing them to acquire political power within a business and resulting in a strong relationship between employers and those employees. These workers that work so diligently deserve lifelong support for the dedication to the companies, which employ them. The voice of the people is what makes the unions so valuable in the corporate world today. Although I'm uncertain to where the next few years will take me, I know the importance of what my father and his fathers before him had to create, the bond between corporations and their employees. Without the family owned businesses that had once made our country strong the importance of strong unions is more critical in today's job market. Unions will continue to protect the workers of yesterday, today and the future.
Volume 26, Issue 1
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Local Officers Frank Cline, Rod Nelson and Organizing Committeeman Mike Cordell, attend Sunday School and Church Services with Former 39th President of The United States, Jimmy Carter and his wife, former First Lady Roselyn Carter, at Mr. Carter’s home town church, Maranatha Baptist Church, in Plains, Georgia. Plains is located just 23 miles north of Albany.
Local 207L Officers and Committeemen Assist in Albany Organizing Drive Officers and members of our Local’s organizing committee recently traveled to Cooper’s Albany, Georgia plant to assist District 9’s organizer, Lagurtha Sharpley, in organizing our sister plant. Although the union was voted down 755 to 465, this was a remarkable turn around from the last organizing drive, which was in 2002. There are currently 7 NLRB (National Labor Relations Board) charges that the union can pursue as a result of probable violations on the Company’s part. The Company took a hard nose anti-union stance during this drive by using every trick in the book, even sending their employees several videos directly to their homes, in order to dismay them from voting in a union. The last video they sent focused on plant closures, most of which closed before a lot of Albany’s employees were born, and blamed the union for those plant closures. The final message to the workers of Albany, as long as you keep fighting for a union in your shop, we’ll be there to help….. we’re not going away!
Volume 26, Issue 1
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Cooper Picnic Local 207L committee members, officers and stewards wish all of our union members a happy fourth of July!