Bloggers organize boycott of Chase Morgan

Michigan bloggers are spearheading a nationwide boycott of JP Morgan Chase over the bailout bank’s refusal to help out struggling Big 3 automaker Chrysler, putting 300,000 jobs in jeopardy.

JP Morgan Chase runs a large portion of Chrysler’s debt, and it is refusing to negotiate with the auto company on their debt: a move that could put thousands of hardworking American auto employees, the majority of them Michigan residents, out of their jobs by forcing Chrysler into bankruptcy. Anyone with a JP Morgan Chase bank account should close it out and to transfer their money to a local bank or credit union, and make sure they know why when you close it out.

According to the Detroit Free Press, Gov. Jennifer Granholm said that any banks that received rescue money from the federal government should be open to making concessions on the debt Chrysler owes them to help the automaker reach a deal with Italian carmaker Fiat necessary for its survival.

There is also an online petition and a Facebook group.

Top labor stories of 2007 feature a strike and an assault on labor

Organized labor was under attack in Michigan with proposals aimed at busting unions and increased moves to privatize many services and send them to non-union employees at often lower wages and benefits. But the biggest news that had Michigan residents on edge was the contract negotiations between the Big 3 and the UAW.

UAW and The Big 3 sign a contract after short strikesThe United Auto Workers signed a historic four-year contract with the Big 3 automakers in the fall that called for moving unfunded retiree health care costs into an independent trust administered by the UAW. The contract did not come easy and in September the UAW launched a nationwide strike against General Motors as 73,000 UAW members walked off the job and hit the picket lines at the nation's largest automaker. Luckily, the strike only lasted two days before an agreement was reached. In October, the UAW reached an agreement with Chrysler after a strike that only lasted a few hours. The contract Ford and the UAW signed in December was reached without a strike.

Right to Work Laws pushed
Republicans in the Michigan legislature made a concerted push to enact so-called Right to Work laws this year. Sen. Nancy Cassis, R-Novi, introduced Senate bills 607 and 608, and the companion bills in the House – House bills 4454 and 4455 – were introduced by Rep. Jack Hookendyk, R-Kalamazoo, and Rep. Kevin Elsenheimer, R-Bellaire. Both bills sat idle in their respective committees, despite Republicans controlling the Senate and Senate Majority Leader Mike Bishop saying that passing Right to Work was a priority in 2008. There is also talk of a Right to Work ballot initiative in Michigan appearing in mainstream media outlets, and that may be a story for 2008. Right to Work laws allow workers to enjoy benefits won by trade unions but not pay union dues.

Pro-labor law makes it out of the HouseThe Michigan House tried to put an end to the unfair advantage that unions feel management has when there is a drive to establish a union. This came in the form of House Bill 4316, known as the Worker Freedom Act sponsored by Rep. Mark Meadows, D-Lansing. The bill would prohibit employers from making workers attend mandatory meetings where employers have a captive audience to put out negative and anti-union information. The bill passed by a 56-49 vote on July 18, 2007, and it’s still currently in the Senate Commerce and Tourism Committee awaiting action. The practice of gathering employees to put out one-sided information is a staple in management’s fight to stop a union-organizing effort, while union organizers are sent to the sidelines to try and pass out info as employees zoom out of the employee parking lot. According to the nonpartisan House Fiscal Agency, a study of more than 400 union representation election campaigns found that during 92 percent of union organizing drives, employers forced their employees to attend closed-door, anti-union meetings. In addition, 78 percent of employers directed supervisors to deliver anti-union messages to employees in one-on-one meetings.

Employee Free Choice Act approved
In March, the U.S. House approved HR 800, the Employee Free Choice Act, by a vote of 228-183. It will allow workers to organize a union free of an employer’s intimidation, free from fear of being fired and free from retaliation. The bill was introduced by U.S. Rep. George Miller, D-Calif., on Feb. 5, and it had bipartisan support with 233 co-sponsors. The bill would allow employees at a work site who want a union to simply sign a card clearly indicating support for a union, and the company is required to recognize the union. Under the current law, even if the majority of the workers sign up for the union, the company can simply veto that decision and call for an election.

GM cuts workforce
General Motors Corp. announced in December it plans to offer buyouts to 5,200 of its 72,000 hourly workers. This will allow GM to hire new workers at lower wages. The deal was part of the agreement reached in September between the union and GM.

Communist China set to invade U.S. shores in renewal of Cold War

The good news is when Chrysler rolls out its $7,000 cars made in Communist China by workers working for less than a $1 an hour it will actually be marked up to $10,000 after all the safety features required for U.S. roads are added in.

It appears the communists were not able to win the Cold War because they could not keep up with our defense spending and match our amount of nuclear missiles, so they are trying to win by exporting American jobs to China. According to the Detroit Free Press, Chrysler will begin importing the cars that are priced less than half of the lowest current Chrysler product in partnership with Chery Automobile Co. The company is owned by the local government of Wuhu, located in the southeastern province of Anhui.

It’s news like this that makes it clear why under President Bush’s watch we have lost more than 3 million manufacturing jobs. Bush has completely ignored the manufacturing sector to the point that the alleged new jobs being created are not making up for the lost manufacturing jobs in both quantity and quality. The current tax policies, unfair trade polices and lack of enforcement of trade polices by the current administration is making it impossible for U.S. automakers to compete globally, and – as the ownership of Chery illustrates - foreign governments are helping foreign auto companies compete by providing health care for employees for help with health care and even manipulating currency to make their cars cheaper and U.S. cars more expensive. U.S. car companies are not just competing against foreign car companies they are competing against foreign governments.

I fail to see how U.S. automakers can compete against a communist country - because that's exactly what they are doing - or how importing the cars here can be good for anyone. This administration continues to make it attractive for U.S. companies to offshore jobs, and there is no way we can compete against a country that pays workers less than a dollar an hour. We will never win a race to the bottom, and why would we want to?

Under free trade agreements, we should be exporting our products to sell in China, but the only thing we are exporting is our decent paying jobs. Not only is China not allowing open markets, but with some three-quarters of the population living in poverty how can they even afford to buy anything? China has unfettered and unrestricted access to U.S. markets. That’s despite the fact they compete with slave labor wages and production and wages and benefits manipulated and controlled by a Communist Chinese regime. The obvious question is why do we allow them unrestricted access to sell products made in China when they do not reciprocate?

It seems ironic that people like U.S. Rep. Mike Rogers, R-Brighton, is constantly speaking on his cable show and elsewhere about inferior products - especially auto parts - that are being manufactured in China that are exact look-alikes, complete with packaging and company name, that is costing U.S. manufactures as much as $250 billon a year in lost revenue, but we are now embracing them. In fact, Chery was also sued by GM Daewoo for copying that company's Chevrolet Spark. Why are we allowing this unfettered access without addressing the rip-off of American products, copyright infringement and patent infringement?

Then there is the obvious question of quality. We are getting products from China that lack the basic quality control procedures of products made in the U.S. to the point that it is endangering lives. Just last month more than 900,000 tubes of Chinese-made toothpaste containing diethylene glycol - a sweet, syrupy poison - were pulled off the shelves of U.S. stores.

Some Republicans have no problem with buying products from an enemy that just a few years ago we were calling our ideological enemy bent on destroying us. It was just some 20 years ago when former President and conservative hero Ronald Reagan called the second largest communist nation in the world an evil empire, but now we are buying cheap cars from the largest communist country because they can make them cheaper by paying workers dirt-cheap wages.

Some are saying there’s a double standard because the Democratic leadership is not speaking out against this like they did last fall when Republican Gubernatorial candidate Dick DeVos, as head of Amway, invested more than $200 million in Communist China for building plants to manufacture the company's products. I think they should, but I don’t see how much effect the governor of a state and a state party chairman can have on federal trade policy.

It should also be pointed out that they were pointing out the lies of a political candidate during an election. DeVos was falsely claiming that investment was creating jobs in Michigan. If Chrysler CEO Tom LaSorda ran for political office making the same untrue claim then Michigan Democratic Party Chair Mark Brewer would be 100 percent correct in debunking that claim. Frankly, LaSorda should stick to managing the Dodgers.

DeVos also claimed that Chinese law says if you sell to the Chinese it must be built or manufactured in China, and that only those products made in China are sold in China. The first part is true, but Brewer presented proof that DeVos lied when he said those products made in China were not sold here. That begs the question: why don’t we tell the Chinese and Chrysler if you sell to Americans it must be built or manufactured in America like the Chinese do?