Here's a brief round-up of key labor activity in the South in March:
- A one-day strike by more than 30 bus drivers at the University of Alabama left the drivers locked out and watching university-hired scabs take over bus routes with university vans. Although the members of the Amalgamated Transit Union Local 1208 agreed to go back to work while contract negotiations were underway, first-day talks stalled, and university officials decided to let scab drivers take over approximately one-third of the normal bus service and to abandon the rest.
The labor action and university response have led students to protest and distribute flyers in support of the bus drivers, and several scabs subsequently changed their minds about taking over the routes.
Union officials say the drivers, who work under contract with the First Transit company, make an average $9.50 an hour, much less than even the $11.75 per hour starting pay for First Transit drivers at the University of Texas. Those drivers can earn up to $17 an hour. The strike came after nine months at the bargaining table with an intransigent employer insisting that wages be frozen.
- The national AFL-CIO, increasingly frustrated with Democrats who vote and talk more like Republicans, has announced it will support Arkansas Lt. Gov. Bill Halter in his bid to unseat incumbent U.S. Sen. Blanche Lincoln in the May 18 Democratic primary. The endorsement puts as much as $4 million in union support in Halter's camp. Lincoln, as unreliable a vote on health care reform as she is on the Employee Free Choice Act, still has her friends at Wal-Mart, however, to give her consolation and cash.
The union rank-and-file's growing frustration with President Obama crystallized after he gave his strong endorsement to an excise tax--sometimes called the "Cadillac" tax--on comparatively high-cost, employer-sponsored health plans to help fund health care reform. These plans are the hard-won fruit of struggles by labor unions on behalf of their members, and to single them out for taxation was a slap in the face of organized labor, which strongly supported Obama's election.
A White House meeting with labor leaders resulted in a deal that exempted union-won plans, but it left a bitter taste in everyone's mouth and it exposed unions once again to the charge they only care about their own, not the working class as a whole.
Rank-and-file anger played a key role in Republican Scott Brown's capture of the late U.S. Sen. Ted Kennedy's seat in Massachusetts in January. Polls show less than half the union members in the state supported Brown's Democratic opponent. Obama got 60 percent of the union vote in 2008.
Monday, March 15, 2010
Sunday, March 7, 2010
A life or death fight for workers' rights in a deeper South: Mexico
Three years after the revolution he helped launch in Mexico, Emiliano Zapata (seen to the left on horseback in a 1912 photo by Hugo Brehme) issued this warning in a letter to the military leader General Victoriano Huerta: "The Revolution has not triumphed. ... In your hands still is the will and the power to save it; but if, unfortunately, you do not, the shades of Cuauhtemoc, Hidalgo and Juarez and the heroes of all times will stir in their tombs to ask: What have you done with the blood of your brothers?"
Today, the ghosts of Zapata, Pancho Villa, and the revolutionaries and visionaries Zapata invoked in his letter are indeed stirring as the government of Felipe Calderon wages war against the workers whose struggles were the very cause of the revolution in the first place --ironically in the centennial of that revolution's beginning.
In a struggle far to the south of the U.S. South but very much worthy of attention on this side of the Rio Grande, the Mexican Mine and Metal Workers Union and the Mexican Electrical Workers Union are in a life or death fight as they dig in against efforts by the Calderon regime to destroy both. It's a battle being duly reported by the United Electrical Workers (UE) in the United States--a union that has long worked closely with its Mexican counterparts--but which is largely being ignored by a U.S. media much more focused on the drug wars along the border between the two countries.
The 13,000 mine workers at the Cananea copper mine have been on strike since 2007 in protest against the poor safety standards in the mines and the lack of concern of the mine owners, Grupo Mexico, standards that experts believe have been a factor in lung disease among the miners. In 2006, an explosion at Grupo Mexico's Pasta de Conchos mine killed 65 miners. The explosion came after the union complained of safety problems at the mine. Grupo Mexico has yet to compensate the families, the UE reports.
State agents shot down three unarmed strikers in 2008, and Grupo Mexico has asked that the army step in again to bring the strike to an end. Union leaders are convinced that the Calderon government is indeed preparing a major intervention, and that a bloody battle is bound to be the result. Ironically, the same mine at Cananea was the site of a 1905 strike, and the subsequent killing of 27 miners there became a rallying cry in the 1910 revolution.
That revolution, by the way, was fought to free the people of Mexico from a feudal society controlled by the hacendado who lived lavishly in the cities but owned giant estates in the countryside where the majority of Mexicans worked as sharecropping peasants. These haciendas were much like the plantations of the ante-bellum (and post-bellum) U.S. South.
The Mexican government's other anti-union war has been against the Mexican Electrical Workers Union (SME), and it reached a low point several months ago when Calderon "sent the police to occupy the electrical facilities in central Mexico, liquidated the state-owned Light and Power Company, and terminated 44,000 workers," the UE and the Mexico-based Authentic Labor Front said in their February report, Mexican Labor News and Analysis. Calderon moved to destroy the militant SME so he could replace it with the more government-friendly union, the Sole Union of Electrical Workers, and thus continue with his push toward his ultimate goal: the utility's privatization.
These actions have led to calls for a general strike--possibly as early as March 16--and to demonstrations by thousands of teachers, farmers from the state of Chiapas, and other workers. You may not have read about these events before now because this is not the kind of news you typically find in the mainstream U.S. media. The alternative press is doing its best to fill the gap, and that includes Labor South.
Tuesday, March 2, 2010
A rendition of "We're Gonna Roll the Union On" fires up the troops
Brenda R. Scott, veteran activist and president of the Mississippi state employees union, got the state AFL-CIO's four-day annual legislative conference off to a rousing start Monday with a fiery rendition of the old labor song, We're Gonna Roll the Union On!
"I'm tired of the haves taking advantage of the have-nots!" Scott told the crowd at the Edison-Walthall hotel in downtown Jackson after the song. "We need to stand up and fight back!"
Scott, nearly as good a singer as she is a grassroots organizer, said Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour is trying to do away with job protection for veteran state workers by eliminating a clause requiring that "just cause" be proven before a firing. The governor is also trying to raise the cost of state employees' health premiums by 15 percent over each of the next four years.
"When you don't say anything, you are telling Haley Barbour to go ahead," she said. "My state workers are afraid."
A new militancy is needed, she said. Union leaders across the state need to stand up for their members and for all working people.
Scott said she hopes Barbour, frequently touted as a possible future Republican presidential candidate, does run for president so the rest of the nation sees what he's doing in Mississippi. Barbour, in Oxford today for a meeting with the press, declined to dismiss the possibility of a future run.
Scott, herself an unsuccessful candidate for Jackson mayor last year, organized 3,000 members for her union, CWA (Communications Workers of America) Local 3570. "Brenda has done this is a state where there are no collective bargaining laws for public workers and no legal right to have dues check-off for public workers," CWA District 3 Vice President Beverly Hicks said. "She has been successful over the years against all odds."
Another speaker urging unity and activism at Monday's opening day ceremonies for the conference was John W. Graves, president of IBEW Local 2164 and also of the Mississippi chapter of the A. Philip Randolph Institute.
"We all need to pull together," Graves said. "We all have the same common goal--the ACLU, the AFL, the APR. Think of it as a chain. The chain is no stronger than its weakest link. We've been fighting for a long time, but we don't have victory yet."
Yours truly also spoke at the conference, and I'll do something very unusual for me: quote myself! "You are at the forefront of a major movement for social justice," I told the crowd. "The enemy is formidable, just like it was in the 1920s, just before labor grew to its greatest strength.
"President Obama needs to realize--and I think he does--there's not going to be bipartisanship in Congress. Republicans only want his defeat and failure. So he needs to push ahead, use the rules of Congress to ram health care reform through on a simple majority, and punish those Democrats who aren't on board. He's the president. He has the power to do it. We need what the Germans call Realpolitik. We need militancy. And after he does it on health care, he needs to do the same on EFCA (the Employee Free Choice Act)."
The real work is done after all the speeches, however. Let's hope Brenda Scott's fighting spirit proves contagious.
"I'm tired of the haves taking advantage of the have-nots!" Scott told the crowd at the Edison-Walthall hotel in downtown Jackson after the song. "We need to stand up and fight back!"
Scott, nearly as good a singer as she is a grassroots organizer, said Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour is trying to do away with job protection for veteran state workers by eliminating a clause requiring that "just cause" be proven before a firing. The governor is also trying to raise the cost of state employees' health premiums by 15 percent over each of the next four years.
"When you don't say anything, you are telling Haley Barbour to go ahead," she said. "My state workers are afraid."
A new militancy is needed, she said. Union leaders across the state need to stand up for their members and for all working people.
Scott said she hopes Barbour, frequently touted as a possible future Republican presidential candidate, does run for president so the rest of the nation sees what he's doing in Mississippi. Barbour, in Oxford today for a meeting with the press, declined to dismiss the possibility of a future run.
Scott, herself an unsuccessful candidate for Jackson mayor last year, organized 3,000 members for her union, CWA (Communications Workers of America) Local 3570. "Brenda has done this is a state where there are no collective bargaining laws for public workers and no legal right to have dues check-off for public workers," CWA District 3 Vice President Beverly Hicks said. "She has been successful over the years against all odds."
Another speaker urging unity and activism at Monday's opening day ceremonies for the conference was John W. Graves, president of IBEW Local 2164 and also of the Mississippi chapter of the A. Philip Randolph Institute.
"We all need to pull together," Graves said. "We all have the same common goal--the ACLU, the AFL, the APR. Think of it as a chain. The chain is no stronger than its weakest link. We've been fighting for a long time, but we don't have victory yet."
Yours truly also spoke at the conference, and I'll do something very unusual for me: quote myself! "You are at the forefront of a major movement for social justice," I told the crowd. "The enemy is formidable, just like it was in the 1920s, just before labor grew to its greatest strength.
"President Obama needs to realize--and I think he does--there's not going to be bipartisanship in Congress. Republicans only want his defeat and failure. So he needs to push ahead, use the rules of Congress to ram health care reform through on a simple majority, and punish those Democrats who aren't on board. He's the president. He has the power to do it. We need what the Germans call Realpolitik. We need militancy. And after he does it on health care, he needs to do the same on EFCA (the Employee Free Choice Act)."
The real work is done after all the speeches, however. Let's hope Brenda Scott's fighting spirit proves contagious.
Thursday, February 25, 2010
Is the "Toyota Way" behind the recalls?
A century ago, Frederick W. Taylor, a mechanical engineer whose book The Principles of Scientific Management influenced generations of business owners and managers, had this to say about American working people:
“Underworking … constitutes the greatest evil with which the working people are now afflicted. … Instead of using every effort to turn out the largest possible amount of work, (a worker) deliberately plans to do as little as he safely can, to turn out far less work than he is well able to do; in many instances to do not more than one-third to one-half of a proper day’s work.”
With that contemptuous attitude at a time of sweatshop abuse and rampant child labor, Taylor proceeded to propose that every second and every movement at the workplace be monitored and scientifically managed to eliminate waste, inefficiency, and labor costs in the cause of high productivity and company profits.
Proponents of the so-called “Toyota Way”—the production philosophy employed by the same Japanese giant now reeling from the recall of 8.5 million cars since November—say it’s a “democratic Taylorism” that values workers even as it pushes them constantly toward “continuous improvement,” known in Toyota-speak as kaizen.
What role did the “Toyota Way” play in the current recall? It’s the kind of question you’re never going to hear Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour ask, nor the governors and members of Congress from Kentucky, Texas, West Virginia, and other states where Toyota has built plants. All you’re going to hear from them is a resounding “The Toyota Way Is Okay!”
Indeed, the “Toyota Way” of kaizen and so-called “lean management” is now taught in the public schools at Scott County, Ky., where the company built its first solely owned U.S. plant in 1986—at a cost of nearly $150 million to Kentucky taxpayers.
Even Kindergarteners now learn Toyota-think in Scott County, Ky. With Toyota-trained managers overseeing the process, students learn, for example, to be creative in determining what jobs can be eliminated at a work site without negatively affecting production. What they don’t learn is whether they should question the “Toyota Way”.
Expect public schools in and near Blue Springs, Miss., where the company plans to build a $1.3 billion, 2,000-worker assembly plant, to be incorporating the “Toyota Way” into their future curricula. The University of Mississippi is already there. Earlier this month, the university’s Undergraduate Council approved program and course changes in the School of Engineering that, in cooperation with the newly established Center for Manufacturing Excellence, will teach “lean manufacturing and the Toyota Production System.”
Yet, all is not rosy for Toyota or its way these days. With millions of its cars on recall for pedal, floormat, and brake problems, Toyota president Akio Toyoda has apologized to Congress, television's Larry King, and the nation of Japan, which the New York Times recently called practically a “one-company town.” No company more symbolizes Japanese economic might than Toyota.
Yet sales are dropping. The U.S. Congress is investigating. Even the Prius hybrid, the pride of Toyota, Japan’s best-selling car last year, and the car that is to be built at the Blue Springs plant, is in recall. Toyota has had eight major recalls since September 2007. Lawsuits were filed in February relating vehicle deaths to Toyota deficiencies.
Certified auditor Katy Cameron is probably nodding her head at the irony. After working more than two decades at the New United Motor Manufacturing, Inc., (NUMMI) plant in Alameda County, Calif. she filed a lawsuit in 2007 claiming the jointly run General Motors-Toyota operation took revenge on her after she complained of shoddy practices that allowed cars to be put on the market with bad brakes, faulty seat belts, and a host of other problems. It was her job to spot such problems. The company apparently didn't like what she reported.
More than a year ago, a 65-page report by the New York-based National Labor Committee claimed Toyota subcontractors in Japan forced employees to work 16-hour days and seven days a week at sub-minimum wages to build the same Prius planned for Blue Springs. The report also claimed that migrant workers at Toyota faced a constant threat of deportation if they complained about sweatshop-like conditions.
To Frederick W. Taylor, workers were merely objects to be scientifically managed into little more than highly productive automatons. The “democratic Taylorism” of the Toyota Way is supposed to be an improvement in that philosophy. The company’s current troubles are hardly proof.
“Underworking … constitutes the greatest evil with which the working people are now afflicted. … Instead of using every effort to turn out the largest possible amount of work, (a worker) deliberately plans to do as little as he safely can, to turn out far less work than he is well able to do; in many instances to do not more than one-third to one-half of a proper day’s work.”
With that contemptuous attitude at a time of sweatshop abuse and rampant child labor, Taylor proceeded to propose that every second and every movement at the workplace be monitored and scientifically managed to eliminate waste, inefficiency, and labor costs in the cause of high productivity and company profits.
Proponents of the so-called “Toyota Way”—the production philosophy employed by the same Japanese giant now reeling from the recall of 8.5 million cars since November—say it’s a “democratic Taylorism” that values workers even as it pushes them constantly toward “continuous improvement,” known in Toyota-speak as kaizen.
What role did the “Toyota Way” play in the current recall? It’s the kind of question you’re never going to hear Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour ask, nor the governors and members of Congress from Kentucky, Texas, West Virginia, and other states where Toyota has built plants. All you’re going to hear from them is a resounding “The Toyota Way Is Okay!”
Indeed, the “Toyota Way” of kaizen and so-called “lean management” is now taught in the public schools at Scott County, Ky., where the company built its first solely owned U.S. plant in 1986—at a cost of nearly $150 million to Kentucky taxpayers.
Even Kindergarteners now learn Toyota-think in Scott County, Ky. With Toyota-trained managers overseeing the process, students learn, for example, to be creative in determining what jobs can be eliminated at a work site without negatively affecting production. What they don’t learn is whether they should question the “Toyota Way”.
Expect public schools in and near Blue Springs, Miss., where the company plans to build a $1.3 billion, 2,000-worker assembly plant, to be incorporating the “Toyota Way” into their future curricula. The University of Mississippi is already there. Earlier this month, the university’s Undergraduate Council approved program and course changes in the School of Engineering that, in cooperation with the newly established Center for Manufacturing Excellence, will teach “lean manufacturing and the Toyota Production System.”
Yet, all is not rosy for Toyota or its way these days. With millions of its cars on recall for pedal, floormat, and brake problems, Toyota president Akio Toyoda has apologized to Congress, television's Larry King, and the nation of Japan, which the New York Times recently called practically a “one-company town.” No company more symbolizes Japanese economic might than Toyota.
Yet sales are dropping. The U.S. Congress is investigating. Even the Prius hybrid, the pride of Toyota, Japan’s best-selling car last year, and the car that is to be built at the Blue Springs plant, is in recall. Toyota has had eight major recalls since September 2007. Lawsuits were filed in February relating vehicle deaths to Toyota deficiencies.
Certified auditor Katy Cameron is probably nodding her head at the irony. After working more than two decades at the New United Motor Manufacturing, Inc., (NUMMI) plant in Alameda County, Calif. she filed a lawsuit in 2007 claiming the jointly run General Motors-Toyota operation took revenge on her after she complained of shoddy practices that allowed cars to be put on the market with bad brakes, faulty seat belts, and a host of other problems. It was her job to spot such problems. The company apparently didn't like what she reported.
More than a year ago, a 65-page report by the New York-based National Labor Committee claimed Toyota subcontractors in Japan forced employees to work 16-hour days and seven days a week at sub-minimum wages to build the same Prius planned for Blue Springs. The report also claimed that migrant workers at Toyota faced a constant threat of deportation if they complained about sweatshop-like conditions.
To Frederick W. Taylor, workers were merely objects to be scientifically managed into little more than highly productive automatons. The “democratic Taylorism” of the Toyota Way is supposed to be an improvement in that philosophy. The company’s current troubles are hardly proof.
Sunday, February 21, 2010
Latest round-up of labor activity in the South: A Charleston celebration, a guilty plea in immigrant raid, and a contract for Memphis teachers
To the left is Ken Riley, president of the International Longshoremen's Association Local 1422 in Charleston, S.C.
Let's take a look at some recent labor activity around the South:
CHARLESTON, S.C. - A two-day celebration marking the 10th anniversary of the International Longshoremen's Association victory over an anti-union attorney general and union-busting Danish shipping line will be held Feb. 25 and 26.
Called the "first major labor battle of the 21st century"--in a right-to-work state, no less--the dramatic January 2000 labor action pitted ILA Local 1422 against state troopers and local police who used helicopters, armed vehicles, patrol boats, and attack dogs to squash a picket line. The dockworkers were protesting a decision by the Nordana Shipping Line to break a 22-year-old relationship with the local by hiring nonunion workers. Why pay union workers $16.50 to $25 an hour when nonunion workers will do the job for $8 an hour?
Law enforcement authorities arrested several union members on riot charges that were later tossed. Enter then-South Carolina Attorney General Charlie Condon, a politician cut from the same cloth as "Pitchfork" Ben Tillman, Cole Blease, Cotton Ed Smith, and Strom Thurmond. Vowing "jail, jail, and more jail," Condon got a grand jury to go along with felony indictments against five longshoremen--who came to be known as the "Charleston Five". The five eventually served 18 months under house arrest before agreeing to misdemeanor rioting charges.
The union won its standoff with Nordana after a show of unity by fellow longshoremen in Spain and elsewhere in Europe. The "battle" became a showcase of how international solidarity can be used to win victories for workers' rights. Local 1422 president Ken Riley emerged as not only a hero in Charleston but also a major reform figure in the ILA, a union long tainted by a history of corruption and ties to organized crime.
The Feb. 25/26 celebration will include the launching of a new organizing initiative in the South under the banner "Jobs With Rights Now!"
HATTIESBURG, Miss. - More than a year after the largest workplace raid by federal officials on undocumented workers in U.S. history, we're still waiting to see just how much the federal government is going hold Howard Industries to account for its role in the circumstances that led to the raid.
In December, company executive Jose Humberto Gonzalez pleaded guilty to a charge that he knowingly hired undocumented workers at the company's plant in Laurel.
As a result of the raid, federal agents sent hundreds of immigrant workers to the LaSalle Detention Center in Jena, La., where they were held for weeks without formal charges or the ability to see an attorney. Female immigrant workers arrested at the plant--many of them mothers with young children--were forced to wear monitoring devices on their ankles and forbidden to leave Mississippi.
Their crime? Working without proper documentation at a company that had already been fined for 54 safety violations. They helped make power transformers and voltage regulators, reportedly at wages much less than other workers, and many of them living in substandard conditions as a result.
Gonzales faced a 12-count indictment and pleaded guilty to one of the counts. That could put him in prison for up to five years. He has been the only company official charged with any crime. What about other Howard Industries officials who perhaps don't have Spanish surnames? What did they know and when did they know it? Who looked the other way? I'm not holding my breath for fresh indictments. This is a company known for its owners' gifts to politicians and that was so beloved by Mississippi lawmakers that they awarded it $31.5 million in taxpayer money in 2002 as incentive to expand its operations.
In fact, the state of Mississippi has a new law that penalizes companies using undocumented workers if those companies have public contracts. Whether Howard has faces such penalties or even has such contracts is uncertain, but one of the law's sponsors, state Sen. Lee Yancy, R-Brandon, says he has full confidence that Howard is doing everything it can to abide by the law.
MEMPHIS, Tenn. - Members of the Memphis Education Association have agreed to a new contract with city schools that won them a 2 percent pay raise with the guarantee of another 1 percent pay raise next year.
With the agreement, Memphis City Schools now has signed contracts with all seven of its workers' unions. The pay raise is smaller than in years past, but, given the hard economic times, Memphis Education Association leaders said they were happy to get it. Union membership totals more than 6,000.
Wednesday, February 10, 2010
Wal-Mart & Toyota, two giants in trouble
Wanna stay busy? Become a Wal-Mart lawyer.
Ten West African immmigrants have filed complaints against the Arkansas-based retailer with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, saying they were unjustly fired by the company although they had worked for years without any complaints until new managers took over stores in Avon and several other Colorado towns. The men feel they were fired because they're foreigners, and because they're black.
Wal-Mart says the firings were simply part of large-scale layoffs and firings at the company. However, the complaints come on the heels of other legal problems. As reported recently in the New York Times, it recently reached a $17.5 million settlement in a class-action case regarding claims it discriminated against African-Americans seeking truck-driving jobs.
Another class-action suit claims Wal-Mart discriminated against 1.6 million former and current female employees in pay raises and promotions. That one has been pending since 2004.
Another giant of interest to Southerners is Toyota, which has a huge plant in Kentucky as well as other plants and operations in West Virginia, Texas, and Mississippi (that plant remains yet-to-be-built). With millions of its cars on recall for pedal, floormat, brake, and other problems, the world's largest automaker is reeling from a certain kind of publicity it has rarely seen in the usually fawning press--bad publicity.
Company president Akio Toyoda has apologized to the nation of Japan. Sales are dropping. The U.S. Congress is investigating--although don't expect a lot of aggressive scrutiny from West Virginia, Kentucky, Texas, and Mississippi politicians. They'd just as soon close the book on this matter with the next announcement from Tokyo that everything's quite hunky-dory.
Toyota has had eight major recalls since September 2007.
Somewhere in California there's a certified auditor nodding her head at the irony of it all. Katy Cameron, who worked more than two decades at the New United Motor Manufacturing, Inc., (NUMMI) plant in Alameda County, filed a lawsuit in 2007 claiming the jointly run General Motors-Toyota operation took revenge on her after she complained of shoddy practices that allowed cars to be put on the market with bad brakes, faulty seat belts, and a host of other problems. It was her job to spot such problems. The company didn't like what she reported.
The recalls and lawsuits like Cameron's call into question the much-touted "Toyota Way" with its philosophy of "kaizen" (continuous improvement), its "just-in-time" production, the much-heralded "andon cord" that allows a single worker to stop an entire assembly line if a problem emerges. Not sure what happens to the worker--oops, I'm sorry, I should have said "team member"--after he pulls that cord.
Now the cord has been pulled on the entire Toyota corporation. What's going to happen to it?
Ten West African immmigrants have filed complaints against the Arkansas-based retailer with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, saying they were unjustly fired by the company although they had worked for years without any complaints until new managers took over stores in Avon and several other Colorado towns. The men feel they were fired because they're foreigners, and because they're black.
Wal-Mart says the firings were simply part of large-scale layoffs and firings at the company. However, the complaints come on the heels of other legal problems. As reported recently in the New York Times, it recently reached a $17.5 million settlement in a class-action case regarding claims it discriminated against African-Americans seeking truck-driving jobs.
Another class-action suit claims Wal-Mart discriminated against 1.6 million former and current female employees in pay raises and promotions. That one has been pending since 2004.
Another giant of interest to Southerners is Toyota, which has a huge plant in Kentucky as well as other plants and operations in West Virginia, Texas, and Mississippi (that plant remains yet-to-be-built). With millions of its cars on recall for pedal, floormat, brake, and other problems, the world's largest automaker is reeling from a certain kind of publicity it has rarely seen in the usually fawning press--bad publicity.
Company president Akio Toyoda has apologized to the nation of Japan. Sales are dropping. The U.S. Congress is investigating--although don't expect a lot of aggressive scrutiny from West Virginia, Kentucky, Texas, and Mississippi politicians. They'd just as soon close the book on this matter with the next announcement from Tokyo that everything's quite hunky-dory.
Toyota has had eight major recalls since September 2007.
Somewhere in California there's a certified auditor nodding her head at the irony of it all. Katy Cameron, who worked more than two decades at the New United Motor Manufacturing, Inc., (NUMMI) plant in Alameda County, filed a lawsuit in 2007 claiming the jointly run General Motors-Toyota operation took revenge on her after she complained of shoddy practices that allowed cars to be put on the market with bad brakes, faulty seat belts, and a host of other problems. It was her job to spot such problems. The company didn't like what she reported.
The recalls and lawsuits like Cameron's call into question the much-touted "Toyota Way" with its philosophy of "kaizen" (continuous improvement), its "just-in-time" production, the much-heralded "andon cord" that allows a single worker to stop an entire assembly line if a problem emerges. Not sure what happens to the worker--oops, I'm sorry, I should have said "team member"--after he pulls that cord.
Now the cord has been pulled on the entire Toyota corporation. What's going to happen to it?
Sunday, January 31, 2010
An Editorial: Bipartisanship, Filibustering & the Ghosts of Thurmond and Helms
In calling for a bipartisan spirit on Capitol Hill--issued in his State of the Union address and later to a House Republican retreat in Baltimore--President Obama is a voice crying in the wilderness.
Surely he knows by now that the spirits of Strom Thurmond and Jesse Helms are what drives today's Republican Party. Yes, the Senate's champion filibuster and its "No" master. Thurmond, the ol' Dixiecrat seg from South Carolina who led the charge to change the South from solid Democrat to solid Republican, and Helms, the raging North Carolina ex-TV exec who earned the moniker "Senator No" for opposing practically everything that a South American dictator wouldn't want for his country.
Obama's trying to be above it all, a leader of all the people--that's what presidents are supposed to do--but he's also got to practice realpolitik. He needs a dose of manhandling Lyndon Baines Johnson to deal with Republicans, none of whom have any desire or intention to work with him or any Democrat for that matter. Why would they do anything that might remotely score a victory for the White House?
That's why Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour's claim today on Face the Nation was disingenuous at best. He had the temerity to say that Republicans are willing to work with Democrats as long as they can find common ground on the issues. Barbour knows this is untrue, host Bob Schieffer knows this, and so does anyone else with any feel for American politics today.
This is an election year, and Republicans sense they might have a shot at regaining a lot of lost ground in Congress. They want Obama to fail, regardless of what that means to the nation. They don't care. That's the reality. Rush Limbaugh was the first to admit it, and he essentially is the leader of the Republican Party today.
What Democrats this past year should have done--here employing my 20-20 hindsight vision--is push as many bills to the Senate floor--health care, Employee Free Choice Act, jobs bills, etc.--that they could muster together. Let the Republicans filibuster, and let the nation see it. Let the nation see firsthand their self-serving obstructionism, that they're willing to let the nation go to hell in a hand basket if that's what it takes to score points for their side.
Thurmond, still the Senate's filibustering record-holder, and Helms are smiling from their graves, enjoying their one true, lasting legacy: the modern-day Republican Party.
Surely he knows by now that the spirits of Strom Thurmond and Jesse Helms are what drives today's Republican Party. Yes, the Senate's champion filibuster and its "No" master. Thurmond, the ol' Dixiecrat seg from South Carolina who led the charge to change the South from solid Democrat to solid Republican, and Helms, the raging North Carolina ex-TV exec who earned the moniker "Senator No" for opposing practically everything that a South American dictator wouldn't want for his country.
Obama's trying to be above it all, a leader of all the people--that's what presidents are supposed to do--but he's also got to practice realpolitik. He needs a dose of manhandling Lyndon Baines Johnson to deal with Republicans, none of whom have any desire or intention to work with him or any Democrat for that matter. Why would they do anything that might remotely score a victory for the White House?
That's why Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour's claim today on Face the Nation was disingenuous at best. He had the temerity to say that Republicans are willing to work with Democrats as long as they can find common ground on the issues. Barbour knows this is untrue, host Bob Schieffer knows this, and so does anyone else with any feel for American politics today.
This is an election year, and Republicans sense they might have a shot at regaining a lot of lost ground in Congress. They want Obama to fail, regardless of what that means to the nation. They don't care. That's the reality. Rush Limbaugh was the first to admit it, and he essentially is the leader of the Republican Party today.
What Democrats this past year should have done--here employing my 20-20 hindsight vision--is push as many bills to the Senate floor--health care, Employee Free Choice Act, jobs bills, etc.--that they could muster together. Let the Republicans filibuster, and let the nation see it. Let the nation see firsthand their self-serving obstructionism, that they're willing to let the nation go to hell in a hand basket if that's what it takes to score points for their side.
Thurmond, still the Senate's filibustering record-holder, and Helms are smiling from their graves, enjoying their one true, lasting legacy: the modern-day Republican Party.
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