Zachary Miller & Lorenzo D’Ettore
Ford Motor Co. has terminated its contract with Jack Cooper, a vehicle hauling company based in Kansas City, Missouri and Kennesaw, Georgia, ending a four-decades long relationship. The announcement was made January 2nd, 30 days before the contract was set to expire. The International Brotherhood of Teamsters (IBT), who has over a thousand members employed by Jack Cooper, have stated their opposition and urged Ford to reverse the decision, citing the potential for the contractor to go under and the drivers to lose their jobs due to the decision.
In 2019, Jack Cooper faced $2 billion in underfunded pension liabilities, leading to a Chapter 11 bankruptcy where the pension contribution was slashed from $348 to $150 per week for workers. This restructuring, while presented as necessary to “save jobs,” effectively transferred wealth from future workers to maintain past promises. At the same time, it weakened the union and its fighting capacity, leaving it increasingly unprepared in the face of the latest attack.
Ford is joined by the other big American automakers Stellantis and GM in mass layoffs. These layoffs are hitting across industries, with unionized workers being replaced with cheaper, non-unionized labor as the capitalists force the burden of the economic crisis onto the backs of the working class.
Sean O’Brien, general president of Teamsters and arch labor-aristocrat, said: “Ford, a once iconic American brand, wants to boost its own bottom line by walking away from a family-owned company and into the arms of second-rate third parties that will pay workers less money and far fewer benefits to haul Ford vehicles.” After peddling his usual opportunism and jingoism, O’Brien went on to say the IBT would use the “full force” of the union to defend its workers and their jobs.
While the union bureaucracy refuses to fight mass layoffs, they draw a rhetorical line in the sand around pensions, which are nevertheless hacked away by the capitalists over time—for instance, the IBT/UPS contract, hailed as “historic” by the Teamsters bureaucrats, allowed for pensions to be undermined while the bureaucracy has done nothing to fight against layoffs. The older and retired union workers see their hard-earned pensions disappearing, while the younger workers end up contributing to a system being yanked out from under them.
It remains to be seen what the “full force” of the union is, according to O’Brien. The union bureaucracy’s response to shipping carrier Yellow’s bankruptcy and mass-layoffs was limited to a lawsuit against Yellow for using their bankruptcy claim to avoid filing mass layoff paperwork in the time-frame specified by law and paying severance.
Photo: Retrieved from Ford Authority.
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