The Fight at Goodyear
15,000 Steelworkers are waging a tough fight for jobs and health care at Goodyear Tire and Rubber Co. They’ve been on strike for 11 weeks and they need the help of the entire labor movement as they fight back.
On Saturday, Dec. 16, over 75,000 union activists and other supporters turned out at more than 150 Goodyear Tires stores for the USW’s first Day of Action. Goodyear contacted the USW on Friday, December 15 about contract talks, and negotiations resumed on December 18 in Pittsburgh.
Workers at 12 U.S. and 3 Canadian plants went on strike Oct. 5 to protest Goodyear’s attack on workers’ retiree health care and its efforts to shift jobs overseas. The company’s demand to eliminate retiree health care would affect some 30,000 retirees/surviving spouses as well as active employees. It’s a disgraceful move by Goodyear which is ignoring the sacrifice and commitment workers have made over the years to keep their company going.
CWA President Larry Cohen stressed that “we must mobilize at this Goodyear fight as if it were own fight, because it is our own fight. The issue of health care is critical to USW members at Goodyear, but also to CWA members who will face the same assault in major bargaining and to all workers. The time to stand up to this corporate attack is now. At key times like this, we can make a real difference.”
Saving retiree health care at Goodyear is the first step to saving health care for all retired members, and to winning real health care reform for all retirees.
More information on the issues is available at www.usw.org/goodyearalert.
