Fighting Back: CWA President Cohen: 'Goodyear Fight Is Our Fight'

The battle for health care and good jobs at Goodyear, whose manufacturing workers went on strike Oct. 5, is a call to arms for all union members, CWA President Larry Cohen said.

Hundreds of CWA members and staff around the country took part in a "Day of Action" Dec. 16 at nearly 150 Goodyear stores nationwide, joining thousands of Steelworkers and other union activists to leaflet on a busy Saturday morning at the tire centers.

"The Nov. 7 elections were a turning point — that economic justice matters, that we can fight corporate greed and win," Cohen said, urging CWA families to boycott Goodyear during the walkout and join efforts to support the 15,000 striking employees and all working Americans.

Cohen said Goodyear's decision to cut health care benefits for retirees should be of enormous concern to everyone, especially as CWA prepares for bargaining with Verizon next year. The telecom company has already cut retiree health care for everyone but its union represented employees.

"Saving retiree health care at Goodyear is the first step to saving health care for our members, too," he said. "At key times like this, we can make a real difference."

Talks between the USW and Goodyear were continuing as the CWA News went to press. The strike is affecting more than a dozen Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. plants in the United States and Canada, as workers fight to keep more jobs from going overseas.

In 2003, Goodyear closed its Huntsville, Ala. plant, leaving 1,200 workers unemployed and now another 1,100 face job loss as the company prepare shut down another plant in Tyler, Texas — one year after the Goodyear posted its highest profits in seven years and gave its executives large bonuses.

Meanwhile, Goodyear has invested more than $150 million since 2004 in overseas production, including China and Colombia. "Despite its flag-waving rhetoric, Goodyear's performance reveals a company that is turning its back on its country and on communities all across North America," USW President Leo Gerard wrote in a recent column. "Goodyear's attitude is especially galling after workers agreed to sacrifices in 2003 that pulled the company back from the brink of bankruptcy."

Those sacrifices included agreeing to the Huntsville closure and taking wage, pension and benefit cuts. But rather than let workers share in last year's $228 million in after-tax profits, Gerard said Goodyear is demanding more concessions.

The strike brings back memories for CWA Secretary-Treasurer Barbara Easterling, whose father was a rubber worker in Akron, where Goodyear and other rubber companies began in the United States. Easterling recalled the campaign by the then-Rubber Workers to organize the companies, starting with Goodyear. "My father walked five miles from his job at Goodrich tires to do his picket duty at Goodyear," she said. "There were National Guardsmen with rifles on the roofs."

More details about CWA efforts during the Goodyear strike are available at http://ga.cwa-union.org/action/goodyear/. News about the strike can be found on the USW site at www.usw.org.