UAW replies to domestic content article

As a long-time subscriber, I was pleased to see your publication examine the pending domestic auto content legislation as an approach to controlling the multinationals. With one major exception, you give a fair presentation of the contending forces. You prominently quote critics blaming the bill for racist activity but do not present arguments to the contrary. You quote me on other issues about the bill, but you unfortunately never raised this critical issue with me.

I firmly believe that, on balance, the content bill has helped to curb racist thinking and activity. The despicable racist stickers, leaflets, speeches, etc. among some unionists derive from economic facts that predate the bill: auto employment is down a third. For racists Japan provides a ready scapegoat despite the fact that most unemployment resulted from the decline in overall sales and U.S. companies' failure to anticipate the 1979 shift toward fuel efficient vehicles.

Although imports are not the primary cause of today's auto unemployment, the threat they pose cannot be swept under the rug. In fact, the union simply cannot accept the continued rapid erosion of the industry to imports. Imports have displaced over ten percent of the domestic industry in the last few years. Projections by industry experts indicate that another quarter of the industry will be lost by 1990: the import share for vehicles will rise from the current 25 percent to 40 percent while the value of parts used in U.S.-assembled vehicles will jump from 5 percent to at least 20 percent

If something must be done, what should that be? The traditional response to such import problems has been to call for quotas period. A political effort in that direction would inevitably put all the focus on Japan and none on the U.S. companies. In contrast, the domestic content approach puts the focus on the multinationals. In fact, that explains the real steam that this bill has picked up among our members. They hear constant threats that their work will be shifted abroad, so they want restraints put on GM, Ford, and Chrysler. Thus, this approach deflects from racist, chauvinist directions more than any other remedy yet proposed for serious trade problems.

- Lee Price
International Economist
UAW, Washington, DC

Labor leaders to blame, too

United Steel Workers of America labor leader Mike Stout is right on when he focuses on "the banks and those corporations and their agents in government and everywhere" as responsible for the Mon Valley "holocaust" (MM June 1983). Yet his statement that "it's not the free enterprise system that's necessarily under attack" weakens his analysis.

"Free enterprise," a euphemism invented during the 1930's for the hopelessly disreputable capitalist system, rationalizes, legitimizes, and enforces the prerogatives of banks and corporations to command and abuse labor. It is the uncontrollable contradictions of this profitoriented system that are bringing grief to the workers, destroying the environment, and threatening nuclear war.

Stout should have included the top AFL-CIO leadership in the alliance of multinationals, bankers, and government. That leadership sponsors the American Institute for Free Labor Development, which collaborates with the CIA to destroy legitimate unions in the Third World, AFL-CIO President Lane Kirkland has been a long-standing member of AIFLD and is now a member of President Reagan's National Bipartisan Commission on Central America, which can be expected to legitimize U.S. support for repression of workers and peasants in Central America.

For the U.S. labor movement to become an effective force over the long term it must broaden its scope of interest to include the environment, human rights, and economic and political democracy. It would benefit from studying such programs as that of Germany's Green Party.

- Bill Stivers
Anchorage, Alaska

Multinational are not heroes

I'd like to reply to a letter in the MM June 1983 issue written by Mr. and Mrs. H.H. Holman of Norman, Oklahoma.

1. These companies are run by intelligent, hardworking people who own lots of stock and stock options. (See the Big Business Day Reader, Essays on Corporate America, especially "Another Day. Another $3,000: Executive Salaries in America.")

2. The companies are not owned by-the widows, etc. The top 1 percent of our population (economically speaking) owns 25 percent of the wealth in the U.S. The top 1 percent owned 24 percent in 1860 and 24.9 percent in 1969. Source: many economic texts.

3. In many, many cases the multinationals are not performing a service to mankind. I suggest that Mr. and Mrs. Holman bite the bullet and start reading up on multinationals.

- Kay Cornetta
East Walpole, Massachusetts

Waiting for the Left

The idea of a Multinational Monitor is great - that's why I subscribed last year. What a disappointment when I began receiving your publication! I think I can learn far more about the subject from the Wall Street Journal than from your efforts. I am still waiting for something new and inclusive from the Left on the multinationals, something beyond a rereading of the American press with a layer of rhetoric.

- Bob Spertus
Berkeley, CA