Eating Our Young

The April 17, 2008 strike at Lansing Delta Township Assembly Plant has brought many interesting topics to mind. With many auto parts and assembly plants either idle or on strike I cant help but notice the venom being directed at labor. I don’t mean just union labor but workers as a whole. More disturbing to me is that much of this ill will is coming from other working people.

A portion of the negativity can at least partially be understood. When someone is experiencing a difficult time they will often lash out at the first available “whipping post”. Much of the country is facing a foreclosure crisis, wages that have been shrinking or flat and benefits that have been disappearing for years. Misguided angst towards workers that are also affected by these same issues is only counterproductive. A phrase that I keep hearing is “I don’t get that, why should they?” Shouldn’t the argument be “they get that, why don’t I”? If we keep arguing against other workers pay and benefits when does it stop? At what depth will working people argue on behalf of each other? How low will we allow ourselves to sink? Working full time should bring at least a modest standard of living; I don’t think that many people disagree with this statement. In what manner is tearing each other down beneficial to any of us?

It seems that we have begun to fight for the interests of corporate America rather than America’s citizenry. A recent quote attributed to David Cole, chairman of the Ann Arbor-based Center for Automotive Research, only illustrates my point:

"I don't think this strike is that big a deal at all for GM, What really matters is that this strike is saying: 'This state is an unfriendly place to bring new manufacturing jobs.' "
"I wish (UAW President) Ron Gettelfinger would look in the mirror and say 'I am killing Michigan' and understand what he is doing,"

Cole was referring to, in part at least, workers on strike at Alliance Interiors who have been asked to go from $10 an hour to $9 an hour with benefit cuts. I wonder if $9 an hour with little to no benefits is Cole’s idea of “friendly”. Obviously Cole has ONLY the company’s interest in mind while giving this quote; blaming Gettelfinger for everything and assigning NO blame whatsoever to the company. This quote was printed in a Lansing newspaper on the front page 5 days after the strike at Alliance started; there was no mention of the tax breaks that Alliance received at the Federal, State or Local level. The headline read:

Strikes give state's image black eye, experts say

According to our “experts” Michigan needs to attract a bunch of jobs that pay less than $9 an hour with little to no benefits in order for the state to get back on track. This type of devaluing of each other’s labor is horrific. Our everyday language has been slowly modified to remove the “human” element from our consciences. A pension that allows a worker to retire with a meager income for their old age is now called a “legacy cost”. Providing workers with health insurance is now referred to as the “health care burden”. We now go to “human resources” to deal with many things that used to be handled by our immediate bosses; now FMLA, pay raises, reporting workplace violations or job transfers are no longer handled by people we see everyday. Removing the decision from someone that we interact with everyday makes it much easier to deny workers things that may be due them. Things that are done on behalf of a corporation today by employees are things that under different circumstances the same decision makers would never do, for example:

Drug companies sending drugs to market before thorough, conclusive testing is completed or ignoring results that are not favorable to profit margins. Check it out.

Or

Decision to fly planes that have not been properly serviced and do not meet safety requirements. This could also include the decision to have safety inspections or maintenance done in countries where checks are “friendly” and could be manipulated.

Most people would never knowingly put other lives at risk for profit. However it has become so engrained in the minds of employees to act in the best interest of the corporation that the “just doing my job” excuse comes into play.

Strangely many working people have taken up arms against each other in what some have called the war on the middle class. The Art of War by Sun Tzu is an ancient Chinese text that delivers not only a tactical guide for warfare but some have called it a philosophical manual at winning just about anything. The text gives ways to defeat your enemy and steps to follow to weaken them. Step number 24 is to “keep him under strain and wear him down.” I would point to the issues that I have already mentioned regarding the weight of the problems working people face today. Step number 25 states, “When he is united divide him.” This step could refer to MANY, MANY things that are currently taking place today. I would point to the Democratic primary that continues to fester for far too long. The clever attacks on workers rights that have been slowly eroding workers protections. Another example is the split amongst the AFL-CIO; this is a different sort of example but a big one nonetheless. The right wing attacks on labor leaders. I could list examples for hours but I will assume that you get the point.
So in the end the war that is being waged is working. We ARE wearing down and we are starting to divide. We must continue to work toward common goals and not loose focus on the larger picture. I recently came across a blogger who is calling for a one day national strike. As one person in the comment section of the post said “what’s it gonna take?”

Good question.

STRIKE UPDATE

STRIKE UPDATE!!

I am trapped at the union hall all day but thankfully my sister over at Blue Collar Heart did a fantastic job posting about the why, when and where regarding the strike.

Check it out and be sure to stop by her blog often!

BIG, BIG thank you to Liberal Lucy who stopped by the picket line to drop off supplies for the troops!!

"Bring Out Your Red"

(This post has been sitting waiting to be finished for several days. Due to the strike at UAW local 602, my local, I have not been able to finish it until now. Posts on the strike will follow as time allows.)

I am a proud member of a union. Because of that there are many issues that I don’t have to worry about. One of those is equal pay. While I would benefit from the lopsided pay scale between men and women it would not and does not sit well with me. In 2005 women earned only $.77 for every $1.00 earned by men. For women of color, the gap is even worse – only $.71 for African American women and $.58 for Latinas. WTF! This is simply unacceptable. The Equal Pay Act was passed in 1963, at the time full-time working women were paid 59 cents on average to the dollar received by men, while in 2005 women were paid 77 cents for every dollar received by men. In other words, for the last 42 years, the wage gap has only narrowed by less than half of a penny per year. Sadly Women's earnings in 2006 were 76.9% of men's, leaving the wage gap statistically unchanged from last year, according to US Census statistics released in August 2007.

To make matters worse the Supreme Court ruled against workers, specifically a woman, recently. On the positive side Rep. George Miller of CA. did get The Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act passed by the House of Representatives on July 31, 2007 by a 225 to 199 vote. Back to the bad news my Rep. Mike Rogers voted against women, workers and being human. Thanks to pieces of crap like Rogers working women in Michigan won’t have equal pay until 2025.

Back to braggin’ on unions.

Union women earn 33 percent more than nonunion women, African American union members earn 37 percent more than their nonunion counterparts, for Latino workers, the union advantage equals 51 percent and for Asian American workers, the union advantage is 4 percent. GO TEAM!!
Wear RED on Equal Pay Day to symbolize how far women and minorities are "in the red" with their pay!
Equal Pay Day will be celebrated on April 22, 2008. Why is it celebrated on Tuesday? Tuesday is the day that women’s pay catches up to men’s wages from the previous week. Wow is that messed up!

You can urge your senators to support fair pay for women here, and here.

STRIKE!!

UPDATE - The Management of Alliance Interiors has hired SCAB truckers, that are willing to cross a picket line, to deliver parts to Delta Township Assembly.

A strike at Alliance Interiors was announced at 9 pm on Tue. April 15, 2008. Workers at the plant voted the UAW as bargaining agent for them in April of last year. The profitable company has dragged its feet throughout negotiations. This strike is likely to stop work at the nearby Delta Township Assembly plant which is supplied by Alliance.

The name of the company may be familiar because less than 2 years ago the company was given $2,550,000 in bonds from the Michigan Strategic Fund. The Michigan Strategic Fund was designed to promote smart economic growth by developing strategies and providing services to create and retain good jobs and a high quality of life according to the article linked to above.

I wonder if the cuts to wages and benefits are a part of the “high quality of life” that were part of the program. Federal, state and local taxes were waived from the bond to help insure that “good jobs” would stay local. I don’t believe that this was the vision of the program and it looks like John and Jane taxpayer are getting stuck with the tab on another corporate tax break!

Good News

There was a big victory for friends of nature and American environmentalists on April 4th, 2008. In December, the Kaibab National Forest approved exploratory uranium drilling by VANE Minerals, a British firm, at up to 39 locations across seven project sites just south of the Grand Canyon. The approval was granted using a “categorical exclusion,” the least rigorous public and environmental review available to the agency under the National Environmental Policy Act. Thankfully a Federal judge issued a restraining order against further drilling on April 4th. VANE was allowed to drill while the case was pending and was ordered to stop with this decision.

The case was brought by several environmental groups:

“The Grand Canyon is too important for the Forest Service to give short shrift to the possible and significant negative impacts of uranium mining exploration,” said Sandy Bahr, conservation outreach director for the Sierra Club’s Grand Canyon Chapter. “The Forest Service should take a hard look at the impacts and the public should have an opportunity to review and comment on this mining exploration. We are pleased that the judge recognized the importance of protecting the Canyon and the possible significant impacts this exploration could have.”

There has been a boom of recent uranium claims on the lands surrounding the Grand Canyon. Richard Mayol, communications director of Grand Canyon Trust, had this to say:
“The judge’s decision reinforces our belief that the current uranium boom poses the most significant threat that Grand Canyon has faced in many years, the Grand Canyon just isn’t the place for new uranium development.”

The Sierra Club, one of the key groups that brought the lawsuit that stopped the drilling, has a page full of very worthwhile actions that you can send to your elected representatives here.

Trading Profits for Lives

President Bush has thrown out another trade deal to congress. This time the president is looking to send your job to Columbia.

The opposition has brought together a group of folks that you may not normally see standing side by side:

The Sierra Club has joined with the Friends of the Earth to put out this joint statement in opposition.

The Interfaith Working Group on Trade and Investment has also issued a spirited 3 page letter opposing the agreement.

The AFL-CIO as you can imagine has come out in STRONG opposition.

Amnesty International has documented some of the violent anti-union murders and human rights violations that have taken place recently.

This unusual assortment of coalitions is unified in voicing what they believe are the many, many flaws of this type of trade agreement. They point out the moral, ethical, workers rights, environmental and economic catastrophe that another NAFTA like agreement would bring.

The Columbian government and the corporations that support it have been on a murderous rampage over the last few decades and especially over the last six years

As you can see from this chart Columbia has been no friend to working people. Sadly over the last couple of years the murders of more than one hundred trade unionists have gone unpunished. NONE of them have even come to trial!

The Bush administration pulls out its favorite argument that they believe will fit in any argument; national security! Adam Isacson from the Americas Program shreds apart that theory here.

David Sirota minced no words in his op-ed piece on Friday:

Colombia resembles Colorado in the early 20th century, only with more frequent slaughters. In the last two decades, more than 2,500 Colombian labor organizers have been assassinated, making Colombia the world's most dangerous place for unionists.

This violence is underwritten by companies like Chiquita, which has financed Colombian death squads that "destroyed unions, terrorized workers and killed thousands of civilians," according to Portfolio magazine. The brutality deliberately depresses labor costs in a country where business analysts cite exploitative conditions as reason to invest.

Sirota and many other friends of labor have been very skeptical of Speaker of the House Pelosi’s token opposition to the trade deal and this NY Times article would show reason to be skeptical:

“If we are going to be successful in passing a trade agreement,” Ms. Pelosi said, “we have to first tell the American people that we have a positive economic agenda.”

Let’s hope that the speaker reconsiders!

Here is a letter you can send to your elected officials from Jobs with Justice.

And here is another letter you can send from Change to Win.

Stop Sweat Shops

(From the Inbox)

A very cool event is taking place at MSU. Two workers from sweatshops that supply Wal-Mart will be speaking locally.

Join SweatFree Communities and the International Labor Rights Forum for the 2008 Wal-Mart Sweatshop Workers Speaking Tour

April 15: East Lansing, MI, 7 pm - 9 pm, Michigan State University, 105 South Kedzie Hall. Contact John at beckj [at] msu [dot] edu

From Costa Rica, Didier Leiton has worked for 17 years on pineapple and banana plantations and has worked for two years as a union organizer for SITRAP (Sindicato de Trabajadores Agrícolas y Plantaciones, or Union of Agricultural and Plantation Workers). He has been ‘black listed’ by the plantations for his activities with the union. Workers on the plantation are usually under 40 years old because of the hard physical labor required of them. Didier is 41. He is responsible for organizing workers on pineapple and banana plantations that supply fruit to Wal-Mart stores.

From Cambodia, Phal Savin spent many years working in garment factories, where she sewed clothing for Wal-Mart. A mother of five, she was recently fired for trying to form a union, and is now vice president of the Coalition of Cambodia Apparel Workers Democratic Union (C.CAWDU). Phal has directly experienced labor abuses by factory management, including being forced to work long hours and facing intimidation in response to her organizing activities. She and her fellow workers have focused on raising the wages at their factory and at other factories that supply directly to companies like Wal-Mart.

The Friday Night Dump

More news items that got buried on Friday night.

81% in Poll Say Nation Is Headed on Wrong Track. This one is self explanatory.

80,000 Jobs Lost, Worst Since 2003; Jobless Rate Spikes. Go team W.! To counter all of the slow down bullshit:
"After three consecutive months of losses, it's hard to argue we're not in a recession," said Joel Naroff, chief economist at Naroff Economic Advisors. "The question is how deep will it be and how long it will last."

Blackwater to Keep Working in Iraq. Shameless!!

More than 1,000 Iraqi soldiers and policemen either refused to fight or simply abandoned their posts during the inconclusive assault against Shiite militias in Basra last week, a senior Iraqi government official said Thursday. Iraqi military officials said the group included dozens of officers, including at least two senior field commanders in the battle. More directly contradicting information to use against the W. / 100 more years crew.

McSame was heckled and booed in Memphis as he tried to make amends over voting against MLK holiday. You have got to play the video, he actually has to stop speaking and wait for the crowd to quiet down several times!

Washington Blocks Exports of Munitions Firm Suspected of Fraud. It looks like another contract with the pentagon has corruption and war profiteering written all over it.

Inspectors Say F.A.A. Ignored Violations. Another example of what happens when big business is allowed to regulate itself.

Finally, some good news. David Sneath has worked at a Ford Motor Co. parts warehouse for 34 years, but it didn't take him any time at all to walk out once he discovered he had won a $136 million Mega Millions jackpot. Sneath did what many lottery players dream of; won big bucks and told his boss “I’m outta here!”
Sneath said he doesn't have any big plans for the money, but noted none will go toward buying a big, new foreign car.
"I worked for Ford Motor Co.," he said. "I won't be buying a foreign product."
Congratulations to David Sneath and way to keep grounded!

Meet the Press Missed the Point

I took special interest when Tim Russert announced a special segment devoted to the 40th anniversary of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King. Featured guests were Tom Brokaw, Andrew Young and author Michael Eric Dyson. What followed was an intellectually stimulating dialog with all present contributing the usual thoughtful anecdotes on racial injustice and pronouncements on poverty one would expert from such an august body. Mention was even made of how all three presidential candidates are committed to fighting poverty.

So why am I so disappointed? Not one of them bothered to mention the reason WHY Dr. King came to Memphis that fateful day. Martin Luther King came to Memphis to support sanitation workers who were out on strike for better wages and improved working conditions. How could four intellectual giants fail to mention such an important point? A quick internet search of these men reveals that none of them have done the ‘heavy lifting’ in the American economy. None of them have toiled long hours on an assembly line or worked the kind of hard labor job which leaves one with the aches and pains associated with doing the ‘heavy lifting’. No wonder they got it wrong!

Those of us in the world of Unionized Labor understand what Martin Luther King understood. In order to make meaningful change for the better, people need to organize. Want to fight racial injustice? Organize! Want to fight poverty? Organize! Too many have forgotten that it was the Labor Movement which molded the American Middle Class. It is Labor which gave us the 40 hour work week. It is Labor which paved the way for health care. It is Labor which raised everyone’s standard of living. Today the American Middle Class is under attack by those who want to return to the days of the 1800s ‘Robber Barons’.

This is why the upcoming elections this fall are so important. We are at a historical juncture; we need to elect progressive candidates committed to uplifting working families. We need to elect candidates who support the Employee Free Choice Act. The Employee Free Choice Act will unite the voices of the 60 million Americans who would join a union if given the opportunity. It is voice that needs to be heard, NOW!

A Time to Break Silence

There are several great posts as well as articles today about the 40th anniversary of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Many of them cover huge periods of his life and many of his speeches. I will detail only one speech and I urge you to read it in its entirety here.

Because of space limitations I will only give highlights of what I believe to be an incredible speech that at the time was VERY courageous. The speech was delivered in 1967 at a time when public figures were just starting to voice their opposition to the war. Dr. King spoke about poverty, peace, war, and what I think was his philosophy of what America stands for and what it should be.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
Beyond Vietnam -- A Time to Break Silence

“We were taking the black young men who had been crippled by our society and sending them eight thousand miles away to guarantee liberties in Southeast Asia which they had not found in southwest Georgia and East Harlem. And so we have been repeatedly faced with the cruel irony of watching Negro and white boys on TV screens as they kill and die together for a nation that has been unable to seat them together in the same schools. And so we watch them in brutal solidarity burning the huts of a poor village, but we realize that they would hardly live on the same block in Chicago. I could not be silent in the face of such cruel manipulation of the poor.”

“…As I have walked among the desperate, rejected, and angry young men, I have told them that Molotov cocktails and rifles would not solve their problems. I have tried to offer them my deepest compassion while maintaining my conviction that social change comes most meaningfully through nonviolent action. But they ask -- and rightly so -- what about Vietnam? They ask if our own nation wasn't using massive doses of violence to solve its problems, to bring about the changes it wanted. Their questions hit home, and I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today -- my own government. For the sake of those boys, for the sake of this government, for the sake of the hundreds of thousands trembling under our violence, I cannot be silent.”

“…If America's soul becomes totally poisoned, part of the autopsy must read: Vietnam. It can never be saved so long as it destroys the deepest hopes of men the world over.”

“…I cannot forget that the Nobel Prize for Peace was also a commission -- a commission to work harder than I had ever worked before for "the brotherhood of man." This is a calling that takes me beyond national allegiances, but even if it were not present I would yet have to live with the meaning of my commitment to the ministry of Jesus Christ. To me the relationship of this ministry to the making of peace is so obvious that I sometimes marvel at those who ask me why I'm speaking against the war. Could it be that they do not know that the good news was meant for all men -- for Communist and capitalist, for their children and ours, for black and for white, for revolutionary and conservative? Have they forgotten that my ministry is in obedience to the One who loved his enemies so fully that he died for them? What then can I say to the Vietcong or to Castro or to Mao as a faithful minister of this One? Can I threaten them with death or must I not share with them my life?”

“…They watch as we poison their water, as we kill a million acres of their crops. They must weep as the bulldozers roar through their areas preparing to destroy the precious trees. They wander into the hospitals with at least twenty casualties from American firepower for one Vietcong-inflicted injury. So far we may have killed a million of them, mostly children. They wander into the towns and see thousands of the children, homeless, without clothes, running in packs on the streets like animals. They see the children degraded by our soldiers as they beg for food. They see the children selling their sisters to our soldiers, soliciting for their mothers.”“…What do the peasants think as we ally ourselves with the landlords and as we refuse to put any action into our many words concerning land reform? What do they think as we test out our latest weapons on them, just as the Germans tested out new medicine and new tortures in the concentration camps of Europe? Where are the roots of the independent Vietnam we claim to be building? Is it among these voiceless ones?”

“…Here is the true meaning and value of compassion and nonviolence, when it helps us to see the enemy's point of view, to hear his questions, to know his assessment of ourselves. For from his view we may indeed see the basic weaknesses of our own condition, and if we are mature, we may learn and grow and profit from the wisdom of the brothers who are called the opposition.”

“…I am as deeply concerned about our own troops there as anything else. For it occurs to me that what we are submitting them to in Vietnam is not simply the brutalizing process that goes on in any war where armies face each other and seek to destroy. We are adding cynicism to the process of death, for they must know after a short period there that none of the things we claim to be fighting for are really involved. Before long they must know that their government has sent them into a struggle among Vietnamese, and the more sophisticated surely realize that we are on the side of the wealthy, and the secure, while we create a hell for the poor.
Somehow this madness must cease. We must stop now. I speak as a child of God and brother to the suffering poor of Vietnam. I speak for those whose land is being laid waste, whose homes are being destroyed, whose culture is being subverted. I speak for the poor of America who are paying the double price of smashed hopes at home, and death and corruption in Vietnam. I speak as a citizen of the world, for the world as it stands aghast at the path we have taken. I speak as one who loves America, to the leaders of our own nation: The great initiative in this war is ours; the initiative to stop it must be ours.”

“…The war in Vietnam is but a symptom of a far deeper malady within the American spirit, and if we ignore this sobering reality...and if we ignore this sobering reality, we will find ourselves organizing "clergy and laymen concerned" committees for the next generation. They will be concerned about Guatemala and Peru. They will be concerned about Thailand and Cambodia. They will be concerned about Mozambique and South Africa. We will be marching for these and a dozen other names and attending rallies without end, unless there is a significant and profound change in American life and policy.”

“…It is with such activity in mind that the words of the late John F. Kennedy come back to haunt us. Five years ago he said, "Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." Increasingly, by choice or by accident, this is the role our nation has taken, the role of those who make peaceful revolution impossible by refusing to give up the privileges and the pleasures that come from the immense profits of overseas investments. I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin...we must rapidly begin the shift from a thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights, are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.
A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our past and present policies. On the one hand, we are called to play the Good Samaritan on life's roadside, but that will be only an initial act. One day we must come to see that the whole Jericho Road must be transformed so that men and women will not be constantly beaten and robbed as they make their journey on life's highway. True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring.
A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth. With righteous indignation, it will look across the seas and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa, and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries, and say, "This is not just." It will look at our alliance with the landed gentry of South America and say, "This is not just." The Western arrogance of feeling that it has everything to teach others and nothing to learn from them is not just.
A true revolution of values will lay hand on the world order and say of war, "This way of settling differences is not just." This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation's homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into the veins of peoples normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice, and love. A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.”

“…We can no longer afford to worship the god of hate or bow before the altar of retaliation. The oceans of history are made turbulent by the ever-rising tides of hate. And history is cluttered with the wreckage of nations and individuals that pursued this self-defeating path of hate.”

ACTION! ACTION! ACTION!

The action letters are rolling in! Here are a few:

As you may be aware, the Bush administration is at war with children. Not only has the administration led the fight against providing health care for millions of children with SCHIP legislation they have also gutted state level Medicaid programs. Here is a letter from The Children’s defense fund to your congressperson asking them to help.

The Iraqi war has brought a whole new set of problems for America. One is the military is using a method called Stop-loss as a backdoor draft. Here is a letter you can send to Secretary of Defense Robert Gates calling on him to end the military's stop-loss policy.

All of us in the great lakes region are usually very protective of one of our greatest resources; fresh water. Supreme court rulings have eroded the original Clean Water Act and allowed attacks on streams, rivers, wetlands, lakes, and other previously protected waters. Here is a letter urging your elected officials to Support the Clean Water Restoration act.


Jobs With Justice has created a National Petition to End Sweatshops & Slavery in the Fields. I assume this one is a no brainer.


President Bush is trying to appoint another corporate stooge to the bench. Tell Your Senator to Say NO to Catharina Haynes.


Sick of the Bush administration spying on American citizens? Tell your Rep. to Stand up for the constitution.


The U.S. sends military aid to many countries around the world. Sadly, some of those countries have been using children in their armies for years. There is a bill that may come before the Senate in April. Tell your Senator to Stop US Military Support to Countries Using Child Soldiers.

There is a possibility that the government may try to force higher premiums on Senior Citizens to cut costs. Tell congress to Keep Medicare Fair.

Most are aware of the mortgage crisis in this country today. There is a bill that would help working families keep their homes. Your senators can help Protect Working Families from Losing Their Homes.

High Noon

At approximately noon on April 1, 2008 Lansing’s Delta Township Assembly Plant management was tendered a 5-day letter. A 5-day letter is an official “warning” of a possible strike. The contract requires that the letters be given to management as a notification. A strike can begin after 5 business days. UAW local 602 is still negotiating a local contract with management.

This news comes at an ironic time as many workers are being called back from layoff. The Delta Township Assembly Plant has been running two out of every 3 Saturdays and overtime just about every day.

More information will follow as it becomes available.