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Regional UAW director vows to fight to keep GM Lordstown open
YOUNGSTOWN
At the Nov. 19 launch of the grass-roots Drive It Home campaign in support of the General Motors Lords- town plant, Rich Rankin, the UAW Region 2-B director, made a promise to Lordstown workers: “You guys can count on me, through thick and thin, as long as I’m breathing. ... I’m always going to fight for Lordstown.”
It’s a promise Rankin will have the opportunity to keep in the coming months as the UAW negotiates a new contract with General Motors.
Central in the negotiations will be the allocation of products and the status of plants – including GM Lordstown – that GM announced Nov. 26 would be idled this year.
In a recent interview with The Vindicator, Rankin spelled out how contract negotiations work and reiterated his resolve to fight for GM Lordstown.
A Mahoning Valley native who started his career in Lordstown, the issue is all the more personal for him.
As a regional director for the UAW who directs operations in Ohio and Indiana, Rankin – although not at the bargaining table – expects to have some influence in the process.
Rankin got his start as a UAW member in 1997, when he joined Local 1112 in Lordstown. He then worked at the Lear Seating plant in Lordstown for more than a dozen years. He was an international servicing representative in Northeast Ohio for several years, then in 2014 was promoted to assistant director of the region.
He was elected to his first full term in the role in June.
The negotiation process begins with a UAW bargaining convention in March, Rankin said.
“We have a process where we solicit the members for bargaining demands,” he said. “Any member can fill out a form and put any demand they want on the form.”
The local unions then go through those demands and have their members rank them. A list then goes to the international union.
The bargaining convention is where the union strategizes for its negotiations with Detroit’s Big Three automakers – GM, Ford and Fiat Chrysler.
With the current contract expiring in September, negotiations will play out over the summer.
“Obviously we are going to dispute the closing of Lordstown, [the Detroit-Hamtramck Assembly plant] and all the other plants that quote-unquote are unallocated,” Rankin said, noting other topics include items such as wages, benefits and any other issues members raise.
GM plans to idle five North America plants: Lordstown; Detroit-Hamtramck; Oshawa Assembly in Ontario, Canada; Baltimore Operations parts plant in Maryland; and its Warren Transmission Operations plant in Michigan.
Asked about a potential competition among plants to remain open, Rankin said the UAW does not look at it that way.
“As far as the UAW is concerned, we are not going to accept that or tolerate that,” he said. “Our plan is to fight to keep every single plant open with work, and bring more work back into this country.”
Asked about concessions the corporation may be looking for from the union, Rankin noted GM’s nearly $12 billion in adjusted earnings in North America in 2017.
“They’ve got to be insane to think concessions are on the table,” he said. “When is enough, enough?”
In other GM-related news, U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown on Tuesday blasted the automaker for using temporary workers at a plant in Fort Wayne, Ind., instead of recently laid-off employees from Lordstown.
According to recent news reports, the UAW is suing the company for failing to provide these job opportunities to workers who were eligible for transfer under their collective bargaining agreement. Brown, a Cleveland Democrat, called GM’s decision shameful.
“I strongly support UAW’s decision to fight GM’s attack on the Lordstown workers.
“It says everything you need to know about GM that they’d shut down the highly-productive Lordstown plant, only to build the Blazer in Mexico, and they’d lay off 4,500 workers in the Mahoning Valley, only to hire temp workers in Indiana,” Brown said. “As I’ve said before, it’s corporate greed at its worst. GM’s leadership should be ashamed.”