Dana auto parts workers hold meeting series in Toledo to organize joint fight back with Jeep workers

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On Thursday, practically 50 recent and former workers from Dana Incorporated, a international auto sections maker, as properly as employees from the Stellantis Toledo Jeep Assembly plant, fulfilled in Toledo, Ohio, to go over a typical approach in the struggle towards unjust firings, layoffs and corporate exploitation.

The assembly series—co-sponsored by the Dana Employees Rank-and-File Committee and the Intercontinental Employees Alliance of Rank-and-File Committees (IWA-RFC)—was titled, “Profit sharing withheld at Dana, layoffs threatened at Jeep, UAW sides with management: The rank-and-file strategy to fight back again.”

In contacting the meeting, the Dana Rank-and-File Committee outlined a set of prevalent needs for Jeep and Dana employees to arrange close to and fight for:

• No more layoffs and wrongful termination!
• Re-employ the service of all wrongfully terminated personnel with again pay
• Rank-and-file manage of using the services of and firing
• Roll around all temps now
• No additional tiers
• Large pay boosts to retain up with rising rates
• Expense of residing changes (COLA) to track with inflation

The meetings took put next months of rising discontent among employees at the Dana Toledo Driveline plant in northwestern Ohio, who manufacture axles for the nearby Stellantis Toledo Jeep plant. Various Dana employees have arrive ahead to discuss out towards a wave of arbitrary terminations, as properly as the depressing situations at the plant, where by it is not unheard of for workers to labor 10-hour times for weeks without having a day off.

Concurrently, personnel at the Significant Three automakers are struggling with a growing assault on their careers, as the organizations search for to intimidate personnel in the run-up to this year’s contract deadline with the United Car Employees. Hundreds of job cuts or layoffs have been declared or are being floated at Detroit-place Stellantis crops, like Sterling Heights Assembly and Warren Truck Assembly. The working day soon after the conference, the UAW educated Jeep staff at the Toledo Assembly Complicated that layoffs were commencing.

In reaction to these attacks and to arrange a battle back, a developing selection of personnel have been joining the community of autoworker rank-and-file committees in the US, component of the Global Workers Alliance of Rank-and-File Committees.

Opening the conferences, a foremost member of the Dana Rank-and-File Committee explained, “I am speaking on behalf of these that were terminated in the recent months from Dana Toledo Driveline. We consider it was an endeavor to cut company charges, although violating the 2021 contract amongst the UAW and Dana Integrated.”

The broad bulk of these fired from the Toledo plant, she explained, “were wrongfully dismissed, they did not receive any sort of progressive self-discipline, or even any type of disciplinary motion ahead of obtaining immediate termination. This would be around matters this kind of as owning your cellphone out, or coming to the line a few minutes late, obtaining your glasses on your brow. And the union in essence did not support reinstate any of the 60 to 80 employees that have been terminated in the last few months.”

Outlining how the Dana Rank-and-File Committee arrived to be initiated, she ongoing, “After we all got terminated, people today began asking inquiries as to why the UAW wasn’t responding. Why are our officials not answering to our grievances? They are not even calling us again. They’re not responding to any of us.