Picketline During the RNC to Save the Ford Plant and Union Jobs Through Public Ownership of the Plant!
Wednesday, Sept. 3, 2008, 3:00-6:00 pm, Ford's Twin Cities Assembly Plant, Ford Parkway and Cretin Ave., St. Paul, Minnesota
The scourge of plant closings across the U.S. has created a crisis for the working class. Here in Minnesota, as in the rest of the nation, Ford CEOs don't make decisions based upon anything other than maximum profits. Ford wants to weaken and bust unions. Job security for auto workers is not a consideration. Ford announced that it would be closing the St. Paul Ford Twin Cities Assembly Plant in 2008 and coerced many members of the United Auto Workers (UAW) union to accept buy-out packages. Ford's profits jumped as workers were laid off and the union was kicked in the teeth. Now, Ford has announced that the plant will remain open a few more years. The threat of plant closure and the unemployment of more than a thousand workers still looms.
Enough is enough. The time has come to nationalize the St. Paul Ford Twin Cities Assembly Plant and guarantee union power and job security by operating it under public ownership. Ford is not entitled to any compensation. The working class has subsidized Ford's manufacturing at the St. Paul Ford Plant for years. We say: "What the tax-payers finance, taxpayers should own!" The St. Paul Ford Plant should be taken over by the government and run by and on behalf of the workers and the community.
Gus Hall, former leader of the Communist Party USA, said at a 1979 People Before Profits rally at Cobo Hall in Detroit, MI., that "workers...have an absolute right--even a duty--to tell the profit mongers: ’This is our city. These are our plants. Here is where we make a living and raise our children. And come h*ll or high water here is where we’re gonna stay. One way or another, these plants will not close.’...
"There is nothing wrong or illegal in the government taking over these plants because there is one sacred and inalienable right that supersedes all others. And that is the right of the people to make a living--to be able to eat, pay rent, raise and educate their children." (Gus Hall, The Working Class Answer to the Deepening Crisis, 1979)
