Locked-Out Workers Rally vs. War-Maker Honeywell

ALBANY, NY, September 21—Today, about 100 members and supporters of the United Auto Workers (UAW) blocked traffic outside the Federal Building to support the 359 UAW members locked out by Honeywell since May 9. Honeywell is a major war contractor which manufactures brakes for military and commercial aircraft at two plants. UAW Local 9 in South Bend, Indiana, has 317 workers. UAW Local 1508 here in Green Island, New York, has 42 members and services the South Bend plant. Building solidarity with these workers is a key task for the communist Progressive Labor Party.
Honeywell is a crucial part of U.S. imperialism’s industrial complex. PLP fights for better working conditions for the Honeywell workers, while organizing for communist revolution to smash the capitalist system that exploits them as they build the weapons for future imperialist wars.
Today, scabs from the notorious union-busting Strom Engineering are running both the Green Island and South Bend plants. The Green Island plant is working two 12-hour shifts, sometimes six days a week! After picketing the plant early this morning, the workers joined the rally at the Federal Building, demanding — while the lockout continues — that the Obama Administration reverse its decision to extend an $18.3 million contract. From the Federal Building, workers took to the streets and blocked traffic for about 45 minutes before marching to the State Capitol building.
Honeywell: War-maker, Strikebreaker
Honeywell is a company known to most U.S. workers for its thermostat temperature-control devices found in many buildings. Most workers may not know that in addition to thermostats and brake parts for aircraft, Honeywell also manufactures missiles and drones, and is part of a consortium that assembles the nuclear bombs in U.S. imperialism’s arsenal.
Its role as war-maker dovetails with its actions as a strikebreaker. Despite more than $4 billion in government contracts last year, Honeywell locked out the workers after they rejected a contract that would double healthcare premiums for a family of four, and add a $1,400 deductible. After these premiums would be deducted from their paychecks, some workers would be taking home less than $15 an hour.
Honeywell also wants to unilaterally increase healthcare costs in each year of the contract, outsource work to non-union sites and eliminate job classifications and end pensions.  Clearly, this “offer” was intended to force the workers out and break the union.
Honeywell CEO Dave Cote, who has a personal retirement package worth $800,000/month, is no stranger to the Obama Administration. He served on the Deficit Commission and in 2010, he flew on Air Force One on an official trip to India, while 250 Honeywell uranium workers, members of the United Steelworkers, were locked out in Metropolis, Illinois.
This is the fourth time Honeywell has locked out its workers since 2010 — the uranium workers that year and again in 2014, and 840 workers, members of the International Association of Machinists (IAM), in Kansas City in 2011. In 2010, Honeywell threatened to use federal troops to break a Steelworkers strike in Florida.
Fight UAW Mis-leadership, Build Solidarity!
PLP supports the rank-and-file workers fighting for their jobs. Rather than using this action to mobilize thousands of workers to surround the plant and stop the scabs, the UAW mis-leadership used it as a platform for a dozen politicians and labor officials to blow hot air at the workers. After four months, the President of the New York State AFL-CIO told the workers, “You are not alone. The 2.2 million members of the AFL-CIO are with you.” Yet he was there by himself! And any talk of mass militant action at the plant, against the scabs, is countered by, “We can’t do anything that will bring an injunction against the local.” But with the plant still working around the clock making profits, what more harm could an injunction do?
The UAW misleaders are also trying to build patriotism to mislead this struggle, saying, “Our military deserves better than scab parts in their fighter jets.” The fighter jets Honeywell is building, along with the nuclear bombs, will be used to slaughter our working-class sisters and brothers internationally. They’re part of the U.S. bosses’ arsenal to remain the top-dog imperialist power versus their growing Russian and Chinese imperialist rivals.
PLP salutes the fight of the Honeywell workers against the war-making, profiteering Honeywell bosses and their servants in the UAW mis-leadership. As the Honeywell workers’ Black and white sisters and brothers in Charlotte, North Carolina, fight back against racist police terror and workers in India fight in the tens of millions for better working conditions, we glimpse the potential for international working-class unity. Our class deserves communism, where factories like Green Island and South Bend assemble machines to build a communist world run by our class, instead of weapons for World War III.
That is PLP’s fight—to organize the working class to smash all borders and this racist, imperialist system whose most recent genocide has cost millions of Arab workers their lives and displaced millions more, turning the Middle East into a killing field. PLP builds the international solidarity of all workers, from Green Island to Syria. Smash war-maker, strikebreaker Honeywell and its imperialist government! Fight for communism!