Cooper Tire (CTB)
Slows Down Production in Challenging Industry Environment
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June
24, 2008 9:16 AM EDT
Cooper Tire & Rubber Company (NYSE:
CTB) announced that it has reduced production in its North
American facilities during the second quarter to counter decreased
tire demand and projected shortages of certain raw materials. These
production curtailments during the second quarter will cost in the
estimated range of $12 million to $14 million.
Cooper Tire & Rubber Company is a global company that specializes in
the design, manufacture, marketing and sales of passenger car, light
truck, medium truck tires and subsidiaries that specialize in
motorcycle and racing tires, as well as tread rubber and related
equipment for the retread industry
June 11, 2008
Looking
at the 2008 Election
Now
that the Democratic Primary race has come to an end, let’s look at
the November election in a clear light of what it will mean to
working families. Too many attempts were made in the past months to
define working people’s voting decisions as racially based, while
completely ignoring the fact that for years Senator McCain and many
of his Republican colleagues have treated all working people with
complete disdain, whether those workers are white, Black, Hispanic
or otherwise. We can expect the Republicans to continue to utilize
this tactic to distract attention away from the fact that John
McCain will only offer a continuation of the Bush administration’s
assault on working people and unions. Here are some facts:
-
McCain votes
the Bush party line almost 90 percent of the time, according to
the AFL-CIO.
-
McCain voted
“right” on labor bills only 16 percent of the time; Obama’s
rating is 96 percent.
-
McCain is
against the Employee Free Choice Act and the Davis-Bacon Act.
Obama support them.
-
McCain is for
a national right-to-work law. Obama is not.
For
more information, click here.
USW Reaches Global Agreement with ArcelorMittal on Health and Safety
Issues
Last
week our union announced a groundbreaking agreement with
ArcelorMittal, the world’s largest steel company, to improve health
and safety standards throughout the company. The global agreement
covers ArcelorMittal workers represented by unions throughout the
world.
In addition to
recognizing the vital role played by unions in improving health and
safety conditions, the unprecedented agreement establishes universal
minimum standards at every site the company operates. Also included
in the agreement is the creation of a joint
union-management,
global health and safety committee that will target plants in the
group in order to work to dramatically improve their performance.
For more information, click here.
New Contract Ratified at Georgia-Pacific’s
Brewton, Ala. Mill
Our
members at Local 888 and Local 941 recently ratified a four-year
labor agreement by a wide margin at the Georgia-Pacific (GP) paper
mill in Brewton, Ala. that will provide wage and benefit increases,
improve retiree health care and pensions,
in addition to restoring all seniority rights that existed on Sept.
27, 2007 under the plant’s previous owner. Unlike the old contract,
this one contains successorship language. When Smurfit Stone sold
the mill to Georgia-Pacific in September of 2007, all of our members
were forced to re-apply for their jobs. That won’t happen again.
For more information, click here.
USW Supports Severstal’s Purchase of Esmark
The
USW continues its active and vital role in consolidating a healthy
steel industry in North America by strongly supporting OAO
Severstal’s proposal to acquire Esmark. We will also exercise our
full contractual rights to prevent the transaction between Esmark
and Essar. Under the
successorship
clause of the contract, Esmark and Essar cannot close the proposed
transaction until Essar has entered into a collective bargaining
agreement with the USW. We will not enter into such an agreement.
For more information, click here.
USW’s Blue Green Alliance Links Jobs and Global Warming
Our
union and the Sierra Club last week sent a joint letter under the
banner of the Blue Green Alliance to the U.S. Senate pushing for
Climate Security legislation that also addresses
the
competitiveness
provision. We want to make sure that manufacturing capacity in the
U.S. is not encouraged to relocate offshore to avoid the increased
costs of energy resulting from the pricing of carbon. America’s
manufacturing workers and their communities have already suffered
enormously from the global economy over the last two decades. As we
craft the necessary and scientifically based solutions to global
warming, we must make sure that we do not worsen their plight and
that we share the benefits of our investments in the clean renewable
energy economy of the future with those who have been the most
disadvantaged.
For more information, click here.
USW and U.S. Companies Fighting Back
Against Dumped Circular
Welded Steel
The
U.S. Department of Commerce may soon impose duties on Chinese
circular welded pipe. This is the first investigation involving
Chinese government subsidies to the steel industry. The Commerce
Department found that Chinese pipe exports are being dumped at rates
ranging from about 70 to 85 percent. In addition, the Commerce
Department found that Chinese pipe producers benefit from illegal
government subsidies at rates ranging from about 30 to 615 percent,
with an average subsidy rate for all respondents of some 37 percent.
The trade suit was brought by the Ad Hoc Coalition for Fair Pipe
Imports from China and the USW.
For more information, click here.
Statement by AFL-CIO President John Sweeney
On the Biggest Swing in Unemployment Rates since 1986
June 6, 2008
The economy is in meltdown. Today’s report isn’t isolated – it is part of a
long-brewing problem that is toxic when combined with falling incomes, the
mortgage crisis and out-of-control everyday gas, food and health care costs. For
working people, the numbers mirror the worries around the kitchen table each
night. For legislators and policymakers, the numbers should be a red flag that
it is high time for aggressive action. more...
May 12, 2008
A Special Message from Pittsburgh on the 2008 Presidential Election
Campaigns
In a recent meeting of the International Executive Board, concerns were
raised about the media’s ongoing attempts to sensationalize and mischaracterize
the contest between Senators Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton to become the
Democratic Party presidential nominee. Most disturbing have been attempts to
define working people’s voting decisions in this contest as somehow racially
based, while completely ignoring the fact that for years Senator McCain and many
of his Republican colleagues have treated all working people with complete
disdain, whether those workers are white, Black, Hispanic or otherwise.
Shouldn’t that be the issue for 2008, and not this absurd and unfair focus on
race and sometimes on religion?
There is a lot of talk that Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton is now fated to
lose the Democratic nomination and should pull out of the race. We believe it is
her right to stay in the fight and challenge Senator Barack Obama as long as she
has the desire and the means to do so. That is the essence of democracy, and of
the Democratic Party process.
But we believe just as strongly that Mrs. Clinton will be making a terrible
mistake — for herself, her Party and for the nation — if she continues to press
her candidacy through negative campaigning with disturbing racial undertones.
America needs a clean break from eight catastrophic years of George W. Bush,
and it needs it now. And so far, Senator John McCain is shaping up as simply the
“Bush Sequel” – with more war in Iraq, even more tax cuts for the rich while the
middle class struggles mightily, and courts packed with even more right-wing
activists intent on undoing decades of progress in civil rights, civil liberties
and other vital areas. The Democratic Party must field the most effective and
vibrant candidate it possibly can. And more attack ads and squabbling will not
help achieve that goal.
The IEB feels, therefore, that we need to make it absolutely clear to our
staff and local leadership that both Democratic candidates would be far superior
advocates for the rights of working people and their families than Senator
McCain, and to make it equally clear that neither Democrat should urge a choice
based on the race or the age of working-class voters. All workers have a common
need to be represented better than they have been by George Bush or will be by
John McCain, whether he or she is a retiree, a worker in one of our facilities,
or one of the fine young men and women fighting right now to protect our nation.
It’s bad enough that John McCain’s supporters are already engaged in the
politics of divide and conquer, especially if Senator Obama is the Nominee,
which now seems likely. These destructive Republican tactics are deeply
troubling and completely unfair, as Senator Obama’s grandparents, who raised him
during much of his youth, fought in World War II and worked honorably in
manufacturing jobs to support their family. And they are deeply troubling
because the Senator has pledged his own undying allegiance to our country and to
working-class Americans, and because of his outspoken commitment to a vibrant
middle class which grows from the bottom up and which recognizes that when it
comes to economic policies and trade, American workers must come first.
Dividing working people along racial and ethnic lines is the oldest and
meanest game in the book, and it is the one the Republicans are already using to
distract attention from the fact that Senator McCain has made it abundantly
clear that he offers nothing more than a continuation of the Bush
administration’s sorry record of relentlessly assaulting the well-being and
interests of working people and of our nation’s unions.
John McCain is proposing a health care “plan,” for example, that is a health
care industry-driven rehash of the approach that employers have been trying to
shove down our throats for years in bargaining – and he is doing it with the
full support of Bush and their Republican cronies in Congress and the insurance
industry. John McCain has never seen a free trade deal that he doesn’t love –
and as a candidate he’s already cheerleading for even more of them. He is
calling for more Bush-type tax cuts for the wealthy that are creating the worst
income inequality the country has seen since 1928. He opposes the Employee Free
Choice Act, which Senator Obama supports for all workers, including for
part-time and contract employees. John McCain will keep doling out subsidies to
big oil. And he (along with Senator Clinton, unfortunately) has pandered to
working people’s struggle to pay for rising gasoline prices by calling for a
microscopic “gas tax holiday” that will only save working people pennies while
robbing our country of the funds needed to rebuild our failing infrastructure –
which is just one of the job-creating functions that our government should be
investing in instead.
Given these troubling circumstances, the IEB urges all staff and local
leadership to share Senator McCain’s vicious anti-worker record with our
members, and to encourage them to understand that media attempts to
sensationalize differences among working people based on race, ethnicity or
religion will only distract us from the real need to change our nation’s
policies on health care, trade, workers’ rights, energy and foreign affairs.
Getting that message out immediately to all our members and supporters is
crucial, and we must not let either the last few days of the Democratic primary
process or the everyday McCain lies rob us of the chance to end the Bush assault
on us, our union and our families.
Huffington Post
On Worker's Memorial Day: Protest Bush Administration Policies Making Work
Less Safe
By Leo W. Gerard
In the heart of Pennsylvania, while the media still relentlessly plagued
Senators Obama and Clinton about flag pins and memory lapses just before the
primary, a machine at an ArcelorMital plant in Steelton crushed Roger H.
Prichard to death. He was 58.
It was April 18, three days before the Pennsylvania primary. It occurred just
five days after piping crushed Jaren T. Hoover to death at the Dura-Bond Pipe
factory, also in Steelton. He was 19.
Life went on. Jaren's father, a Pennsylvania common pleas judge, found dozens
of his son's friends at the funeral, mourning, and doing what kids do now, which
is post memorials on MySpace. Roger Prichard's wife told a local reporter that
her husband was a good father and husband and loving person, before she was too
overcome to continue speaking. His grandchildren will never get to know him.
As the presidential candidates are repeatedly forced to focus on the
frivolous -- whether Hillary faked crying or laughed too loud or whether Obama
once served on a board of directors with an unsavory character -- real issues
like federal enforcement of workplace safety are completely ignored … more
AFL-CIO Launches First-Ever Online Video Contest to “Turn Around America”
Kick-off effort to begin national conversation on how to get America back on
track
www.turnaroundvideocontest.com
(Washington, Apr. 10) The AFL-CIO today launched the “Turn Around America”
video competition -- its first-ever online video contest -- and will feature the
winners in television ads in part to engage voters and 2008 political candidates
in a national dialogue about what is necessary to get America back on track.
more...
The video is a
compilation of Sen. John McCain, in his own words, proudly declaring support
for policies that have been a disaster for working families throughout the
country.
Cooper Tire & Rubber Company Reports Continued Improvement in the Fourth
Quarter
PR NEWSWIRE
Posted: 2008-02-28 07:27:19
FINDLAY, Ohio, Feb. 28 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Cooper Tire & Rubber Company
(NYSE: CTB) today reported net income of $51 million, or 82 cents per share, for
the quarter ended December 31, 2007. Income from continuing operations increased
$67 million from a loss of $28 million for the same period last year, resulting
in earnings per share of 62 cents from continuing operations. The substantial
earnings improvement was accompanied by a new record of $765 million in sales
for the quarter, a 7 percent increase over the same period last year.
more...
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