O F F I C E R S '
R E P O R T

2004



 


36th IAMAW
Grand Lodge
Convention

Introduction — 2

Those Federal Reserve interest rate hikes triggered a recession, forced large manufacturing firms like Freightliner to lay off workers in early 2001, and caused hundreds of small and medium sized firms to simply close their doors by 2003. And yet, the so-called jobless recovery was the fig leaf covering Alan Greenspan’s embarrassment that he was impotent to alter the economy’s downward trajectory.

The terrorist attacks of September 11th used planes built, serviced and loaded by IAM members. Two IAM members─Marianne MacFarlane and Jesus Sanchez-died in those attacks. Hundreds more worked valiantly to rescue and provide relief to the survivors. But, within weeks, tens of thousands of IAM members were laid off as the captains of the airline industry panicked, business travelers stayed home, corporate lobbyists fashioned bailouts to protect executives and investors and Congress ignored the pleas for help from the jobless.

Shooting wars, first in Afghanistan and then in Iraq, persuaded the public that flying unfriendly skies was foolhardy. Production lines slowed and then shut down completely as new plane orders vanished. Again, tens of thousands of IAM members were laid off. And again, industry and government colluded to cover their bottom . . . lines and ignored the jobless.

Governments on both sides of the border curried favor with the corporations and countries that would de-industrialize both Canada and the United States. NAFTA, Fast Track, China’s entry into the WTO and the Free Trade Area of the Americas-trade deals foisted on incredulous blue- and white-collar workers-produced unintended consequences.

Besides accelerating the race to find the lowest wages and most abysmal working conditions across the globe, these myopic trade deals generated record trade deficits and left us with insurmountable current account balances.

And yet, the string of zeros behind those trade numbers could not capture the pain of working men and women who saw everything they had created-their families, their homes, their schools, their communities-taken from them overnight.


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