Thailand's Goodyear Workers Warrant Support

Message from ICEM (www.icem.org)

 

In a week’s time in Thailand, on August 10, 600 Goodyear workers will present their demands to management at a tire plant near Bangkok. Those demands should not provoke local managers much, since they are modest and include issues on health care benefits, continuation of wage adjustments, and maybe narrowing the 4-tier wage scheme that exists inside the factory.

 

If they have any advantage in this set of 3-year talks, it is that they are more united now than they have been for the past several years. The local union committee speaks in unison, and even better, leaders of a 31-member supervisors unit at the factory are actively engaged with leaders of the local union.

 

What have united them are the words of Richard Fleming and the atmosphere he has created since he became managing director of this plant late in 2006. Fleming, from New Zealand, has arrogantly let it be known what he expects, in terms of social benefits that workers will concede to him. He has done it through fear of a lockout, he has done it by threats to move tyre production from Thailand to Viet Nam. And he has done it by short-changing workers following a major fire in the plant earlier this year that closed it.

 

The local union at Goodyear in Thailand is affiliated to the Petroleum & Chemical Workers Union (PCFT), an important affiliate to the ICEM, the global federation of trade unions for the energy, chemicals, mining, rubber and other sectors. Through the PCFT, the ICEM has been deeply involved with the plant-level union at the Goodyear tire factory in Wattana, Thailand.

 

The ICEM is requesting that readers of this blog send a message of support and solidarity to the 600 workers and 31 supervisions at Goodyar’s Bangkok tire factory. The local union guarantees that all messages will get forwarded to all workers. Please send messages to: icemthai@yahoo.com.

 

Goodyear (Thailand) Public Company Ltd. makes auto, truck, tractor, and commercial aircraft tires. In recent years, the plant has seen a reduction in force. Fleming has added to the pain by now denigrating the factory, saying that it accounts for less than 1% of Goodyear’s totals. He has said this in the context of the plant closing threat.

 

The 600 workers and 31 supervisors take great pride in their production and in the proportion of profit their labours create for Goodyear. The workers also take great pride in the fact that they are one of the few rubber plants in Asia-Pacific that makes aircraft tires. They make these tires with care and precision, and they are stung when Fleming discounts the factory and eyes benefits that he wants slashed.

 

To bear out the new resolve of the local union committee, they met with management on July 24, 2007, and one agenda item was to pass a formal letter to the company demanding the reinstatement of Anan Pol-ung to his rightful job inside the factory. Anan, the former president of the plant-level union, was fired last year. He first drew negative attention from Goodyear’s Thai management nearly three years ago when he made a stand with 20 contract workers in the warehouse and rubber stock department. These workers had been working for up to 10 years on a temporary, or year-to-year basis. The wanted to join the PCFT, and Anan was helping them do just that.

 

Following the exchange of demands on August 10, the first set of negotiations in this round of bargaining will occur on or around August 22.

 

Goodyear workers in Thailand need messages of support from trade unions, and from other Goodyear workers and managers from around the world. Please send your own message to icemthai@yahoo.com and it will be translated into Thai, and distributed to workers.