Alabama educators join the growing international support for striking Volvo workers
The Alabama Educators Rank-and-File Safety Committee extends its full solidarity to the 3,000 workers at the New River Valley Volvo plant in Dublin, Virginia who have now been on strike for one month. After overwhelmingly defeating two concessionary contracts, the workers are already exposing a new tentative agreement pushed by the UAW for making further inroads on health care and the multi-tiered payroll schemes for which the union has become notorious. As one Volvo worker commented, “Looks like a fluffed-up version of the original—like lipstick on a pig.”
Workers have found that the key to their struggle is the newly formed Volvo Workers Rank-and- File Committee. This committee has put forward demands based on what workers need, not what the multinational auto corporation Volvo Group and the UAW attempt to dictate. The committee has exposed the duplicity and betrayals of the pro-corporate UAW and developed relationships with workers across the US and internationally, building a new leadership for autoworkers everywhere.