IN SOLIDARITY WITH OUR BROTHERS AND SISTERS IN THE UAW

WHEREAS, the AFT and the UAW have a 70-year tradition of solidarity and mutual support; and

WHEREAS, the moral, strategic and financial support of the UAW played a crucial role in establishing the AFT as an organizing and collective bargaining force within the education sector; and

WHEREAS, the relationship, which started in Detroit in the 1930s and made labor history in the 1961 representation election for New York City’s teachers, continues to this day with our Unity Team partnership for state employees in Indiana; and

WHEREAS, the UAW has been a driving force behind lifting millions of American workers into a thriving middle class at the heart of our democratic society; and

WHEREAS, the current economic crisis plaguing the country has emboldened labor’s detractors and set them on a course blaming unions for failures of management and government; and

WHEREAS, the UAW has been a leader in pioneering innovative collective bargaining and labor-management approaches for improving the quality of goods and services through meaningful worker involvement:

RESOLVED that the American Federation of Teachers supports the UAW’s efforts to ensure the survival and prosperity of the unionized automobile sector in the United States; and

RESOLVED that the American Federation of Teachers calls upon Congress and the incoming Obama administration to reject measures that would attempt to solve the current economic crisis by driving American manufacturing workers into a race to the bottom with respect to wages, working conditions and democratic voice; and

RESOLVED that the more than 1.4 million members of the American Federation of Teachers stand in solidarity with the men and women of the UAW in their struggle to restore and strengthen the domestic automobile industry as the powerful engine of American manufacturing and prosperity, and as the road to the middle class for millions of American workers and their families.