7th Circuit Court of Appeals Orders AMC to Rehire Jon

After 1000 days, the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in Jon’s favor; AMC caved and let Jon return rather than proceed to the U.S. Supreme Court. 

After a few months back at the Milwaukee plant, Jon’s job transferred to the Kenosha AMC plant. In Kenosha, Jon hooked up with two activists – John Drew and Tod Ohnstad – who were already organizing in Local 72. Together they focused on building the existing Fighting Times caucus into a solid in-plant organization with a no-holds-barred, hard-hitting, irreverent rank-and-file voice – Fighting Times. 

On the trim line, Jon set about reestablishing himself as an outspoken militant willing to go toe-to-toe with management. During a blizzard, management refused to issue passes for workers to leave early. Jon spread word for a noon walkout. When the noon buzzer sounded, workers pushed their way through a gaggle of supervisors blocking the exit; the assembly line never started back up after lunch.  

Gaining a reputation as a militant, honest, straight-shooter, Jon was elected steward and then department chair. As department chair, he harnessed the position as an organizing platform to reinvigorate the department’s most basic democratic institution – monthly meetings. By making meetings relevant, attendance grew from a handful to over 80 per meeting. 

The meetings exemplified shop floor rank-and-file democracy; strategy for confronting pressing issues was openly discussed and acted on. A racist incident reared its ugly head. The chief steward, a tobacco chewing, hillbilly maligned a young white woman for allowing a black worker (in the most vulgar, despicable language) to kiss her after work. 

Every black worker, and many younger whites were outraged. I scheduled a discussion of the incident on the department meeting agenda. The union hall was packed with angry department members, most of whom rarely participated in the union. In a no holds barred, highly emotional critique, they raked the chief steward over the coals. Most left the meeting with a feeling of empowerment that comes from collective action, be it opposing bad union leadership or company malfeasance

After a few terms as steward, Jon was overwhelmingly elected chief steward of trim, representing over 800 workers on two shifts.  Jon actively recruited blacks and women to run for steward positions in trim. Once many were elected, the steward body reflected the racial and sexual make-up of the department for the first time. 

With twelve stewards on both first and second shifts, Jon mentored stewards to diligently and aggressively police the contract, ensuring that any violations or egregious behavior by management were addressed. No grievance was too small or insignificant and Jon reported on the resolution of each, establishing a principle of strict transparency.

Central to Jon’s stance as chief was to jump on every dispute involving racism or sexism. Racist and sexist supervisors were policed by the steward body and forced to rectify bad actions or face a barrage of grievances and other shop floor tit-for-tat retaliation. 

When management refused to allow a black worker to bump onto a coveted relief job that provided line workers with breaks, Jon jumped on the issue as one of systemic racial discrimination. Despite it being within management’s purview to ‘appoint’ its choice of employee to fill relief jobs, considered semi-skilled as relief workers had to perform multiple jobs, a grievance was filed. The grievance, alleging overt racism, worked its way to the executive board where the aggrieved worker won back pay as relief jobs paid a higher rate. 

Jon and Fighting Times seized the opportunity to raise the demand that the next contract provide that all relief jobs be posted for open bidding to eliminate any opportunity for the company to appoint favorites while denying relief jobs to blacks or women. When word reached Jon that a black Vietnam vet had been fired by a racist supervisor, he hooked up with the chief steward in the vet’s department to file a mass petition, which forced the company to back off. 

These type of day-to-day skirmishes over systemic racism defined Jon’s stance and that of the Fighting Times. No instance of racism was too insignificant to call out. When racist graffiti appeared in the Lakefront plant, Fighting Times prominently highlighted a grievance jointly filed by black, Latino, and white workers, forcing the company to repaint the entire area. Wherever workers of color or women experienced discrimination, they looked to Fighting Times to champion their fight for fairness and justice. 

As Jon, Tod, and John Drew moved into union positions, they continued to publish the Fighting Times newsletter, which evolved into a popular, take-no-prisoners’ voice. As the newsletter’s following grew, so did the group of activists who wrote, printed, and distributed it. 

A key lesson Jon and the other activists around Fighting Times learned was that ‘tactical alliances’ were necessary to move the union toward an increasingly militant posture. Fighting Times promoted a rank-and-file movement to oust the corrupt, international-backed, class collaborationist local president and replace him with a ‘reform candidate,’ even though the reform challenger wasn’t an optimal first choice. The ‘reform’ president won. John, Tod, and Jon were appointed to the local’s standing committees where each took on a more substantial, leading role in the committee structure politically influencing the local.

Jon was appointed to the Education Committee where he advocated for rank-and-file participation and education. He organized a successful and well-attended (by 250) 7-week labor school that included: the history of Local 72 (founded in large part by radicals, socialists, and communists), the impact of multinationals on the bargaining process (important as Renault had acquired a stake in AMC), women’s role in the union, and basic contract enforcement.

For the 1980 contract, Renault, the nationalized French automaker, entered the picture as AMC’s joint venture partner. Fighting Times produced a detailed educational series explaining that local 72 members were now a cog in a multinational corporation with worldwide tentacles. Through consistent education, based on facts and concrete analysis, local 72 members, by-and-large, came to understand that they were part of an international class of workers. 

The Fighting Times caucus formed a no-concessions committee with other shop militants and set a 12:01am contract expiration as a line in the sand. Momentum built. Workers walked out plant wide. After the wildcat and stand-off with management, local 72 once again bucked management by holding the line on givebacks. The local even managed to win the first paid day off in the auto industry to honor the legacy of Dr. King. 

During the 1982 contract negotiations, Renault sought to disguise takeaways by promoting an ‘Employee Investment Plan’ (EIP). The EIP, stripped of its obfuscating veneer, pressed members to ‘loan 10% of wages and benefits.’ In theory, the monies would be repaid based on sales. The EIP was a false flag as sales were in no way adequate to repay the ‘loan.’ 

With Fighting Times fanning the flames of opposition to the EIP, the local’s leadership split with one faction opposing EIP givebacks. Disguising concessions as an ‘investment, however, confused many, allowing the EIP to pass with 52% of the vote. (Ironically, the 1989 Plant Closing Agreement, finally forced full payment of the EIP with interest.)

Having made union democracy an organizing mantra, time came to take the fight for democracy to the International. Both John Drew and Jon were elected as dissident delegates to the 1983 UAW convention and were able to push local 72 to issue a national call for amending the procedure for electing top UAW officers to a direct, one member/one vote policy, rather than restricting the vote for officers to UAW convention delegates. Along with activists in Locals Opposed to Concessions (LOC) in Detroit, a national campaign kicked off with local 72 contributing $100,000 to fund the effort ($275,000 in today’s money). 

Under the local 72 president’s signature, the local bombarded delegates in the U.S. and Canada with letters urging passage of supportive resolutions. At the convention, Jon, and John Drew, in league with delegates from other supportive locals, waged a challenging floor-fight but ultimately lost on a voice vote. The media quoted outgoing International President Doug Fraser, “It took us two months of the hardest work we have ever done before a convention to beat one member/one vote.” (In 2021, in part due to the public corruption, arrest, and conviction of top international leaders, One Member/One Vote passed in a court supervised vote.) (Link to Jon’s speech on the floor of the 1983 convention.)

Month-after-month, Fighting Times challenged racist, sexist, and just plain nasty bosses. In an underhanded effort to squelch the newsletter’s free speech, Detroit management surreptitiously funded and orchestrated supervisors to sue John Drew, Tod, and Jon for defamation, claiming damages of $4.2 million. 

The litigation attained national news status covered by the L.A. Times, Chicago Sun-Times, N.Y. Times, Racine Journal Times, and Kenosha News, among others. See newspaper article data base for in depth coverage of the litigation Dozens of witnesses came forward to attest to the veracity of the newsletter’s articles, many of which exposed racial and sexual discrimination and company malfeasance.

After two-and-a-half weeks, the anti-union, red-baiting judge ruled as a ‘matter of law’ that John Drew, Tod, and Jon had defamed two plaintiffs. The jury, however, rebuffed the judge and awarded $0 damages. The NLRB found AMC had violated the National Labor Relations Act and ordered payment of $200,000+ to cover legal fees. 

In 1974, John, Tod, Jon, and close ally, Bob Rosinski, relying on a decade each of shopfloor leadership, were elected to positions on the executive board/bargaining committee. Almost immediately, the 1985 contract constituted an existential challenge to the continued existence of the factory. For the first time in its 50-year history, AMC, via Renault, had alternative production options to employ as a hammer in exacting concessions. Renault threatened to move the two models produced in Kenosha to unused capacity in France if local 72 didn’t grant punishing givebacks. 

Management, empowered by the might of the Renault Empire, demanded concessions that threatened to erode fifty years of contractual gains. With the livelihoods of the thousands working in the plant, their families, and the futures of 18,000 retirees in the balance, negotiations no longer revolved around concessions, but the future of Kenosha. 

Emboldened by the option of manufacturing in France, AMC/Renault gave no ground. John Drew, Tod, Rosinski and Jon, always adamant opponents of concession bargaining, begrudgingly accepted local 72 President Rudy Kuzel’s position that, “A Big 3 job is better than no job at all.” Swallowing the bitter pill, the 15-member executive board voted to recommend that the membership ratify. A final lesson: Sometimes staying alive is the only option. Every radical, no matter how militant, must face reality.

Jon’s 1973 firing turned out to be only one of seven disciplinary actions lodged against him by management. Each discipline was followed by NLRB intervention - all which Jon won. With production greatly diminished, Jon left in the summer of 1985 to attend law school. The Racine Labor Paper ran a headline summing up Jon’s thirteen-year scorecard wrote -- “Melrod 7 vs. AMC 0.”