UAW President Bob King tells In These Times’ Molly M. Ginty:

If we restructure the city just like we restructured the auto industry, there’s hope that Detroit, too, can see a turnaround.

On Wednesday, top leaders of Brazil's largest trade union federation, Central Única dos Trabalhadores (CUT), including President Vagner Freitas, João Felicio and Artur Henrique, met with U.S. union leaders at the AFL-CIO headquarters in Washington, D.C., to discuss strategies for joint action, priorities and partnerships moving forward.

More than 100 New Hampshire union members joined Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) for a get-out-the-vote Obama–Biden rally today outside Manchester’s Verizon Wireless Arena, where Mitt Romney is scheduled to speak tonight. Also at the rally were UAW President Bob King, New Hampshire AFL-CIO President Mark MacKenzie and Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.).   

UAW President Bob King has blasted presidential candidate Mitt Romney's false claim that Jeep is "thinking of moving all production to China," in a USA Today op-ed.

Romney's "meandering statements and plain falsehoods about the auto industry finally caught up to him earlier this week when he told a big whopper that cannot be squared with the truth," King said. "And, rather than take the opportunity to exhibit honesty and presidential character by correcting his misstatement, Romney doubled down with a misleading campaign spot about Jeep running in Ohio."

In 2008, at the height of the recession, Mitt Romney declared that government should “let Detroit go bankrupt” rather than providing federal aid to automakers. President Obama was a lot smarter than that. As a result of federal assistance, General Motors (GM) posted record profits and paid back its loans early, Chrysler paid back all its loans and hundreds of thousands of U.S. workers are on the job who otherwise would be out of work (click on chart to enlarge).

Karen Eusanio, a UAW Local 112 member and second generation auto worker, is one of those workers. Speaking last night at the Democratic National Convention, Eusanio recalled her struggle to support her children after GM laid her off, and the unpopularity of Obama’s plan to save the auto industry. Yet, President Obama didn’t think about the polls or the politics, said Eusanio.

He thought about the people. Because he put himself in our shoes, we’re back on our feet. Obama believed in us, he stood up for us.

An excerpt from a USA Today column by UAW President Bob King:

The bankruptcy restructuring of General Motors (GM) and Chrysler in 2009 through the creation of new companies formed with assets purchased from those troubled companies was highly successful. Today GM and Chrysler are profitable, investing in America and creating jobs.

While Mitt Romney is campaigning in Michigan this week, workers there are letting him know just how offensive they find his claim that “we should have let Detroit go bankrupt,” when the economy and the auto industry were about to collapse.

In North Carolina, the tobacco industry is running roughshod over workers’ rights—and their most fundamental human rights, according to a recent report, “State of Fear: Human Rights Abuses in North Carolina’s Tobacco Industry,” issued jointly by the Farm Labor Organizing Committee and Oxfam, the global relief organization. FLOC represents more than 6,000 farm workers in the state.

Members of the UAW working at General Motors Co. (GM) voted by two-to-one to ratify a new four-year collective bargaining agreement with the company. The two sides had reached a tentative agreement Sept. 16.

The four-year tentative agreement between the UAW and General Motors (GM) provides jobs for UAW members who have been laid off over the past several years, creates and retains more than 17,000 jobs and brings production back to the United States that had been moved to Mexico and other parts of the world.