New Life for the Ford Plant?

“The best-case scenario would be for the plant to stay open,” says Alliance Executive Director Russ Adams. “But if it does close, we want the community to have a say in how the site is reused. We need to organize now to make sure that can happen.”

If Russ Adams is really sincere in stating this, the "Alliance For Metropolitan Stability" and all of its "coalition partners" would have mobilized support for S.F. 607, the legislation brought forward by Minnesota Democratic Farmer-Labor Party State Senator Stephen Cohen.

"The city has set a goal to make St. Paul a center for green manufacturing," said retired United Auto Workers leader Lynn Hinkle. "While we hate to see the Ford plant go, we see this as a major opportunity. There is no better site in the Twin Cities to attract green manufacturing and model low-carbon, mixed-use development with good jobs at its core."

Lynn Hinkle had his opportunity working at this Plant and now he wants to deny the same opportunity to future generations of workers in the Twin Cities.

Lynn Hinkle needs to explain why he, and the rest of the UAW leadership sat on their hands and refused to fully mobilize the membership in support of S.F. 607. Any union leader understands that you always bring along a great big crowd when trying to get anything from politicians.

We need to find out why the UAW and the AFL-CIO refused to insist that Barack Obama address the issue of saving the St. Paul Ford Twin Cities Assembly Plant when he addressed some 30,000 people on his campaign stop in the Twin Cities. According to Obama, he wants us to unite for change behind him to save American jobs as he "greens the American economy." What better place to start than with saving the St. Paul Ford Twin Cities Assembly Plant.

Here we have Lynn Hinkle, a UAW "leader;" and, Russ Adams, the "Executive Director" of the "Alliance for Metropolitan Stability" who make the grandiose claim to be speaking for their "coalition partners"--- none of which the public has heard from on this issue--- both ACKNOWLEDGING that the best case scenario would be if the Ford Plant remains--- yet, neither one of these "leaders" is prepared to lead the fight to save the St. Paul Ford Twin Cities Assembly Plant, two-thousand good union jobs, and the hydro dam powering the entire operation with lots of electricity to spare.

Like their other "coalition partner" in this dirty deal, the Minnesota Democratic Farmer-Labor Party, Lynn Hinkle and Russ Adams are content to acquiesce to corporate power and the well-heeled Summit Hill Club which includes the St. Paul Chamber of Commerce, investment bankers along with a sundry of other money-grubbing scoundrels looking to finance another boon-doggle at tax-payer expense as these "limousine liberals" drive off with the profits.

It is bad enough that tax-payers still owe some thirty-million dollars for the UAW-Ford-MnScu Training Center that is an integral part of this operation attached directly to the Plant


From the Spring 2008 "Common Ground," publication of the "Alliance for Metropolitan Stability."

Link: http://www.metrostability.org/news/article.php?id=162

New Life for the Ford Plant?

The Ford Motor Company plant based in St. Paul may soon be facing a makeover.

The plant, situated on 136 acres of riverfront land in the Highland Park neighborhood, is scheduled to close in late 2009. The date of the closing keeps getting pushed back—a good thing for the more than 900 union workers who are still employed there— and it’s still not clear what will happen to the site after Ford vacates the property. The site’s large size, proximity to the river, and location in a vibrant urban neighborhood make it an exciting opportunity to consider innovative
redesign options that preserve jobs, offer affordable housing, integrate with local
transit hubs and minimize the carbon footprint of the new development.

Recognizing these opportunities, the city of St. Paul appointed a Ford Site Planning Task Force to consider redevelopment options for the site. The task force is comprised of residents, business- owners, environmental and labor representatives,
and the Ford Land Company (a subsidiary of Ford Motor Company), and according to the city’s web site, is charged to “prepare for consideration by the planning commission, city council and mayor a development framework for a mixed-use development that will represent a fitting legacy for both the Ford Motor Company and the city of Saint Paul.”

5 REDEVELOPMENT SCENARIOS

The task force spent much of 2007 gathering stakeholder input and setting forth goals for the final development scenario. Based on this process, the task force has put together five redevelopment scenarios that it believes meet its goals to promote and preserve neighborhood character, access to community amenities and open space, economic vitality, appropriate land use, city- and community-desired features, sustainability and transit integration:

• Reuse for industry

• Mixed-use light industrial

• Mixed-use office/institutional campus

• Mixed-use urban village

• High-density urban transit village

These plans are being evaluated by the task force for economic and environmental
viability, which will eventually lead to a recommendation to the city planning commission. Yet despite the city’s power over zoning of the site, its reuse is ultimately in the hands of Ford, which has control over sale of the land.

With the task force’s work well underway, the delay of the plant closing slightly confuses this planning scenario. It is unclear whether the task force will make a recommendation in 2008 as planned, or whether that decision will be put off until 2009.

What is clear is that the city will hold at least one more public meeting this year to present its findings from the environmental review of the site. The Alliance and our partner organizations will monitor the process as it unfolds.

COALITION ENVISIONS FORMER FORD PLANT SITE AS MODEL OF GREEN REINDUSTRIALIZATION

The delay of the plant closing opens an opportunity for community groups to organize concerned citizens to affect the Ford Site Planning Task Force’s recommendation to the St. Paul Planning Commission, and eventually the full city council. The Alliance has been convening a coalition of labor, environmental, transit and community organizations that are pressuring city officials to support a plan that supports our vision for the development to be a model of green reindustrialization— providing thousands of living-wage jobs, while manufacturing green products and reducing the carbon footprint of the site. “The best-case scenario would be for the plant to stay open,” says Alliance Executive Director Russ Adams. “But if it does close, we want the community to have a say in how the site is reused. We need to organize now to make sure that can happen.”

ST. PAUL TO BE CENTER FOR GREEN MANUFACTURING

"The city has set a goal to make St. Paul a center for green manufacturing," said retired United Auto Workers leader Lynn Hinkle. "While we hate to see the Ford plant go, we see this as a major opportunity. There is no better site in the Twin Cities to attract green manufacturing and model low-carbon, mixed-use development with good
jobs at its core."

COMMUNITY FORUM PLANNED FOR SPRING 2008

The coalition is planning its own community forum this spring, which will
offer an alternative scenario featuring green and equitable development
principles.

Information about the forum will be posted on our Ford community blog at:

http://stpaulfordplantsite.typepad.com/highland/


For more information on the Ford site project, see the city’s web site at:

http://www.stpaul.gov/depts/ped/fordsite/index.html.


Ford site coalition members are represented by leaders from:

• Alliance For Metropolitan Stability

• Environmental Justice Advocates of Minnesota

• Fresh Energy

• ISAIAH

• Metropolitan Interfaith Council on Affordable Housing

• The Sierra Club, North Star Chapter

• Student activists from Macalester College

• Transit For Livable Communities

• United Auto Workers Local 879

• United Food & Commercial Workers Local 789

• University United

This quote from Lynn Hinkle which was featured in this article is quite interesting from several perspectives:

"There is no better site in the Twin Cities to attract green manufacturing and model low-carbon, mixed-use development with good jobs at its core." — Lynn Hinkle, retired United Auto Workers leader

First, Lynn Hinkle has maintained, all along, until now, that he was responsible for "educating" his fellow UAW members to accept considerable concessions from the Ford Motor Company over a twenty year period in order to create a manufacturing facility which is "green."

This is very important, because over two-thousand auto workers over more than twenty years, accepted everything from horrendously longer hours in their work-day and the work-week to very significant pay-cuts. Workers gave up their good health and a big chunk of their standard of living so that the St. Paul Ford Twin Cities Assembly Plant could "go green." Many work-place injuries were the result of fatigue from long hours, not enough rest and Ford's atrocious and notorious "speed-up."

The result was, in fact, what is today, probably the "greenest" heavy industrial manufacturing operation in the world.

Workers are treated like dogs, just to create the economic conditions--- the incentive of greater profits--- to convenience the Ford Motor company to go "green," and after the operation reaches the point of being as "green" as any heavy industry can get given the most modern and up-to-date technology compliments of tax-payers... and now these "leaders" want to bring in the wrecking ball. This makes no sense to anyone except the greedy pigs who once again feed at the public trough to profit.

Workers and their families paid a tremendous price "convincing" the Ford Motor Company to "go green."

Tax-payers foot the bill. What tax-payers finance; tax-payers should own and control.

Ford reaped the profits at worker and tax-payer expense.

No bank or venture capitalist would have made the tremendous investments in this Plant and the operation that workers and tax-payers made without insisting on becoming co-owners and full joint partners--- including reaping the profits.

Let us remember, tax-payers even built the hydro dam that has provided FREE "green" electricity to power the entire operation since the day the foundations for the St. Paul Ford Twin Cities Assembly Plant were poured.

Plus, the Ford Motor Company banked over two-hundred million dollars in sheer profit from selling the excess electricity the manufacturing operation didn't need. This is two-hundred million dollars that very justly and rightly belongs to the United States Treasury.

Lynn Hinkle has repeatedly stated: Workers create all wealth.

This is a very important observation, one that Karl Marx made over one-hundred years ago, and apparently the only thing Hinkle has retained from studying Karl Marx because he has decided to join the management "team" at Ford in his retirement years. Hinkle chooses to ignore the class struggle and the interests of workers who have created all this wealth.

Which brings us to the real purpose of the "Alliance For Metropolitan Stability" and why this organization is so well funded by foundations receiving their funds from some of the largest corporations in America... including the Ford Motor Company and its top executives... talk about your "conflict of interest."

In fact, the "Alliance For Metropolitan Stability" and its coalition partners are funded in one form or another by just about every single member of the St. Paul Chamber of Commerce!

Anyone who takes the time to study the purpose of the "Alliance For Metropolitan Stability" and its so-called "coalition partners," quickly finds out that their primary purpose is to mediate "class peace;" to help render the working class docile and acquiescent to profit gouging corporations like the Ford Motor Company.

It is no accident that Merritt Clapp-Smith whose family has made its fortune in corrupt and crooked real estate transactions for over one-hundred years in the Twin Cities is not only the lead person for St. Paul's "Ford Site Planning Committee and Task Force," she also sits on the board of directors of one of the Alliance's "coalition partners... a very cozy arrangement indeed.

What is very significant is this title of the article in "Common Ground,"New Life for the Ford Plant?" How is demolishing a perfectly good manufacturing facility giving it "new life?"

More appropriately, the article should have been entitled, "Squeezing Greater Profits from the Ford Site."

"The coalition is planning its own community forum this spring, which will offer an alternative scenario featuring green and equitable development principles."

The question which is begging an answer, and needs to be asked, is:

Knowing the Plant's life has been extended by the Ford Motor Company beyond the original scheduled date of shut-down; and acknowledging that the best case scenario is keeping the existing plant in production--- if not producing Ford Ranger pick-up trucks, then make the Plant part of Obama's planned drive to "green the American economy--- Why aren't Lynn Hinkle and Russ Adams and the coalition partners they lead, at least including as part of this planned conference, organizing the struggle to save the plant?

When Lynn Hinkle and Russ Adams talk about "creating good paying jobs" by rebuilding on the Ford Site, this makes me want to puke. Thousands of workers are presently employed within a few blocks of the St. Paul Ford Twin Cities Assembly Plant making minimum and other poverty wages and neither the UAW, United Food and Commercial Workers, or any of these other "coalition partners" let alone the MN AFL-CIO (which has been shamefully silent on this issue) have lifted a finger to improve the wages and working conditions of any of these workers. What fool is going to be found who will believe Lynn Hinkle or Russ Adams that these new jobs created in this Disney World/Epcot Center like "green community" they are talking about will provide union jobs and decent working conditions? If the neighboring business to the St. Paul Ford Twin Cities Assembly Plant, the huge and highly profitable supermarket for upscale shoppers--- Lund's Supermarket--- has not been organized by the United Food and Commercial Workers Union already, why would anyone think these coalition partners would see to it that these new jobs would be organized?

In fact, neither Lynn Hinkle nor Russ Adams, nor any of their "coalition partners," have ever supported legislation which would raise the minimum wage to a real living wage based upon cost of living factors.

When I hear Lynn Hinkle and Russ Adams talk about their fairy-tale vision of hundreds of "affordable housing units" being built on this site in conjunction with their new "green industries" as if this will be some kind of community described in a science fiction fantasy, I can't help but ask why neither of these two "leaders" have mobilized the community to insist that the local, state and federal governments cough up the half-billion dollars it is going to take to bring existing public housing in the Twin Cities up to code?

More housing is needed? Look at home after home with foreclosed signs dangling on the front lawns. Where is their "leadership" in halting foreclosures and evictions if they are truly concerned about "the housing question?"

The two-faced, hypocritical double-talk coming out of the mouths of Lynn Hinkle and Russ Adams is just as sickening as the way the Minnesota Democratic Farmer-Labor Party let Ford workers and Minnesota tax-payers down in refusing to pass Senator Stephen Cohen's legislation to save the St. Paul Ford Twin Cities Assembly Plant from the wrecking ball and keep the Plant and hydro dam intact as an industrial unit until a way can be found to save these two-thousand jobs through S.F. 607.

Senator David Tomassoni has stated in no uncertain terms he wants to see S.F. 607 brought before the Senate Committee on Business, Industry and Jobs since it has already been pushed through the House Committee by its Chair, Representative Tom Rukavina.

Both Rukavina and Tomassoni should know a little something about saving jobs... they have pushed through similar legislation resulting in thousands of jobs being saved at the taconite plants on the Iron Range.

Senator James Metzen, an official with Key Community Bank who Chairs this Senate Committee on Business, Industry and Jobs failed to do in his Committee what Rukavina did in his Committee... when a few Republicans kicked... Rukavina simply said, "This legislation is going through this Committee I don't care what any of you say."

Now, Metzen presides over his Committee which is heavily dominated by the DFL over Republicans by eleven to seven. There is something terribly wrong if Metzen can't push this legislation through his Committee by Election Day.

Any worker who would actually waste his or her time voting for any Democrat in the upcoming election--- for a Party claiming to be the "party of working people" and can't get S.F. 607 out of a Senate Committee--- should have their head examined.

Minnesota workers can send a message to the Democratic Party and the Minnesota Democratic Farmer-Labor Party on Election Day by voting for Cynthia McKinney, the only Presidential candidate for President who has taken the time to talk directly with Ford workers ... if McCain carries Minnesota, let Brian Melendez and Jim Metzen look in the mirror to place the blame.

Everyone from Norm Coleman to Al Franken to St. Paul Mayor Chris Coleman and even that poor, pathetic excuse who calls himself the Governor says the St. Paul Ford Twin Cities Assembly Plant needs to be saved.

Everyone knows the only way to save this Plant is through public ownership; the much idolized "free enterprise" system has failed us, again.

What is the problem? If everything from libraries to schools and state banks and football teams and bus plants to golf courses and ski resorts work perfectly well under public ownership, why can't the St. Paul Ford Twin Cities Assembly Plant?

United Auto Workers union President Ron Gettelfinger and his obedient head of the Ford Department, Bob King... ran from the issue of trying to save the St. Paul Ford Twin Cities Assembly Plant.

The Sierra Club's Carl Pope and the United Steel Workers President, Leo Gerard, appeared at the gates of the St. Paul Ford Twin Cities Assembly Plant just long enough to proclaim they had arrived to lead the "battle against big-capital" to save the Plant and two-thousand jobs along with the hydro dam powering the operation. They led some "battle;" no one ever saw the fight.

Pass S.F. 607 now.

If the present politicians can't keep one auto plant in operation and save two-thousand jobs which they have repeatedly voted to subsidize to the hilt with our tax-dollars as the Ford Motor Company walked away with the profits; the time has come for a major political shake-up in Minnesota. And, as each day passes, the socialist alternative to this rotten capitalist system as proposed by Minnesota Farmer-Labor Party Governors, Floyd B. Olson and Elmer Benson, starts to look better and better by the day.

We all better check out the writings of Barack Obama's "mentor," Frank Marshall Davis. Take a walk down to your local socialist institution--- your public library--- and check out, "Livin' the Blues" and "The Writings of Frank Marshall Davis."

I look forward to talking to people at this so-called "Community Forum" Russ Adams and Lynn Hinkle are planning.

In the meantime, be watching for times and dates for a "Frank Marshall Davis Roundtable for Change" coming to a neighborhood near you. Saving the St. Paul Ford Twin Cities Assembly Plant will be on the agenda.

Check out my blog on the official Barack Obama website:

http://my.barackobama.com/page/community/blog/alanmaki

Topics for discussion at the Frank Marshall Davis Roundtable for Change:

1.)In the area of health care we need single-payer universal health care which will be a stepping stone to get us to socialized health care. Obama’s idea of health care “reform” leaves much to be desired; he wants to leave the profit gouging insurance companies, HMO’s, doctors and the pharmaceutical industry in control when most of us know this is what is wrong with the system--- profits come before people; and, it should be the other way around.

2.)We need a minimum wage that is a real living wage. Any job that an employer needs done should provide the worker doing that job a real living wage. The way to arrive at what the minimum wage should be is to use the statistics and calculations of the United States Department of Labor and the Bureau of Labor Statistics based on real cost of living factors rather than having some politicians pull a miserly figure out of their hat at election time. If employers don’t like this let them do the work themselves; with the robbery at the pumps it won’t be long before it won’t pay to go to work anyways. What’s Obama’s stand on the minimum wage? I don’t know. It doesn’t really matter. We need to seize the initiative and make it clear to him the change we want.

3.)We need to end this dirty war for oil in Iraq; it’s a war that was based upon lies and deceit right from the beginning and it has taken a terrible toll, not only on the people in Iraq, but on us here, too--- to the point where we can say that every bomb dropped and every bullet fired is destroying our society, too. We can’t have a foreign policy which sees wars as solutions to complex problems. As far as I can see Obama doesn’t really offer much change in this area either so we are going to have to take the initiative in charting a course for change as we expect things to be and make our voices heard.

4.)We need to make it clear that in any program aimed at “greening” America through massive government subsidies to business and industry, that what taxpayers finance, taxpayers should own--- including the profits.

5.)Public ownership of the St. Paul Ford Twin Cities Assembly Plant needs to be considered. Saving two-thousand jobs is a major priority for Minnesotans in this election.

If you would like to gather a few friends together to hold a "Frank Marshall Davis Roundtable for Change" around your kitchen table or in a union hall, community center or church in your neighborhood, give me a call: 218-386-2432

We need to begin discussing these issues in a mass way--- today. The time has come for working people to become part of the decision making process... for those who create all wealth to continue being excluded from the decision making process certainly is not what democracy is all about.

There are those who have argued for over four years now, as a means and method of escaping taking part in the struggle to save two-thousand jobs and the St. Paul Ford Twin Cities Assembly Plant along with the hydro dam supplying free power to the operation, that this is all a "done deal." Obviously, this position no longer is worthy of refuting since this is far from a "done deal" and no one will find the adherents of such thinking to be credible when it comes to politics and the class struggle.

Other pretenders to leading the class struggle have stuck their heads in the sand claiming they "don't know enough about this issue to participate." Well, again, such charlatans will be seen for what they are: arm chair participants and patio pundits in Minnesota politics.

Everyone is invited to the picket line protest to save the St. Paul Ford Twin Cities Assembly Plant on Wednesday, September 2, 2008 from 2 p.m. to 6 p.m. Link: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=7879844775


For real "metropolitan stability" to be achieved, working people must be involved in the complete decision making process from beginning to end. To this day, neither Ford workers nor the people living in the local communities surrounding the Ford Plant have had no say. Insensitive and uncaring politicians, party hacks and business interests have decided how this issue should be addressed. Ford workers should have been the first invited to participate... so far, the views of Ford workers who have created all the wealth have not been asked if they want to keep working in the Ford Plant. Such a very simple question. Common sense would dictate that their answer to this question would be set the tone for any discussion concerning the future of the St. Paul Ford Twin Cities Assembly Plant.

The problem is, I think we all know the answer to this question.

Alan L. Maki
Initiator of the "Frank Marshall Davis Roundtable for Change"