April
25, 2005
Labor
Loses a Hero
The
Strong Life of Dave Yettaw
By
LEE SUSTAR
THE
LABOR movement suffered an irreplaceable loss April 14 when Dave
Yettaw passed away at the untimely age of 58.
As
a longtime rank-and-file activist and later local president in
the United Auto Workers (UAW) at General Motors’ Buick City
complex in Flint, Mich., Dave was a key leader of the New Directions
Movement that challenged the contract givebacks and pro-corporate
policies of the UAW in the 1980s. As president of UAW Local 599,
he put his perspectives to the test, leading an important strike
in 1994 that showed the union’s power by winning hundreds
of new jobs after years of devastating cuts.
That
victory rattled both GM execs and top UAW leaders, who conspired
to oust Dave and the New Directions slate in the next local union
election. “Vote for Yettaw and New Directions, and GM will
close the plant,” Yettaw’s opponents said. Dave and
his team lost--and GM closed the plant anyway.
As
a retiree, Dave ran with a New Directions slate as delegates to
the 1998 UAW convention and won, elected by workers who felt betrayed
by the UAW. The convention took place amid a long strike at two
Flint parts plants that had virtually shut down GM’s entire
North American production system.
I’ll
never forget how the late Steve Yokich, then UAW president, sweated
and stammered whenever Dave took to the convention floor to call
for a more militant approach to the struggle. Yokich, with his
big salary and gold-plated benefits, was far more comfortable
golfing with Ford executives than leading strikes. Dave, by contrast,
was the real thing: a lifelong militant who personified the best
traditions of the UAW. And Yokich knew it.
Even
in his retirement years, Dave kept fighting to challenge the direction
of the UAW. He was always willing to put his encyclopedic knowledge
of the UAW’s contracts, constitution and appeals process
at the disposal of activists across the country. He helped people
overturn stolen elections, win back their jobs, strategize how
to vote down lousy contracts, and bring issues to the UAW convention
floor.
As
an authority on the real history of the UAW--including the central
role of radicals, socialists and communists in the union’s
early years--Dave was a one-man school of what the old-timers
called class-struggle unionism. “The [UAW leadership] is
taking this union back to where we were in 1933, when we had company
unions,” he told me in an interview for Socialist Worker
about the 20003 contract.
I
got to know Dave through UAW conventions and reform meetings in
the last seven years. He was an invaluable resource to those of
us in the reform wing of the National Writers Union--a local of
the UAW--as we ousted incumbents backed by the union hierarchy.
Like
scores of other UAW members, I corresponded regularly with Dave.
We also spent many long hours on the phone, discussing not only
the UAW and the labor movement, but the rightward turn in U.S.
politics. Dave once told me that he was getting more radical as
he got older. A Vietnam veteran, he spoke out against the impending
war in Iraq at a grassroots meeting of UAW retirees in late 2002.
Sadly,
we’ve lost Dave just as he was warming to a new fight against
cuts in the Big Three health care plans and retirement benefits.
Just three days before he passed away, he was in his element,
meeting with other activists to strategize.
My
favorite memory of Dave is from the 1998 union convention. By
patiently asking a series of pointed questions, Dave had prodded
Yokich into making a militant speech about the GM strike. “When
he’s on that road,” Dave said afterward, with a twinkle
in his eye, “you push him down it as far as you can.”
With
Dave gone, it’s up to us to keep pushing. The job is will
be much harder without him. But we can keep learning from his
example.
Lee
Sustar is a regular contributor to CounterPunch and the
Socialist Worker.
He can be reached at: lsustar@ameritech.net