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Letter to The Veteran

By VVAW

U.S. STEEL WORKER'S TRIP SHOWS FRANCE & GERMANY BLAME FOREIGN IMPORTS TOO

To The Veteran,

I recently returned from a vacation in Europe, through France and Germany. I would like to go over some of my observations as I went through these countries. I am a steel worker, and my plant is being hard hit by the crisis in steel. The companies and the newspapers lay it out very clear for us steelworkers: "The threat is from foreign steel," they say. We all have to pull together so your jobs can be saved. And we have to stop those greedy foreigners, the Germans and Japanese, from overproducing and dumping all their steel on our market. Their motto is "Buy American."

I saw a lot of steel mills especially in Germany. I would drive or ride by some that had as many as 10 blast furnaces. But the funny thing was only 2 were operating. They had modern B.O.P. (Basic Oxygen Process) shops and continuous casters, and they were not operating. I could not figure out how they could be overproducing!

I was in Germany in the Army during 1970-71 and there was no unemployment to speak of then. The big businesses in Germany, including the U.S. Army, imported foreign workers from Turkey, Yugoslavia and Italy. Now there is 4.5% unemployment and also a big campaign against the foreign workers, all about how they "steal" jobs from German workers.

It really hit home when I saw a "buy French" article in France. It was a lesson in how Americans are so stingy and greedy that they will not let the supersonic jet Concorde land in the U.S., and how it is just a scheme of Americans to ruin the French economy. So, as the article states, we must all pull together to save France.

One thing this vacation showed me, besides a good time, was that these "Buy American" and "Buy French" campaigns only try to hide the real cause behind the attacks on our jobs and our living standards.

They try to blame anything but the profit-hungry companies we as well as many foreign workers slave and die for everyday.

They way I see it, it makes more of a difference what class you belong to than what country you live in. And as long as we fight for the working class, we have more in common with our brothers and sisters in any country than we do with any American capitalist.

A well-rested steel worker.