By Doug Cunningham

As 2006 dawns North American auto workers are under siege with plant closings and massive layoffs planned at both GM and Ford. The Delphi auto parts giant bankruptcy threatens jobs, wages and pensions. The implications are enormous. One in seven jobs in the U.S. are auto-related. Harsh demands to destroy auto industry wage and benefit standards - if successful - would devastate working families for generations to come. City University of New York Professor Stanley Aronowitz believes if the UAW and allied unions have the will they have the capacity to fight back and win.

[Aronowitz] : "This is a crossroads. It is the first major union with the capacity to fight, make the fight and possibly win. It's a crossroads. And if the union continues what I think has been a fifty year, the last fifty year history - since the 1950's - of generally speaking, been collaborative with those companies. If they continue this policy they will lose and they will lose very, very seriously. If they make a stand, I think we might see a different environment, not only in the automobile industry but in the American labor relations as a whole."

Marco Trbovich is with the United Steelworkers and the Mobilizing at Delphi group of six unions fighting to defend workers from Delphi's corporate bankruptcy assault. He says strong union solidarity has already backed Delphi off its most insulting demands. And he says trade policies are to blame for the auto industry crisis.

[Trbovich] : "Our trade policies and our health care policies in this country are the source of the problem, not the workers. Not even the management at Delphi. And we're not talking about any of that. We're talking just about savaging the quality of life for workers in the communities they live in."

UAW rank and file activists like Greg Shotwell say auto workers ARE in a fightback mood.

[Shotwell] : " The rank and file is feeling that they have nothing to lose and everything to gain by fighting back."

Fellow rank and file activist Todd Jordan.

[Jordan] : "If we're gonna fight and if we're gonna win, and we're gonna save our jobs and we're gonna save this country, I think the working class, the rank and file, the people at the bottom are the only people who are going to be able to save it."

Keith Millich is a Delphi worker at the Warren Ohio plant.

[Millich] : "We're disgusted, we need to break this. If we're goin' down, they need to come down with us."

For autoworkers the corporate barbarians are at the gates to pillage the American Dream. And a trumpet call to arms is being sounded.

CWA's Larry Cohen knows the stakes and he says unions and workers will fight.

[Cohen] : "We're standin' for our democracy. We're standin' for worker rights. We're standing up to say we will fight for our future, we will fight for our parents, we will fight for health care in America, we will fight for our jobs and we will take on Miller like he's never been taken on before and we will take him down! We will take him down! We will take him down! Thank you (applause, cheering)."