The tire company bosses have steadily attacked the conditions of workers for years. Out of the defeat of the 1994-95 strike against Firestone, the company imposed 12-hour shifts, assembly speedup, and other attacks on job safety and human dignity. Together with their callous disregard for the conditions of workers in the factories, Firestone has produced many thousands of faulty tires, which have so far been responsible for at least 62 people killed and more than 100 maimed. And the numbers continues to climb.

These deadly defective tires are not an aberration caused by the breakdown of an otherwise safe system. Rather, such outrages are the inevitable result of the lawful workings of capitalism, driven by profit at the expense of human life and limb--in the factories and on the streets. For the bosses, "it's just business." Workers in the tire plants see this take place as company engineers scheme at how to shave a few ounces of rubber out of a tire, or a few minutes from the molding and curing process, to squeeze more tires out of workers.

Just as the bosses are responsible for the needless deaths on the roads, they are also responsible for deaths, disabling injuries, repetitive-motion injuries, and unhealthy working conditions in the plants.

The revelations about the bad tires and the enormous recall now under way come as 8,000 workers at Bridgestone/Firestone, members of the United Steelworkers of America, are seeking to make up for the assault on wages, working conditions, and dignity through years of concession contracts and the 1995 setback for the union. Contract talks covering nine plants across the country are taking place, with a September 1 strike deadline recently announced by union officials.

The rubber workers, who daily face the callousness of Bridgestone/Firestone on the shop floor, need to take the moral high ground and put the blame for the faulty tires on the real culprits--the company and its kin at Ford.

Workers at Bridgestone/Firestone and Ford must reject every effort to convince us to defend "our" company or "our" product in face of the growing exposures of the bosses' tire safety disaster. Identification with the company cripples the ability of workers to defend safety--both job conditions and the safety of the commodities they produce.

Ford has issued reports to the media that attribute the tire defects to replacement workers at the Bridgestone/Firestone plant in Decatur, Illinois, during the 1994-95 strike. Never mind that these reports are inaccurate and misleading--mounting evidence shows faulty tires were produced at Bridgestone/Firestone for many years. But this approach is a self-serving attempt to deflect blame away from Ford bosses and the fact that Ford's Explorer sport-utility vehicle, even according to the company's own reports, is prone to flip over at normal highway speeds.

Ford's attempt to blame a section of the workforce at Firestone must be rejected by all unionists committed to strengthening our ranks today. Both the Bridgestone/Firestone and Ford bosses are responsible for the design of the tire. And the tire bosses are responsible for the organization of production and inspection. The blood is on their hands.

In the book Capitalism's World Disorder, Jack Barnes says, "Class-conscious workers must take questions such as safety seriously. Labor must convince broad layers of the population as a whole that it is the working-class movement above all that cares about these questions. We must be able to assert with complete confidence and integrity that the stronger and more militant the union, the safer the operations of the industry, whatever it may be. This is a fundamental matter of class pride, of self-respect, of the morale of the working class. It is a question of the working class taking the moral high ground in the battle against the exploiting class and for human solidarity."

By taking this course, labor can champion life-and-death safety questions and forge the kind of working-class unity in action that is needed today to confront the worsening conditions of work and life imposed on us by our common enemy--the capitalist class.