---

The Attorney General Montgomery Needs to Act Now, According to UAW

29 June 1999

The Attorney General Montgomery Needs to Act Now, According to UAW

    CLEVELAND, June 28 -- The following is an op-ed piece written
by Warren Davis, Director of UAW Region 2.

    Readers of several papers may have recently learned of internal B.F.
Goodrich documents revealing that Goodrich intends to lay-off 650 Cleveland
workers if it is allowed to merge with a North Carolina firm.  The merged
company will create a monopoly in domestically produced landing gear systems
for military and commercial aircraft.  But the Attorney General of Ohio -- who
should care about the impact of the merger on Ohio and the creation of
monopolies -- has had these same documents for months, but has done nothing to
stop the merger.
    While the Attorney General of Ohio has done nothing, others have tried
pretty successfully to stop the merger.  The Attorneys General of Indiana,
Connecticut and Iowa have joined together on briefs filed in federal court
asking that the merger be stopped.  And the federal judge did, in fact,
temporarily stop the merger.  When B.F. Goodrich appealed that decision, they
persuaded the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit -- not usually a
friend of anti-trust law -- to uphold the injunction.
    The judges were acting on conclusions they drew from the same internal
documents that the Ohio Attorney General Betty Montgomery has been sitting on.
Those documents apparently reveal that the bulk of the job loss and plant
closings resulting from this merger will be in Ohio.
    Not all of our elected officials have had the luxury of having these
documents delivered to their door.  They have had to struggle to get them.
Thanks to them, the public is learning about the true intentions of B.F.
Goodrich and real consequences of this merger.  Rep. Dennis Kucinich is
holding two investigative hearings on the merger and subpoenaed the documents.
According to Kucinich, "B.F. Goodrich executives, including B.F. Goodrich's
Chief Executive Officer, made representations to public officials that the
Cleveland facility would not be closed as a result of the merger.  However,
B.F. Goodrich has also made diametrically opposite representations to
officials within the Department of Defense and the Federal Trade Commission.
B.F. Goodrich argues that these federal agencies should not oppose the merger
because of 'efficiencies' that would result from it.  One of the efficiencies
supposedly promised to the federal regulators was the closing of the Cleveland
plant."
    There is one person in Ohio who had the damning evidence early on -- the
Attorney General Betty Montgomery.  And there is one person who could act
directly to save Cleveland jobs and prevent a monopoly in landing gear
production -- the Attorney General of Ohio.  Where is she?  Why doesn't she
file a motion to stop the merger?  Until she acts by filing a motion for
injunction, Ohio citizens have to depend upon the taxpayers and elected
Attorneys General of other states to prevent an economic catastrophe in Ohio.