Word for word, here is the entire text of that Solidarity Alert, published on Nov. 17:

Through your solidarity and your unity in maintaining our picket lines you are winning this strike. On the other hand, Goodyear is painting itself in a corner with investors and customers, while using pet analysts to paint a rosy picture of its failed strategy.

As the strike enters its seventh week the illusion is melting away, revealing more and more a company racked by poor decisions and wrong-headed leadership. Below is the sad track record laid down by a company driving itself into the ground, losing its customer base, alienating its employees and racking up debt that will haunt it for years to come, even as it parades around like the emperor with no clothes on in the old children’s fable.

• Goodyear borrowed a billion dollars to try and break the union by hiring a union-busting company and hiring unskilled replacement workers. The result: tires and products that may be poor quality and even dangerous with virtually no production in the plants on strike, while more and more injuries are occurring.

• Goodyear told the financial community it can meet demand while maintaining 50% of its pre-strike production (an inflated number), that bringing in scabs will dramatically increase production, that it will close a USW plant, that it will force the union to accept fifty cents on the dollar for its existing retiree health care obligation, that it will completely shed any future retiree health care costs and that it will force the union to accept other concessions, including dramatic pay cuts for union members. While that has its pet analysts hyping Goodyear stock, none of it will happen. That’s beginning to become apparent, as the union has rejected all those proposals yet again.

• Goodyear has announced plans to try and sell notes totaling another billion dollars to refinance debt and spend even more on the strike, instead of paying off debt and settling the strike. With this latest debt move, Goodyear has wasted money that could and should have been used to settle this strike.

• Small tire dealers are rapidly deserting Goodyear. Many are in the process of switching over to other brands because, despite Goodyear’s statement that the company had a 90-day stockpile of tires, the truth is most small dealers haven’t been able to get Goodyear tires since the strike began.

• Big distributors are now running out of tires. Many of them stockpiled tires before the strike but those are running out and, despite Goodyear’s big talk about production levels during the strike, the company cannot supply them.

• NASCAR is looking at alternative sources for race tires, despite Goodyear’s claim that it can supply race tires during the strike.

Union Rejects Company “Cut & Gut” Proposals Again

After Goodyear went to the Internet with a proposal package in a failed and desperate attempt to separate striking union members from their leadership, then indicated a new willingness to bargain, the union returned to Cincinnati. With no real movement by the company on the big issues, your Bargaining Committee again rejected proposals aimed at allowing Goodyear to “get out of the retiree health care business,” close a USW plant and drastically reduce pay and benefits for union workers.

We owe it to our members to bargain. This latest desperate attempt by Goodyear to create the illusion with investors that it can get a contract that includes these items was nothing more than a cruel hoax. On Tuesday we rejected their “fifty cent on the dollar and walk away from future obligations” VEBA proposal and presented a union proposal on retiree health care. They have not moved from their position on these key items.

In a meeting with our Table Committee late Thursday (Nov. 16), Goodyear couldn’t, or wouldn’t, tell us when they would have anything new to propose, while flatly rejecting our proposal.

Their proposals concerning shutting down a USW plant and job reductions at other USW plants, as well as on wage cuts for union workers, were also rejected yet again by your Bargaining Committee. The Bargaining Committee made the decision to leave Cincinnati on Friday. No further talks are scheduled.