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| Detroit called perfect site for artistic
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| Labor
leaders from around Detroit will officially present a 63-foot-tall statue
to the people of the Motor City in a ceremony this morning at Detroit's
Hart Plaza. The new landmark, dubbed Transcending, honors "the men and women of labor, the men and women who built this city," said Donald Boggs, president of the Metro Detroit AFL-CIO. Boggs said the new landmark, which cost $1.5 million and took almost three years from idea to today's dedication, is proof that the labor movement is alive and well and looking to the future. Ken Terry, director of the UAW's Region 1, said it is fitting the monument is in Detroit, which he called "the cradle of the labor movement." The statue is meant to represent a gear springing forth from the ground. The structure is surrounded by 14 stations on boulders featuring bronze castings of handprints and statements about labor made by past labor leaders. The giant gear was created by David Barr of Novi. Barr retired after teaching art courses at Macomb Community College for more than 30 years. Sergio De Giusti, an Italian native and resident of Redford, made the bronze reliefs. The design the two men followed was selected from ideas submitted by more than 120 artists. UAW retiree Mike Kerwin, who Boggs and others called the father of the labor legacy monument, said the monument's name speaks to the efforts of organized labor over the years. "The ordinary working people were ground down by the system, but then joined together as organized labor and improved their lot, transcending what they once were," he said at a short media preview at the monument Tuesday. Among the speakers at the event was Gerald Bantom, a UAW vice president who served as president of the Michigan Labor Legacy Project. Bantom is leading negotiations between the auto union and Ford Motor Co., and said Tuesday that negotiations there are "about where they normally are at this point in the process." "This process lives a life of its own once we get started," he said. He said the union was no closer to determining which of the Big Three automakers would be selected as the lead or target company for final negotiations, an announcement typically made by the UAW around Labor Day. "The president (Ron Gettelfinger) hasn't made any statement one way or the other on determining a lead," Bantom said. The labor legacy monument is immediately east of the UAW/Ford National Programs Center, formerly the Veterans Memorial Building, along Jefferson in Detroit. A time capsule is to be buried in the base of the monument at today's 10:30 a.m. event. |