[Pen-l] The Auto Crisis: Management, Labor and the Struggle for the Future

["Charles Brown" <charlesb@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

How about a big caravan to Wall Street , and set up a permanent occupation there ?

Labor Legacy benefits, like the prime fruits of US labor history struggle: just give them up.

In Solidarity Forever,

Joe Hill

^^^


 Big Caravan to Washington? 
The Auto Crisis: Management, Labor and the Struggle for the Future
by Dan La Botz 
The crisis in the auto industry is about many things: the possible collapse
of GM, Detroit gas guzzlers, auto emission standards, the environment, and
the need for mass transportation, among others.  But as became clear this
last week, at the center of it all is the struggle between management and
the workers, that is, between capital and labor.  The crisis in auto is
fundamentally about driving down workers' wages, taking away their benefits,
and putting management firmly in control of the workplace.

Mitt Romney, ( He, whose father was head of American Motors around the time it failed - CB)  candidate for president in the Republican primaries, in his
op-ed piece in the New York Times titled "Let Detroit Go Bankrupt," wrote
that the Big Three's "huge disadvantage in costs relative to foreign brands
must be eliminated."  How?  By making "new labor agreements to align pay and
benefits to match those of workers at competitors like BMW, Honda, Nissan
and Toyota."  What's more, says Romney, "retiree benefits must be reduced so
that the total burden per auto for domestic makers is not higher than that
of foreign producers."1

A few days later New York Times columnist Joe Nocera argued that bankruptcy
would be too long and slow a process to save the industry.  He suggested
that President-Elect Barack Obama create an auto Czar, someone like former
Secretary of the Treasury Larry Summers, to negotiate a new deal in auto.
What would that deal look like?  "It needs to dramatically reduce its legacy
benefits, perhaps even eliminating health care benefits for union retirees.
It needs to close plants.  It needs to pay its workers what Toyota workers
are paid in the United States -- and not a penny more."2

In fact, Toyota and other transplant workers have been being paid just about
the same wages as UAW members, as a way of keeping them out of the union.
But, Nocera is arguing that breaking the union contract will make it
possible to push wages much lower.


Nocera points back to the Chrysler Bailout of 1979 when the Federal
government succeeded in pressuring the United Auto Workers union to accept
concessions.  President Jimmy Carter and the U.S. Congress, working with GM
and the UAW, negotiated the downsizing of the company from almost 100,000 to
just 57,000 jobs.  Black workers were particularly hard hit because so many
Chrysler plants were in Detroit.  The agreement broke the Big Three
contract, leaving Chrysler workers $3.00 an hour behind workers at the other
two.  The Chrysler Bailout is a kind of a model for what the business class
has in mind this time, only now they want to drive the workers much further
back.

The Bailout: Discipline Labor

The Big Three have gone to Washington to ask the government for a bailout to
save the industry.  Ron Gettelfinger, President of the UAW, has gone along
with the CEOs, telling Congress that "Inaction is simply not an option.
Without immediate assistance, we could see -- and I stress could see -- a
collapse of one or more of the domestic auto companies by the end of this
year."3  But he must understand that when automakers talk about saving the
industry they mean exactly what Romney and Nocera call for: plant closings,
wage cuts, and slashing of benefits.

The U.S. government, as the highest political expression of capital's power
in this country, will come to the aid of the auto industry -- meaning aiding
the auto companies to break one of the last strongholds of the old
industrial unionism.  A U.S. government bailout of auto, strictly
conditioned on concessions, will stiffen the backbone of the Big Three and
put a club in their hand so that they can finally and once and for all get
rid of what remains of what was once a powerful union.  To America's rich
and powerful, to save the auto industry means to save its profitability.  It
has nothing to do with saving jobs, workers or their communities.

The Union in Retreat and Challenged

Ron Gettelfinger and other UAW leaders have during the last two decades
overseen the decline of the union.  Summarizing that period, Mark Brenner
and Jane Slaughter wrote in Labor Notes, "In essence, the UAW's deal with
the auto makers was this: do whatever you need to do to boost profits, as
long as you maintain the wages and benefits of (a steadily shrinking number
of) workers at the Big Three.  That 'whatever' included lean production,
outsourcing to nonunion parts plants at home and abroad, the sale of GM's
and Ford's parts divisions in 1999 and 2000 (lopping off 52,000 workers)
and, today, buyouts.  There were 466,000 GM hourly workers in 1978 and in
2006, 112,000."4

While the UAW leadership bargained away the gains of the previous thirty
years, they were opposed at every step by various rank-and-file opposition
groups in the union: Locals Against Concession in the early 1980s, the New
Directions Movement in the mid-1980s and 1990s, and most recently Soldiers
of Solidarity.5  Both the Big Three and the UAW, and sometimes the two
colluding together, opposed the grassroots movements which called for
defending the union and fighting back against the bosses. 

Opposition has become more difficult as the combination of plant closings
and concession contracts tended to divide the UAW Big Three's membership
into three groups: retirees, first tier workers with full wages and
benefits, and second tier workers receiving lower wages and fewer benefits.
Then too there are the divisions between the Big Three workers and the parts
plant employees and also between the unionized U.S. auto companies and the
non-union foreign auto companies operating in the U.S.  Achieving unity
among these workers won't be easy.  Many auto workers today feel that little
can be done to save the industry, the union, or even their contracts and
wages.

Yes history shows that workers' movements -- industrial workers in the
1930s, African American workers in the 1960s, and women workers more
recently --have been at the center of every major progressive movement in
modern society.  Workers do have the power to do something, but only when we
act and when we have a plan.  What's needed at this point are precisely
those two things: First, a plan that saves auto workers' jobs and
communities.  Second, a movement to fight for that plan. 

Frank Hammer, a retired UAW-GM Department International Representative and
past president and chairperson, UAW Local 909 in Warren, Michigan, has
suggested an action plan.  He writes, "This is a defining moment for the
UAW, and the entire labor movement.  25 years ago PATCO was crushed by the
deregulators' champion in the White House, Ronald Reagan.  Today we are
faced with a much larger devastation at the hands of the outgoing George W.
Bush and his Republican friends." 

Hammer calls for an emergency protest.  "The leadership should organize a
car caravan around the headquarters of the Detroit 3 or, with the help of
the AFL-CIO, organize a caravan to Washington, D.C. or even Wall St.
There's no guarantee to what we could achieve, but we should nevertheless
proclaim, 'Not without a fight!'  We are running out of time.  Wouldn't
having UAW members out in the streets be a good way to let everybody know
that we re not dead?"6  Apparently Hammer's suggestion has been picked up by
the media, by car dealerships, and perhaps even by the companies.  Whoever
organizes it, a militant crowd of autoworkers in that parade with its own
demands would be a good idea. 

UAW members need to go to Washington with more than their hands out; they
need to put forward an alternative plan for the industry.  Some longtime UAW
activists have begun to put forward a various ideas which taken together
represent an alternative to the notion that the bailout should be a bludgeon
to be used against workers.  Jerry Tucker, for example, has argued that the
auto crisis demonstrates the necessity and opportunity to create a national
health care program such as Canada has had for some time.7  Retired auto
worker activist Dianne Feeley argues that we could "Convert the excess
plants in the auto parts sector to useful green jobs.  We need to create
solar, wind and geothermal energy.  Axle plants, for example, can be
converted to produce wind turbines, a product not currently made in the
United States."8  These suggestions represent the beginning of a program for
the auto industry that could save workers' jobs and communities.

Obama Says: "Come Back with a Plan"

President-Elect Barack Obama said in his press conference on Nov. 24 that
the auto industry executive should come back to the new Congress and his
administration with a plan.  But shouldn't the UAW and the auto workers --
unions and workers who worked for Obama -- come back with their own plan as
well?  What would be at the center of the auto workers' plan?  I don't think
that's hard to guess: Saving auto workers' jobs and communities.  Rebuilding
America's auto, transportation, and energy industry -- efficient autos,
light rail, high-speed trains, wind turbines.  Making a good job the center
of a good life. 

Shouldn't the American people come back to Congress with their plan too?
And if we did appear in Congress, wouldn't we say, "Yes, of course, you can
use some of my tax money to save these jobs.  But if we put up the money,
then we want ownership in these companies, and a voice, and a vote.  If 'We
the People' put up the money and take ownership of these companies, then we
want a citizens advisory council made up of auto workers -- engineers,
technicians, skilled and unskilled workers -- as well as consumers, and
environmentalists to run the company."

Maybe we all -- as workers and citizens -- should take our plan to
Washington in a big caravan as Hammer suggests.

We Need a Broader Response

Autoworkers surely shouldn't have to do all of this by themselves.  What's
happening to autoworkers today happened to steelworkers a few decades ago,
and even groups as apparently secure as health and hospital workers can
expect to see similar industrial challenges -- and the demand that workers
pay for the problems -- coming in the future.  Auto has gone to Washington
precisely because it faces a problem that can only be solved -- from the
standpoint of the CEOS -- on a broad basis.  The auto industry needs to have
business generally, and the government in particular, to help it to
reorganize the industry.  Similarly auto workers to defend themselves need
to have the support of the labor movement generally.

If the auto companies and the government negotiate a bailout that drives the
UAW and its members back into the past, we will be going back with them.
Everyone's job, everyone's wages, everyone's health care and pension is at
state in this.  We need to begin to fight back and there isn't a moment to
lose.

 

1  Mitt Romney, "Let Detroit Go Bankrupt," The New York Times, Nov. 19,
2008.

2  Joe Nocera, "Road Ahead Is Long for G.M.," The New York Times, Nov. 22,
2008.

3  AP, "UAW Head Says Inaction on Bailout 'Not an Option'," Nov. 20, 2008.

4  Mark Brenner and Jane Slaughter, "End of the Road: If the Auto Industry
Is Dead What Does That Mean for Workers?" Labor Notes, September 2006. 

5  New Directions Movement, <www.uawndm.org/>; Soldiers of Solidarity,
<www.soldiersofsolidarity.com/>.

6  Frank Hammer, "Don't Let Them Destroy Our Union," Center for Labor
Renewal. 

7  Aimee Allison, "Interview with Jerry Tucker, Former UAW Official, on the
US Auto Industry in Crisis," MRZine, Nov. 23, 2008.

8  Dianne Feeley, "Autoworkers Face the Crisis," Solidarity.
<www.solidarity-us.org/autocrisis>.


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