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

[ken hanly <northsunm@xxxxxxxxx>]

 Do you have a link for this article? Some good ideas.

Cheers, k hanly

Blog:  http://kenthink7.blogspot.com/index.html
Blog:  http://kencan7.blogspot.com/index.html


--- On Wed, 11/26/08, Charles Brown <charlesb@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> From: Charles Brown <charlesb@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Subject: [Pen-l] The Auto Crisis: Management, Labor and the Struggle for the Future
> To: pen-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Date: Wednesday, November 26, 2008, 1:44 PM
> 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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