[progchat_action] UAW Rank-and-File Organize to Fight For Union Principles
Steven Robinson
by Ron Solidarity Webzine December 29, 2009
For decades United Auto Workers (UAW) members at the Detroit Three
- GM, Ford and Chrysler - were alleged to be narrowing their goals.
Workers were said to be maintaining their living standards by
'selling out their children' - the new-hires in the plants. Votes
on ratification of contracts backed by the UAW leadership were too
'rigged' so as to permit a 'No' vote. Decades of retreat under an
increasingly isolated - even degenerating - leadership mocked basic
union, and certainly socialist, standards.
These were just a few of the several arguments that were being made
by many people inside and outside of the UAW on why the concessions
contract being proposed by Ford to UAW members in October 2009 would
soon be ratified. A parallel vote, on a different concessions
contract for Canadian Auto Workers (CAW) members at Ford in Canada,
was also being held virtually at the same time.
But if an acceptance vote for the contract was so predictable and
the workers would just sheepishly go along with further concessions
demands, one might wonder why radicals and socialists would organize
among auto workers, even if the auto sector remains a key industry.
This short article tells the story of the UAW Ford workers' fightback
against further concessions bargaining and how, in fact, the
concessions contract was rejected. The Auto Companies Push for
Concessions
The financial crisis that erupted across the North American economy
in mid-2007 revealed a range of management, organizational and
financial problems of the auto companies. Like in the past, they
came hunting for concessions from the UAW as the easy way to solve
their troubles. The March 2009 Ford concessions and subsequent
ratification vote seemed mainly to herald more of the same. The
government-mandated 'bankruptcy contracts' at GM and Chrysler signed
during the summer added to the vicious circle of concessions
bargaining. They appeared to make even more Ford concessions
inevitable: how could Ford workers afford to risk breaking from the
concessions pattern?
As expected, in October of this year enormous pressure came from
the company and the government for concessions, and the UAW leadership
agreed to follow the pattern of the other concessions - a pattern
being set in Detroit Three plants in the U.S. and Canada. Ford
workers in both Canada and the U.S. were threatened with further
job loss if they did not vote for more concessions.
Yet, by an almost 3-1 margin UAW members at Ford voted 'No' - at
some key plants by over 90%. Making History
This vote was historic: it was the first time in the United States
that a UAW-Detroit Three agreement had been voted down nationally.
It was also historic on the Canadian side of the border: CAW workers
at Ford accepted concessions, after enormous pressure from the CAW
leadership, while UAW members rejected the contract. UAW-Ford members
voted:
1. to refuse to give up the right to strike over wages in 2011 (and
possibly more broadly);
2. to refuse to freeze new-hire pay (already cut in half in 2007,
below average non-union industrial pay); and 3. to stop eliminations
of skilled trades.
These issues go beyond immediate dollars and cents and speak to
union and class principles. The right to strike was the leading
reason for voting 'No.' Current Ford workers halted for now the
downward march of future workers' wages. Protecting classifications
was in trades' workers immediate interest - but production workers
supported them, and this was about control of the shop floor much
more than wages.
Starting from Local 600's Dearborn truck plant (part of the Rouge
River complex), bargaining committeeperson Gary Walkowicz's
anti-concessions leadership expanded nationally. Truck plant workers
shouted down UAW-Ford Vice President Bob King when he came to argue
for a 'Yes' vote. Plant president Nick Kottalis and some other
officers also opposed the contract. The truck plant voted 93% 'No.'
Across all of UAW-Ford, dozens of rank and file workers wrote
independent leaflets calling for a 'No' vote. During the balloting
period, the Kansas City plant's early, huge 'No' vote convinced
other locals that the agreement could be defeated. Soon after
national voting ended, that local voted to authorize a strike against
overloaded jobs and health and safety violations. Such a vote is
not uncommon in Kansas City, and the issues were settled without a
strike.
However, nation-wide 'Strike Vote' headlines reminded everyone that
the UAW still has teeth that the rank and file could use to bite
the company.
There were, however, some backward sentiments among 'No' voters:
'We' and 'our company' are superior to GM and Chrysler and 'their'
workers. Some others saw the vote mainly as nationalist resistance
to low-wages abroad. But overwhelmingly workers were fighting for
progressive principles. UAW officials argued that since Ford workers
have not struck nationally since 1976, the right-to-strike effectively
no longer means anything. Workers replied: 'If the right to strike
doesn't mean anything, then why does Ford want to take it away? We
know it's how we got what we have.' The trigger for the 'No' vote
was Ford's demanding concessions once too often. But the ammunition
was a consciousness broader and deeper amongst workers than almost
anyone expected.
Principles in Reverse Gear
Even the Ford and UAW leaderships acknowledged that the fight was
over principles. Officially distributed - but unsigned - leaflets
argued that Ford workers must unselfishly vote 'Yes' to save our
co-workers' jobs. This argument flopped because decades of 'job
security contracts' have not worked.
Since 1979 overall UAW membership has dropped by over two-thirds.
UAW-Detroit Three membership loss is worse. Only a union fighting
for its members and for workers as a whole can organize the 'foreign'
auto transplants and attract new members.
Even stranger was another UAW leadership 'principled' argument -
the bizarre 'defense of pattern bargaining' (an argument successfully
deployed by CAW for Ford workers in Canada). GM and Chrysler workers
were forced to take concessions by the companies, the Obama
Administration and the bankruptcy overseers. Therefore, Ford workers
had to catch up - in the race to the bottom! If your neighbors'
house is on fire, then you should not help put out their fire, but
put a match to your own house?
Years ago UAW officials argued that they bargain with GM over wages
and with Ford to establish principles. This time Ford proposed
'principles' of its own.
Freezing new hire pay would save Ford little short-term with few
new hires likely. But a freeze would move toward cutting all wages
in half over time.
And eliminating the trades classifications is more about power on
the shop floor than immediate wage rates. As for the right to strike,
Ford did not look so much for immediate economic gain as for
destruction of the UAW's political as well as economic power. This
point was made by a leaflet signed by workers from several different
Local 600 production and skilled units:
"The strike threat defends our money, benefits, rights - and UAW
political clout... Power in Washington starts with our power right
here (for true national health insurance, converting closed plants
to greener jobs and alternative transportation for auto and other
workers, and defending the gains of civil rights movements, etc.)."
Workers came to see themselves in a power struggle beyond tomorrow's
wages or abstract words on a page. An article I wrote in October
concluded:
"For activists at Ford, the way forward is upward but not yet
entirely clear in its details. The vote was notably dependent on a
'No' or neutral position taken by shop floor officers who had
supported all the concessions up to now.
Some of these officers concluded during the campaign that they could
not be re-elected if they supported the latest concessions at a
company returning to profitability. What will those who followed
the rank and file yesterday do tomorrow? Such questions will be
prominent until union officers have to side more consistently with
a rebellious rank and file. The 2010 UAW Convention delegate and
other local elections, as well as the 2011 contract, are good
opportunities. The UAW Convention next year is in Detroit."
One Local 600 trades worker suggested forming a movement called
'UAW Members for a Decent Contract.' UAW-CAW Rank and File Unity?
For me - a 30-year UAW-Ford retiree and former Local 600 executive
board member - the CAW bargaining experience at Ford was the source
of both new lows and new highs.
Ford first wanted to secure a CAW agreement to pressure the UAW.
But Ford reversed course, tentatively making an agreement first in
the United States.
Ford-U.S. and Solidarity House couldn't get that agreement past the
UAW membership. But then CAW at Ford voted 83% 'Yes' for their own
concessions contract!
UAW members' links with CAW members were important for the future
regardless of outcomes for either union. Of particular inspiration
to me was solidarity developed between CAW activist Lindsay Hinshelwood
of the Oakville, Ontario assembly plant and Judy Wraight, a maintenance
worker at the Ford Rouge Plant near Detroit. The contacts established
and commitments made will contribute to overcoming the destructive
competition between workers in the two countries and will mutually
strengthen each going into the upcoming battles.
But why the big difference between CAW and UAW voting on concessions?
Some socialist activists in the auto sector in Canada offered
reasons. Since the CAW-UAW divorce in 1984-85, Canadian workers
have not had as long a history of concessions. Some CAW members are
only starting to see that the political energies from the CAW-UAW
split have been exhausted. Now both unions are bidding for last
place to ensure competitiveness and jobs. On this basis, the CAW
now uses cruder arguments for concessions. Some of these worked
this time.
Here's an example of a current CAW tactic that did not work in the
UAW this time because it was used so often before. A CAW official
at the Oakville, Ontario plant ratification meeting tried to shout
down Lindsay Hinshelwood while she was speaking. He claimed: 'There
are seven or eight Ford plants closing in the US!' Voting 'Yes',
he meant, would stop the plant-closing virus from crossing the
Detroit River into Canada. But he could only have meant Ford-U.S.
plants already closed for some years - or perhaps the St. Paul plant
that has 'been closing' since 2005 yet keeps making Ranger trucks
year after year. And whatever might have saved those U.S. plants
already closed, it obviously wasn't the concessions that UAW members
kept voting for - until now - in the hope of keeping them open.
Having developed some cooperation against concessions, the rank and
file memberships of the UAW and CAW are ahead of their leaderships.
Signed by workers on both sides of the border during the 'Vote No'
campaigns, the petition below was - and is - a fledgling attempt
at cross-border solidarity.
It reads: "Stop international concessions! We are active and retired
Ford workers. We oppose any union concessions or give-backs to Ford.
We urge our fellow union members, including our union representatives,
in all unions, across all borders, to speak, write and vote against
concessions."
It is worded so that any Ford worker around the world could sign
it. We need to continue the struggle that has just begun with the
'No' vote by UAW Ford workers.
This article was written for and appeared first in The Bullet, a
Socialist Project e-bulletin in Canada
Ron Lare is a member of UAW Local 600, retired, and he can be reached
at ronlare_AT_sbcglobal.net.
http://www.solidarity-us.org/current/node/2624
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