Labor Notes - The CAW Turn: Bargaining vs Building

What are we to make of the past round of bargaining between the Canadian Auto Workers (CAW) and the Big Three (GM, Ford, and DaimlerChrysler)? While Telus, Stelco, and CBC workers were in the midst of bitter struggles, the reputedly difficult auto talks were in the end remarkably amiable. The question on many labor activists’ minds was: What happened to the CAW’s role in challenging the rest of the labor movement to push further, its status in opposing corporate-inspired globalization, its reputation for practicing social movement unionism?

The CAW achieved significant pension increases at a time when others were worried about hanging on to their pensions; it got a wage increase for its members guaranteeing over a dollar an hour over three years (which will most likely be more than doubled when the union’s cost of living clause is factored in); and though there were caps placed on a few benefits, the CAW’s rich benefits package remained intact. Moreover, the agreement received high ratification votes.

LOWERING EXPECTATIONS

But the vote, however, also reflected the union’s conscious lowering of expectations going into bargaining and it was this, along with the implicit lessons the union seemed to convey in this round of bargaining, that was so troubling.

Collective bargaining is a moment of concentrated attention on what the union is about. The strategic issue beyond any gains themselves, especially in tough times, is how to strengthen the union and increase future options. That is, how to build the understanding, confidence, and capacities of the members and how to inspire a broader labor movement.

It is on this score, the educational and mobilizing dimension of the agreement, that the outcome and process seemed a step backwards. Bargaining, it seemed, had lost any sense of vision and been reduced to a technical game of tactical manoeuvring amongst a few individuals.

Why, given the obvious importance of organizing (less than half the Canadian auto parts sector is now unionized) did the union not build on what it had earlier achieved in Big Three bargaining and strengthen limits on the ability of the Big Three’s suppliers to engage in anti-union campaigns? Why, given the past breakthrough on outsourcing--which was a catalyst for other Canadian union members fighting job erosion--was such language not further strengthened? Why did the union continue to essentially give the companies the green light to push workers harder in the work place, when it is in the workplace that workers primarily learn that fighting back matters and form their attitudes to collective action?

WORK-TIME FORGOTTEN

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Why, when the union had placed work-time on the agenda in every round of bargaining since its formation in 1985, did it set that goal aside? At this time of rising productivity and concern over jobs, focusing on work-time would have been both solidaristic (sharing this work) and crucial to emphasizing that workers are more than ‘just workers,’ but have family lives, other potentials to explore, and can only participate in the community if they regain some of their own time.

Negotiators might merely have insisted that all Big Three workers actually take the vacation time they’ve achieved (as is the practice at Ford, but not GM and Daimler), rather than work through their vacations. Or they could have pushed for GM in particular to actually convert SPA (scheduled paid absence) into new jobs, rather than just increase speed-up and overtime. (SPA: Every week, a certain portion of the workforce has a paid week off and the intent is that they be replaced by adding workers).

We need, in this context, to remind ourselves of the circumstances behind the breakaway of the Canadian section of the UAW 20 years ago. The economic and political elite in both the U.S. and Canada had determined that they had given workers too much; they launched a revolution against past gains and though they did not immediately land any knockout punches, they did over time lower working class expectations and capacities.

The labor movement never saw this polarization with the same clarity that the corporate sector did. Our side – in spite of some resistance--reacted like a deer frozen in the headlights. It stood in disbelief then moved on basically as before without grasping the scale of the changes emerging. The Canadian section of the UAW was among the few exceptions to this and its resistance went so far as to breakaway from its American parent. The split from the American parent reflected a difference in how to respond to the increased corporate aggressiveness. The Canadians stubbornly insisted that unions could only survive as relevant entities if they continued to fight the companies and extended their struggle beyond the economic sphere (the new Canadian union was, for example, soon a leading force in building an almost-successful coalition against free trade).

Yet as the 20th anniversary of the CAW union approached and the CAW went into its latest round of bargaining, the union argued that it had no alternative but to call for major subsidies to the auto assemblers--even as Canada’s share of vehicles assembled remained twice its share of the market. In the just-completed bargaining round, the union highlighted the settlement’s moderation and fatalistically accepted more job losses (even after the massive subsidies to GM and Ford).

Absent a credible alternative strategy, union leaders tend to think only within the constraints of the current economic system and members, not surprisingly, lower their expectations and turn to survival mode. Speed-up is tolerated; consumption maintained through more family members working longer hours and increased debt; tax breaks tend to be welcomed as substitutes for wage increases; mutual funds are investigated to make up for pension insecurity. In the long run, solidarity gives way to a working class that is even more fragmented, and individual workers who increasingly see themselves as isolated and powerless.

That alternative begins with recognizing that if we do not develop a vision independent of the corporations, and do not mobilize the membership and build the capacities and wider solidarity to challenge what is happening to workers, our options will only get narrower and narrower.