A Living Wage: No Longer on the Auto Industry’s Agenda

Is the decades-old deal between the UAW and the auto makers broken? It sure looks that way.

After the organizing drives of the 1930s and the regulation of labor during World War II, industrial unions and employers wove pattern contracts that agreed to decent wages and benefits in exchange for labor peace. In the era of America’s global dominance, it looked like a win-win solution, even though workers lost control of working conditions.

But global competition led employers to view decent wages as a luxury they could no longer afford. In 1999 and 2000, Ford and GM each spun off their parts plants (Chrysler had done so earlier), creating new companies, Visteon and Delphi.

In 2003, the union essentially signed a corollary to the old deal: the companies could cut wages for new-hires in Visteon and Delphi plants, by $10. The UAW would slowly but surely lose well-paid members and high dues, but it would still represent a good number of workers. Their number would shrink through speedup and technology, but not by sudden union-busting.

Thus the UAW agreed to help the companies downsize, but gradually, by the rules.

But Delphi—and its backer and biggest customer GM—couldn’t wait. They weren’t getting rid of expensive older workers fast enough. They needed low wages now. As of October 8, the deal is over.

NO ACCIDENT

Writing in the shop floor newsletter Live Bait and Ammo, reproduced elsewhere in Labor Notes this month, Delphi worker Gregg Shotwell from Coopersville, Michigan, sums up the anger felt at the company’s moves:

Delphi is not a victim of an unforeseen disaster or free-market catastrophe. GM has been methodically divesting from Delphi for more than a decade. It doesn’t take a hedge fund analyst to see that GM/Delphi’s goal is to destroy the UAW by undermining our foundation.

Bankruptcy was in the cards before the first shuffle. The hand we were dealt wasn’t left to chance.

It wasn’t creditors who forced Delphi into court, it wasn’t debt, it was the desire to renege on obligations to workers.

Do I sound angry? A man with no investment of time, energy, or money in Delphi; a man with no ties to the workplace community; a man who won’t even be around when the dust settles, is stealing my life savings.

BUST THE UNION?

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Some auto workers have been asking for years: Why don’t the Big Three try to bust the UAW? The union’s weakness, the unwillingness of its leaders to inspire and rally the troops, have been evident for 20 years.

The only answer seemed to be (1) The union played a role in keeping workers in line, by enforcing attendance programs, for example. (2) Management knew that the union still held great potential power, if members and leaders cared to use it. Workers called this potential “the sleeping giant.”

Another UAW employer, Caterpillar, walked up to the brink of union-busting when it hired scabs during two strikes in the 1990s, thus breaking the gentlemen’s agreement on orderly strikes. Big Three execs flew to Peoria to learn how to do it. But the UAW still has (increasingly lousy) contracts at Caterpillar.

Now Miller, certainly with GM’s backing, is pointing the way to an auto industry that is union-free, in effect if not in name.

There is only one decent response to these millionaires’ proposal to steal workers’ livelihoods and pensions: a strike that shuts down the industry nationwide, paid for with the UAW’s enormous strike fund. The Big Three have been losing market share to other companies for years and can’t afford not to have cars to sell.

SHUT IT DOWN

It’s even legal: UAW contracts contain language allowing the union to strike during the term of the contract over heath and safety, production standards (speedup), and some contracting out. There is no auto assembly or parts plant in this country that does not suffer multiple violations.

In fact, at a meeting of GM and Delphi locals in August, a UAW VP told the delegates to “have strikeable grievances on the table” and “be prepared to stop production if we call you.”

Such a call is unlikely to come. Thus far the union’s only communication to members has been about the law firm it’s hired for bankruptcy court.

Is it still possible for the sleeping giant to rouse? After Miller and his ilk are through with them, the giant of auto worker power will be a dwarf.

Delphi workers, GM workers, and their sisters and brothers throughout the industry need to decide—and soon—whether a Wal-Mart-wage job is worth keeping their heads down for.

They will need to use all the channels available to them, from their Internet networks to union meetings to shop floor discussions, to organize pressure on their elected officials to lead them in a united strategy.