Labor's painful dilemma
Bensman, David
Employment TO GIVE BACK OR NOT TO GIVE BACK Labor's painful dilemma DAVID BENSMAN IT IS THE AFTERNOON of January 23, 1982, several hours before the first round of talks between the United Auto...
...When the roll was finally called, forty-three percent of the delegates voted "no...
...In Clark, New Jersey, after the local repeatedly denied GM's demands to water down unusually strong work rules, the company announced plans to close the plant then sold it to a union-sponsored Employee Stock Option Plan...
...The Teamsters took no action...
...But the union paid a price for its centralized structure...
...We proposed that the United Steelworkers of America bargain with employers to impose a royalty on each ton of steel...
...Their votes showed that opposition to concessions was deep and widespread...
...and mine-mouth coal gasifiers...
...Somebody is going to make equipment for the energy industry, why not American autoworkers...
...The "Japanese" model is attractive at a time when the auto companies are so firmly in the saddle, and union busters dominate the federal government, but it does not appear to be a viable option...
...Up the stairs are local leaders' offices, and a meeting hall lined with barbells and exercise bikes...
...These are serious problems, but they are distinct from the giveback phenomenon...
...UNION "givebacks" are not new...
...But if the Japanese model is rejected, and the troops are mobilized, where will they march...
...The next day, when the GM Bargaining Council met to hear reports on the negotiations, LOC pressed for a roll-call vote on continuing the discussions...
...Although it is hard to believe, the UAW leadership never campaigned to convince GM employees that temporary concessions were necessary...
...And when they don't go to union meetings, it's hard to mobilize them in political campaigns...
...not only did GM lay off indefinitely 1200 of Linden's 6000 production workers in November, it also closed the plant for a week after Christmas...
...The news that Chrysler and the American Bridge division of U.S...
...The Linden plant, which produces large Buicks and Cadillacs, has suffered fewer layoffs than have plants producing compacts...
...Nothing has happened at Brian Mitchell's plant in Danville...
...They are policy choices made by the Reagan and Carter administrations to fight inflation...
...On January 28, the company withdrew its proposals on outsourcing...
...The roll-call forced local leaders to declare themselves publicly...
...Meanwhile, givebacks develop their own momentum...
...Now the union faces another test...
...Last August, United Airlines signed a contract with the Airline Pilots Association that traded work rules for job security...
...It trades $1 billion worth of concessions over a thirty-one month period for protections that will probably help workers less in the short run than in the future...
...And after several Uniroyal locals were forced to make similar givebacks, the United Rubber Workers union agreed in January 1982 to give Uniroyal $54.9 million in concessions from the contract that will be negotiated with the big tire companies this spring...
...The next day, leaders of the Independent Skilled Trades Council (ISTC) organized Locals Opposed to Concessions to combat the Fraser proposal...
...In Rational Reindustrialization (obtainable from "Widgetripper," 19660 Stratford, Detroit, MI 48221) Dan Luria and Jack Russell propose the creation of an investment pool in the auto industry to fund the conversion of Detroit-area plants into factories producing equipment for the energy industry...
...Not only does it leave unspecified the kinds of investments the funds might make, but it also does not speak immediately and directly to the needs of any powerful institutions...
...has imposed a local content bill on imports for years...
...And wherever the leadership ventured, the secondary leadership could be found, bringing the members along...
...We'd be digging our own graves...
...The United States desperately needs new railroad beds and cars, mass transit equipment, and millions of new housing units...
...And for a good reason...
...The union is too weak," he adds...
...Unions would join managers in planning production, improving productivity and product quality, and sharing profits...
...One is that it could provide jobs for former autoworkers in plants that could be organized by the UAW...
...Detroit, of course, would rather have the comfortable protections of tariffs, or a quota...
...To accomplish this, unions would have to give up the highly centralized structure that was appropriate for the company-union symbiosis of the 1950s and 1960s for a new kind of organizational structure based on informed members and on locals actively involved in the governance of their plants...
...In 1978, when they made $3 billion, they didn't call us in and ask us to take some of their extra profits, did they...
...Marty is angry at the inequity of concessions...
...The company's call for relief "is a bunch of crap," said Linden worker Marty Gall...
...Workers in Dearborn, Michigan weren't so fortunate...
...First, although GM has laid off 150,000 UAW workers indefinitely, not all locals have been hit equally...
...The troops aren't ready to fight...
...The opposition campaign paid off...
...The local was rewarded with a billion dollar job building automatic transmissions for front-wheel drive cars...
...Nor was it important whether or not GM's prices or the UAW's wages were too high...
...This would pave the way for the UAW to adopt the "Japanese" model at GM as it has at Ford and Chrysler...
...So how can they ask for help now?'' Eddy wonders if the whole thing is a scam engineered by union leaders fearful of taking a pay cut during the upcoming strike...
...The Teamsters were hurting...
...The International Association of Machinists and the American Federation of Government Employees launched a program modeled on the Canadian Labor Congress's successful canvassing effort, to educate members and increase their political participation...
...How can Eddy Duarte, who's been in the shop for twenty-eight years, feel sorry for GM...
...market...
...The agreement also cut pensions and the wages paid to drivers hired in the future...
...The proud construction unions are reeling from the onslaught of nonunion contractors bidding for industrial and utility projects that once were the unions' domain...
...For forty years, they've treated us like children," charges Doug Stevens, Local 595's education director...
...We were short-handed, some bastard in supervision didn't pass the message on...
...Unexpected opposition surfaced at the regional meetings in December...
...Besides, Carl thinks, "Concessions are destructive to us...
...President Brian Mitchell explains that local members who are still working don't believe there is an emergency...
...THE FIRST OPTION, the "Japanese" model, is currently receiving widespread attention...
...Although the plan makes perfect sense, it's abstract...
...In the last few years the automakers have committed themselves to foreign suppliers, and domestic parts suppliers have failed to modernize their American plants, while increasing their investment overseas...
...All the unionists' sacrifices would be matched by GM's salaried employees, while reductions in supervisory ranks would reflect recent layoffs of production workers...
...The idea of giving something to GM, when you can't even go to the bathroom when you want to, makes unionists see red...
...As it was, his vote merely to continue talks provoked a storm of protest back home...
...United's success led the way not only for six other airlines but for the trucking industry...
...For the UAW leadership, the issue was tactical...
...Carl thinks the plant was shut down to soften the members up for the vote on concessions...
...UAW President Douglas Fraser took a gamble when he proposed reopening the General Motors and Ford contracts on December 14, 1981...
...IN THE MEANTIME, Reagan is in the White House, and pressures for concessions are real...
...Nevertheless, Carl hopes there will be an agreement...
...Fraser envisioned a temporary agreement that would protect his members' jobs at GM for eighteen months...
...When a union's major decisions are made in International headquarters, members tend not to go to local meetings very often...
...You have a scheduled number of breaks...
...Reopening the contract was a way to buy time until the depression lifted...
...A month after the pilots signed with United, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters reopened its contract three months early...
...The result could be a disastrous strike, or a destructive fight within the union, but a new determination to challenge corporate priorities could also emerge...
...Local 595 headquarters are on Route 1, down the road from GM's mammoth assembly plant, in the midst of New Jersey's industrial heartland...
...If GM employees were not ready to approve givebacks, why did President Fraser take his gamble...
...Solidarity Day 1982 is devoted to the congressional elections and the new AFL-CIO Public Affairs department is exploring ways labor can get its message across...
...Recently the UAW leadership unveiled a proposal to stem the hemorrhaging of the auto industry...
...If they put in robots, you lose jobs...
...Royalties would go into a union- and community-controlled investment fund to provide capital for the reindustrialization of communities where mill jobs were disappearing...
...The agreement specified that pilots be paid flat monthly salaries instead of hourly rates, and it raised the ceilings on flying hours...
...When Stanodyne went to the UAW local with the bad news, the union agreed to forego six COLA payments...
...Car dealers would have to reorder one car for every car they sold...
...When the three electrical workers' unions bargain with GE and Westinghouse this spring, the companies will point to concessions at Ford, Uniroyal, and the trucking industry, just as unions used to point to large settlements in other industries to justify their demands...
...The UAW leadership underestimated the opposition...
...And the UAW leadership will not be able to guarantee peaceful labor relations...
...manufactures valves in Spain for autos built in West Germany for sale in the States...
...They can cooperate with employers on a much closer basis than they have ever done before or they can begin to mobilize their members to challenge corporate priorities...
...but he's afraid GM might force one...
...Meanwhile, Dan Luria of the UAW Research Department believes there is no way the union can prevent new technology from reducing employment levels...
...Despite the prejudices encountered in America by anything with the word "socialist" in its title, DSOC commands a good deal of respect in many parts of the labor movement...
...they've also spread to the building trades...
...Brian Mitchell fears that those who led the fight against concessions, like Doug Stevens of Linden, could be voted out of office if things go badly...
...Concessions can be extracted only in industries that are being devastated rapidly by such forces as high interest rates (agricultural implements, auto and auto supplies, construction, and retailing) or by government deregulation (in airlines and trucking...
...But this could change...
...Carl doesn't believe the company did this to run down inventory, for the big Buicks and Cadillacs produced in Linden are selling...
...This might not be such a bad thing, but it means that American industry will not support the legislation...
...Altogether, the auto and auto supply industries could lose a million jobs in the next decade...
...This would be verified by accountants selected by the UAW...
...And Carl doesn't believe GM needs concessions...
...Sometimes no one comes...
...The Danville, Illinois foundry, vulnerable because of its strong local contract, voted eighty-one percent against reopening that contract in the face of a GM warning that one of its central foundries would be shut...
...No one wants to bear bad tidings," Gardner suggests...
...At a meeting in Washington on January 22, 250 angry LOC members developed strategy for fighting concessions...
...The main points of the agreement were to be: • Closing plants and "outsourcing" - buying parts overseas or from other companies - would be restricted during the agreement...
...In rubber, the industry's contraction and competition led by France's fiercely anti-union Michelin have put union locals under severe pressure...
...Nevertheless, the bill faces uncertain prospects...
...the electrical appliance industry is not auto...
...that Eaton, Yale, and Towne had offered to supply parts for less than Stanodyne was charging...
...The workers' anger, frustration, and humiliation make them look at the giveback issue as a matter of equity, not tactics...
...The UAW local at Bellwood, Illinois was whip-sawed when Ford informed the Stanodyne Corp...
...Adding in reductions in white collar pay and the dealers' take increases that figure to $450...
...or it can tell members to work without a contract, in which case General Motors could cut wages and impose harsh penalties on the union...
...The sectoral crises that gave rise to demands for concessions stem from government policies...
...For thirty-five years the International leadership had ruled the union completely and democratically...
...How do unions respond to corporate demands for givebacks...
...At the bar, Carl Bradshaw, a young union activist, is reflecting on the GM Bargaining Council's narrow vote to continue negotiations with General Motors...
...Rational Reindustrialization recognizes that need, but focuses on the energy industry for the sensible reason that public policy now discourages production of railroad and mass transit equipment and high interest rates preclude the construction of new housing, while energy development is subsidized...
...As the-September 14 expiration date for the UAW's contract with General Motors approaches, the union will face a terrible choice: it can make substantial concessions to GM...
...But before the temporary agreement expired, all benefits and wages would return to the level they would have reached had there been no contract reopening...
...that is why the GM pact was defeated...
...large coal- and diesel fuel-fired industrial process engines...
...We would have to eat more shit in September...
...The current giveback phenomenon surfaced in 1979, when American industrial production began to slump...
...Workers would probably receive lower wages than they've been used to, but they'd gain greater security...
...To help them out...
...Carl isn't sure that there will be a strike...
...it can launch an unwinnable strike...
...And the AFL-CIO has broken new ground by organizing labor activity in the 1982 primaries...
...He tells you to wait until a relief man is available...
...What happens when a plant refuses to grant concessions...
...Assuming the UAW does emerge from its painful dilemma in fighting shape, it will need an industrial policy it can counterpose to the plans of Ford, GM, and President Reagan...
...The other day, I talked to one guy who said he wasn't sure if wages would really be lower if GM was non-union...
...nevertheless, our proposal hit the earth with a thud...
...David F. Cole, of the University of Michigan, estimates that domestic producers will obtain 25 percent of their parts overseas by 1985, 35-37 percent by 1990...
...Corporations are fleeing unionized areas for low wage havens in the Sunbelt and overseas...
...These include restrictions on plant closing and outsourcing, guaranteed income for senior employees, and profit sharing...
...But negotiators for the electrical workers won't be taken in by this ploy: GE and Westinghouse are not Ford or Chrysler...
...Carl had just attended the national council meeting of the Community Action Program (CAP), where the leadership outlined plans to lobby Congress for a law requiring automakers who sell cars in the United States to manufacture or buy their parts here as well...
...But questions remain...
...Business Week predicts the unions will get "average wage and benefit gains...
...Fraser is great with the men, but I don't see how he can get the talks opened," confided one International representative who's been with the union for thirty-five years...
...We had a case where a girl called her mother five times to tell her that her grandmother, who's a diabetic, had passed out...
...Employment TO GIVE BACK OR NOT TO GIVE BACK Labor's painful dilemma DAVID BENSMAN IT IS THE AFTERNOON of January 23, 1982, several hours before the first round of talks between the United Auto Workers and General Motors break off...
...Why believe GM now...
...If a local content bill were to pass, Japanese parts manufacturers would invest here and capture the U.S...
...The local content bill has drawn support from an unlikely coalition composed of congressmen in auto-producing states, the Independent Skilled Trades Council, and Business Week, which editorialized on April 13, 1981: "Practically every industrial nation in the world - except the U.S...
...And once he declared concessions to be essential, why couldn't he get his troops to follow...
...Among those who voted "yes" were leaders whose locals had taken strong stands against concessions...
...Steel had extracted pay cuts from the UAW and Steelworkers was troubling...
...Are there alternatives to concessions...
...In exchange for these concessions, United agreed not to lay off any pilots beyond the 750 already discharged, nor to set up a low-wage subsidiary...
...That story remains to be written...
...Eaton's bid became possible when the Allied Industrial Workers' union local in Saginaw, Michigan had agreed to give up seven cost-of-living (COLA) payments...
...Of course, auto plants could be converted to other uses...
...Workers in the auto parts supply industry are even more vulnerable...
...The UAW's highly centralized but democratic structure worked when the union's task was to enable members to share their employers' prosperity...
...Instead, on January 14, 1982, they signed a contract freezing wages, reducing cost-of-living increases, and changing work rules so as to make long-distance drivers responsible for delivering shipments to customers, rather than to city transfer points, for final delivery by other drivers...
...High interest rates and deregulation are not acts of God, nor structural tendencies of late capitalism, and they are certainly not immutable...
...It had pioneered on such bargaining issues as long-term contracts, health insurance, and supplemental unemployment benefits...
...But a local content requirement could help the U.S...
...Some carriers were refusing to pay cost-of-living increases, while twenty-seven major freight companies had imposed fifteen percent wage reductions...
...The International leadership is out of touch with the rank-and-file.'' When I ask Carl how this came about, he answers, "The International union has not fostered, and it has not allowed, the type of secondary leadership you'd need to conduct a long strike against GM under the current conditions...
...What happened in Washington was extraordinary...
...Luria and Russell's plan has a number of attractive features...
...The local's radical leaders soon found themselves selling thirty percent wage cuts and work rules GM could never have put through...
...Forty-three percent of the delegates voted to break off the talks...
...ISTC had always been marginal, but not on this issue: LOC signed up a large group of sponsors and hired a laid-off GM employee to coordinate the opposition...
...The UAW's local content bill, whatever its prospects for passage, points in a direction opposite from the "Japanese" model...
...In the normal course of labor-management relations, that argument makes sense...
...Unions can only challenge corporate plans to invest overseas by mobilizing their memberships to confront the corporations in the political arena...
...Another study meets both objections...
...Whether or not it was the International representatives or the local presidents who misread rank-and-file sentiment, the UAW's organizational structure proved incapable of carrying through this new operation...
...One hundred twenty thousand union drivers were out of work...
...Their local content bill, officially known as the "Fair Practices in Automotive Products Act," HR 5133, requires automakers to produce their cars here or buy components from domestic companies...
...Givebacks are not confined to the declining manufacturing sector...
...Ford closed down four plants in 1980-81, while GM closed none...
...The UAW's recent CAP Council meeting devoted a whole day to informing local leaders about the need for local content legislation...
...it does not in the winter of 1982...
...The union could not secure a decent contract under those circumstances...
...The talks were dead...
...Opposition to givebacks was not limited to "safe" plants, however...
...The steel division of Ford's River Rouge plant (Local 600) granted concessions after Ford warned that layoffs were coming - and the layoffs came anyway...
...But on January 23 the troops did not follow...
...Thus, at Livonia, Michigan, Local 182 voted 1878 to 181 to give the company more discretion in scheduling overtime and vacations and gave Ford permission to use outside contractors for maintenance work...
...That structure enabled the UAW to gain uniform contracts...
...Whether or not GM "needed" or "deserved" concessions was irrelevant...
...In other sectors, the gradual decline of American industry is producing a steadily decreasing standard of living, job losses, and sporadic plant closings...
...Foreign competition makes it impossible for American corporations to pass on labor costs automatically to consumers...
...UAW spokesmen explain that the union has to bargain with the company, not plead its case...
...A source at Solidarity House believes that local presidents were afraid to tell the International how strong membership opposition was because they didn't want to admit they couldn't deliver their votes...
...At the Washington meeting of the UAW's Bargaining Council, dissident unionists obtained a roll-call vote on whether to continue the talks with GM...
...Current versions of the bill would establish a sliding scale mandating that a company selling more than 100,000 vehicles in the United States "produce or buy domestic production worth 25 percent of its automotive sales here," while for companies selling 500,000 cars the proportion would rise to 90 percent...
...many who wanted to support President Fraser were reluctant to go on record in favor of continuing the talks when their locals had already voted against reopening the contract...
...If a new administration reversed these policies, the special agony of the UAW, IBT, and building trades unions would cease, although we would still face the challenge of reversing the steep decline of American industry...
...The UAW achieved impressive gains in the 1950s and 60s, but now faces new challenges...
...Therefore Linden workers don't feel the same pressure...
...Among those who voted "no" were officials belonging to the leadership team...
...Unions now have a choice...
...Owen Bieber, the head of the GM Department, tried to avoid a recorded vote, but his efforts incensed the local leaders...
...If you slow its introduction at GM or Ford, they lose their market share...
...Carl is caught in a painful dilemma, a dilemma shared by hundreds of thousands of trade unionists...
...In addition, the union agreed to fly 737's with two pilots instead of three...
...Ford workers approved concessions because the industry's crisis had touched them more directly...
...it turned a $700 million loss in 1980 to a $300 million profit in 1981...
...economy without touching off a trade war...
...it allowed it to preserve the stable labor relations that corporations demanded...
...Take breaks...
...While the weakened unions try to adapt to an economy far different from the one which spawned them and gave them shape, corporate pressure to make concessions spreads through American industry like a cancer...
...Al Gardner, president of the Tool and Die Unit of Ford's River Rouge plant, and a leader of the Independent Skilled Trades Council, suggests that when Detroit sent out its International representatives to take a reading on rank-and-file sentiment, they reported what their superiors wanted to hear...
...President Fraser went out on a limb to improve the union's bargaining position, then declined to wage the kind of campaign necessary to keep the limb from being sawed off...
...This package would have reduced GM's labor costs by $240 per car...
...But Fraser believed failure to act was unthinkable...
...afterward, auto sales had slowed to a trickle...
...We've been lied to for thirty years," they say...
...Why this happened illustrates how the giveback phenomenon poses new and crucial challenges for the labor movement...
...How can Roger Smith, with his $750,000 salary call on hourly employees like Marty to tighten their belts...
...During a strike, GM could sell off its inventory while union members walked the picket line...
...The leadership of Walter Reuther and his successors had taken the UAW into and out of and back into the AFL-CIO, had persuaded a conservative membership to back a social democratic political program, and had combated George Wallace...
...Furthermore, in an effort to bring its work rules in line with GM's, Ford has been pressuring locals for work-rule concessions...
...They must find ways to cope not only with the current recession but with the long-term decline in American manufacturing as well...
...Today, one of those unions is experiencing the cruel logic of corporate America's abandonment' of American workers and communities...
...During the month that followed, while President Fra,ser visited Australia, International staffers and representatives trying to round up support met stiff resistance...
...If the UAW, joined by other unions in a revitalized labor movement, pushed for an industrial program targeting investment in these sectors, and convinced some significant group within the Democratic party to put that policy on the national agenda, the troops would have somewhere to march...
...the president of the Flint local, for example, supported extending negotiations but it is doubtful that he would have voted for substantial givebacks...
...GM could save on wages, benefits, and overhead costs, while auto workers would lose more than $5 billion in a 41/2 month strike...
...There are signs that the labor movement recognizes the need for greater participation...
...Four years ago, Luther Carpenter and I published in Democratic Left, the monthly publication of the Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee (DSOC), a proposal to provide jobs for steel workers displaced by technological change...
...GM never agreed to this proposal, and there is no way to tell if it ever would have accepted such modest reductions in labor costs...
...Both workers and the union would benefit directly...
...The leaders of Local 595 in Linden enlisted the aid of radical economists at the Institute for Labor Education and Research to develop the case against concessions, and invited unionists throughout the country to come to New Jersey to discuss the issue before it came to a vote...
...Seen in the context of changing patterns of corporate behavior, the UAW's travails are the pains of transition...
...Furthermore, the proposal targets an expanding industrial sector...
...This is not surprising...
...And the political parties have been opened up for sale to the highest bidder...
...President Fraser's plan ran into immediate trouble...
...But in Sheffield, Alabama, Ford closed the plant...
...downstairs is a full-sized bar...
...And yet, if you ask Carl what signs of hope he sees, he points to the UAW leadership...
...Under worse conditions, labor leaders and rank-and-filers created unions during the Great Depression...
...Fraser won approval from the Bargaining Councils on January 14, but the forty percent "no" vote at General Motors suggested that a hard road lay ahead...
...Carl is angry...
...Nor is there any way of knowing whether the UAW membership would have approved the concessions...
...Even worse, if your wife calls the plant to say the kid's sick, your foreman will be notified, but if he's short of people, it's 50-50, he may not tell you...
...But workers' anger alone doesn't explain why the UAW rejected concessions at GM...
...Threatened with the closing of their plant, members of Local 186 of Firestone in Memphis agreed to work on a seven-day schedule, giving up premium pay for weekend work...
...The agreement reached by Ford and the UAW in February marks a step in this direction...
...It's imperative that we settle now...
...The proposal got a big response, and Carl senses that local presidents will be more aggressive than usual when they talk to politicians about the bill...
...Finding a formula that would satisfy both the companies and the membership would not be easy...
...Business Week reports that labor-management committees in fifteen localities have persuaded unions to reduce their work crews, hold down wages, and avoid strikes...
...If the company is in trouble, they should start with the Chairman of the Board...
...Carl Bradshaw, on the other hand, hopes a strike will mobilize the members, strengthen union leadersip, and forge new bonds of solidarity...
...Luria and Russell argue that the equipment in the auto plants and machine shops, unlike that in steel mills, can easily be converted to make such things as deep natural gas and heavy oil production and upgrading equipment, residential and industrial steam-electric cogeneration units...
...And erosion of the national Master Agreement between the Teamsters and the truckers' association, threatened the union's foundation...
...Any bill to restrict the mobility of capital would arouse opposition in the current political climate, but hostile New York Times editorials would not necessarily prevail if the domestic auto and auto supply industry joined with the UAW to protect American jobs...
...They don't know what the union has gotten for them...
...According to union economists, the bill could save 868,000 jobs by 1985., The UAW is adopting this seemingly arcane and complicated approach to protecting its members' jobs because it believes import barriers do not solve the problem...
...All the savings in labor costs would be passed on to consumers...
...The seniority system has crumbled in Congress...
...For example, Borg-Warner has a joint venture in Japan, supplying automatic transmissions and seat belts for Japanese automakers...
...GM retreated...
...Then in 1981, it became clear that concessions were on the agenda across a broad spectrum of American industry...
...The prospects seem remote, but these are not ordinary times...
...Several years ago that was a possibility...
...GM will use the money we give them to expand their foreign operations...
...If you have to go to the bathroom, and it's not your break time, you have to ask the foreman...
...Equally angry workers made concessions in trucking, in airlines, and even at some Ford plants...
...The union would give back one week paid vacation, nine paid personal days, one bonus Sunday, and the three percent wage increase due in September 1982...
...If car sales picked up, the UAW could reopen the contract...
...DAVID BENSMAN teaches labor studies at Rutgers University in New Jersey...
...Things like this infuriate the members...
...it is no longer...
...It is rooted in the day-to-day battle union members wage against management of the General Motors Assembly Division...
...Even if strong import restrictions on cars were passed, the Japanese would still be able to flood the US market with parts for U.S.-produced autos, and with replacement parts for foreign-made vehicles...
...it made it possible for the union to be a power broker within the Democratic party and the halls of Congress, where it pressed for Medicare, the War on Poverty, and full employment...
...Most of the young people don't want to make concessions, but I don't know if they'll strike...
...And the Eaton Corp...
...If we strike in September, and come back with a bad contract, there would be a long, nasty deterioration of the union, a very bad thing...
...A similar agreement is already in place in the Sunbelt...
...Few GM workers had to make such concessions...
...THERE ARE MANY reasons why the opposition grew so large...
...Labor cooperation only makes sense if management can guarantee job security for its employees - but the companies are planning to shift production, and jobs, overseas...
...An organizational structure successful at meeting old challenges proved unable to meet a new one...
...And as long as these policies remain, workers at Harvester, Ford, and GM as well as teamsters and building tradesmen, will suffer disproportionally...
...According to union economists, that would have enabled GM to boost its sales by four percent, which might bring back 15,000 workers from layoffs...
...Officials of several unions have formulated work-rule concessions they would make to get union hiring halls used for the large synfuels projects in the Rocky Mountain region...
...The anger of men like Eddy Duarte and Marty Gall is based on more than their sense of the inequity of the situation...
...Whenever the American economy has plunged into depression, unions have had to accept wage cuts and to loosen their work rules...
...If the union waited for its contracts to expire in September, it would have no leverage...
...In return, the UAW would make concessions worth $4800 per worker...
...We've had people wet themselves on the line...
...The auto companies will not be able to offer workers real job security...
...But the main reason for the opposition to concessions is the deep anger UAW members feel for GM...
...They're so alienated, from the company - and from the union...
...The story is equally bleak in transportation...
...Local officers had registered their disapproval of reopening the contract in March...
Vol. 109 • March 1982 • No. 6
