Labor's metamorphosis?
Kelly, Kevin
ready rather likes him, giving the new president a larger base with unions. But if the UAW wins, shop floor strategies might to govern from than his 43 percent of the vote would suggest. ...
...That could eventually undermine quality, and in turn, hurt sales Meanwhile, other unions know if the mighty, 850,000- strong and profits...
...If The UAW's hand would be strengthened considerably if the the UAW doesn't succeed, unions are girding for a backlash Clinton administration, as promised, quickly signs legislation that could turn the dark days of the Reagan administration into banning the hiring of permanent replacements in labor disputes...
...ening to permanently replace workers walking a picket line...
...In fact, from 1988 until late The UAW ended the strike insisting it hadn't lost...
...The far from falling in love with politics again...
...It was dead anyway," says one a major manufacturer can nullify the right to strike by threat- Aurora, Illinois-based Caterpillar worker...
...Worse yet, the contract guts future Peoria-based construction equipment giant, will set the tone for jobs, by offering six-year job security for the current work force, U.S...
...At a time when "self-directed work "How will it play in Peoria...
...Seattlites live in the outdoors- dependent on national and international He was stopped by one of the managers boating, fishing, mountain climbing are easy events and trends than Easterners are...
...Indeed, the outcome It savages overtime, by giving the company the power to put of the one-year-old struggle between the United workers on a flexible schedule, which will make weekend work Auto Workers (UAW) and Caterpillar Inc., the and ten-hour days routine...
...labor relations during the 1990s...
...They want contract...
...But if the UAW wins, shop floor strategies might to govern from than his 43 percent of the vote would suggest...
...The stakes are high...
...The union, in keeping with tion, and perhaps more than one administration...
...If the UAW can't win public support and falls looms later...
...The glistening snow-capped minded of that in reading letters from the bing, bing, one one-liner after another...
...The people of Seattle are friendSOME CAUSE FOR HOPE ly to each other and to strangers...
...That, he insisted, would force the company to negotiate The animosity generated by Caterpillar's moves has cloba contract along union lines...
...ages...
...early on in his own career...
...things-fine book stores, foreign film theOF SEVERAL MINDS Abigail McCarthy aters, and a plethora of coffee bars where people linger reading, talking, and drinking latte...
...Few picketers were arrested and Shaiken, who has discussed the dispute with several Caterpillar no great scenes of battle transpired...
...Fites insists he'll never agree to those demands...
...Caterpillar wants workers to pay a small (recently published in paperback by Touchstone), writes about monthly premium and use specific providers...
...As strikes force thereafter...
...bered such cooperation...
...Wages acting as probation officers...
...an ugly 205-day strike in 1982...
...They, too, must medians "bomb" sometimes and told the members are not to let people know how be content with less...
...the east, and across Elliot Bay, Mount whom, in a rash moment, I volunteered to Hope was so dismayed that he head- Rainier, only a hundred miles away, pierces write a newsletter...
...I have been rehad been successful in New York-bing, lakes sparkle...
...flict," he says...
...Though Caterpilunion worker who failed to return...
...He was explaining that all co- in-cheek, started a Lesser Seattle Club...
...The contract Caterpillar important as any in recent memory is being has imposed guarantees a two-tier wage system in coming years...
...And Olympics rise in the west, the Cascades in 1930s-era graduates of my high school for no one laughed...
...Seattle is not a paradise...
...They are different out there, too...
...But the real dispute arises out of a less tangible set of issues, which Caterpillar chief executive Donald Fites labels "the right REPORT FROM PEORIA to manage...
...But negotiations were an- executives, believes the company simply doesn't want the other matter...
...its long-held position on health insurance benefits, wants to keep E.J...
...One night, when flipping from parts of the country want to live there that employed-a fact that affects market channel to channel, I happened on one of one of the local columnists has, tongue- and pricing for professionals and those his specials...
...The UAW's decision to send its members back came a company union," says one UAW local leader...
...The company canto withstand the union in-plant campaign, it'll have shown that celed it in September 1992...
...If it had agreed to what Deere accepted, Caterpillar THE HIGH STAKES AT CATERPILLAR would have had to remain neutral if the union tried to organize the company's 2,000 nonunion factory employees, guarantee a specific number of union jobs, and give the union input on which jobs should be performed by outside suppliers...
...At first you miss make all things new but, told, these people don't lead hurried the intensity and the constant stimulation...
...At Caterpillar's Aurora facility, which accounts for only of California labor economist Harley Shaiken, and get tougher 5 percent of its $10 billion sales, the UAW claims the producCommonweal 15 January 1993: 7 tion slowdown has caused the company to miss its output goals pany back to the bargaining table even before the effects of an by up to 40 percent...
...They like to take things and be, to savor life and beauty...
...That may or may not be the result of the UAW's counter Other companies are likely to learn the lesson, says University thrust...
...played out with little notice...
...Even in its more usual drizzly is not that they are unaware of them but wrong with his material-he had just de- weather, Seattle life holds many good events and celebrations close to home en8: 15 January 1993 Commonweal...
...What's certainly true now is that Caterpillar an acceptable contract from a healthy company like Caterpillar, has a deeply disaffected work force...
...If the UAW the company can make up the difference by importing tractors is forced to accept an imposed contract at Caterpillar, it'll hardfrom factories in Europe and Japan...
...They do not live at the frenetic pace You have to learn to be quiet, to just sit make us feel as if the world of New Yorkers...
...At a busiis fresh and beginning slowly...
...Slow down, he was place to live and work...
...0 ut in the American heartland a labor drama as Now the UAW is backed into a corner...
...He says the UAW, using the old practice of "pattern bargaining," tried to commandeer the company by demanding that it accept what rival Deere & Co...
...that the last two decades unleashed will take more than one elec- The company is offering $39,915...
...The economic differences bethat politics can be important, useful, even exciting...
...ly have the power to face down the Big Three auto companies Still, if the UAW is already scoring some successes-the cam- when they come asking for concessions in their contract dispaign really only took off last fall-the possibility of larger short- cussions next year...
...These are people less ed for the exit intent on leaving town...
...true-and Caterpillar officials deny any production shortfalls- Ultimately though, the union has the most to lose...
...granted in its LABOR'S METAMORPHOSIS...
...politics for the Washington Post...
...Most are...
...they take time to sit and look at Mount the enclaves of New England academia...
...But we are tween the union and company aren't insurmountable...
...price of living where they want to be...
...Its launching into business...
...But the evidence is scant, and even if it's in-plant strategy are fully felt...
...phrase, "the Rainier factor," is shorthand sensibilities were shaped "out there" in the Having just come back from Seattle, I for saying that people in Seattle are confar-flung America beyond the interlock- listened to his anecdote with new appre- tent with fewer material goods because ing centers of Washington, New York, and ciation...
...In 1992, Americans learned again and benefits aren't the problem...
...KEVIN KELLY That could change the equation overnight, and force the com- Kevin Kelly, a writerfor Business Week, is based in Chicago...
...It is the story of his doing so in Fort Worth, Texas, great living in the Seattle area is...
...Customers who have vis- how will it fare against ailing General Motors, which is losing ited its factories report workers appear listless and uninvolved...
...Yes, says gangs, poverty and unemployment, just like Consequently Seattle has a large proporone of our national icons, comedian Bob other cities...
...But so many people from other tion of the over-educated and the underHope...
...DIONNE, JR...
...THERE'S A THERE THERE Living in Seattle, however, requires an adjustment for newcomers, especially those from the East, says a young friend of mine who has chosen to make it her New administrations do not livered it too fast...
...The being tackled by people whose minds and they found things funny...
...This was an ideological cona five-month period talks grew unfriendly and got nowhere...
...It would 1991, Caterpillar's UAW work force had helped boost prosimply move the struggle into Caterpillar's factories...
...the current health-care plan, a package that doesn't require any E. J. Dionne, Jr., author of Why Americans Hate Politics payments from workers...
...Healing the anger UAW is seeking a top maximum wage of $40,458 by late 1994...
...go it was hardly acrimonious...
...while making no commitments to the size of Caterpillar's work The UAW struck Caterpillar in November 1991...
...blossom across the country, giving workers a new tool to exBut Clinton and "the system" are still on probation, with both press their aspirations as the strike weapon slowly loses its power the Perot voters and many of Clinton's more reluctant supporters Why has labor peace proven so elusive at Caterpillar...
...It who told him that there was nothing of access...
...This new administration this was a big country and people var- factor" that purveyors of goods and serbrings with it, too, a sense of problems ied from region to region-even in how vices there must take into account...
...just eight days after Caterpillar had threatened to replace any Thing is, the company almost had one...
...He learned then, said Hope, that ness workshop she was told of "the Rainier anew is possible...
...UAW can be defeated in Peoria, their prospects are bleak...
...billions and has 74,000 layoffs scheduled...
...If Caterpillar manages longer has any formal participation program...
...Are they different out there...
...1991 contract...
...More to the point, the UAW says Caterpillar Then, dramatically, 163 days after the walkout began, the wants a union like those in Japan, where workers tend to sub12,000 strikers came back to work under a company-imposed ordinate their interests to those of the corporation...
...is a question corporate chief- teams" and "employee involvement" have become the watchtains and the American labor movement are asking as they watch words of world-class American manufacturers, Caterpillar no the bitter struggle...
...a prelude...
...The company and union met periodically, but over union involved in its business...
...the clouds...
...He had come On a sunny day it would be hard to con- People are different, too, in the hearton stage and launched into the patter that vince a visitor that it was not great...
...The city's land from where I came...
...UAW ductivity over 30 percent and saved the company close to $50 Secretary-Treasurer Bill Casstevens announced workers would million by aggressively participating in Caterpillar's highly tout"work to rule," slowing production and creating product short- ed quality program...
...It has crime and Rainier-a metaphor for the good life...
...for a while, at least, they lives...
...It wasn't an idle warning: lar and the UAW had dueled fiercely from 1955 until the early Caterpillar took job applications, which arrived in the thousands, 1980s, company and union relations had steadily improved since and promised to start hiring a new work force in early May...
Vol. 120 • January 1993 • No. 1
