The UAW: An Aura of Hope

...For two solid days, delegates devoted themselves to a host of troublesome matters, unrelated or remotely related to the question of "going it alone...

...He wanted to know about the war economy: "Those who profit most from it want to stifle and choke us...

...Will the blame, as well as the credit, be ascribable to Walter Reuther...

...Let standards be given primacy, they say, admitting that failure to establish proper standards not only deprives workingmen of the respect they crave, but results in the production of unsafe automobiles which, in turn, causes death to stalk the highways of America...

...But Reuther has tried to live as a principled man, and his friends do him no kindness if they let him forget it...

...neither is he cowed into silence and apathy...

...This phenomenon has not proved to be a total calamity, but it creates more chasms...

...In his keynote address, he excoriated hidebound AFL craft union officials for their flagrant and obnoxious racism...

...They're physically unable to put in a 70- or 80-hour week that some companies now force on them...

...A Canadian delegate warns that parity is a must, and that Reuther had better remember it...

...Will that give Canadian workers the right to strike, which is after all a domestic and governmental issue...

...A word about that aura...

...A Florida delegate who endorsed the Reuther program as far as it went, and who parenthetically proclaimed that he got all his education in the UAW, felt nevertheless that something was missing...

...If militancy develops in a Dearborn plant, work may get switched to Chicago or to Cleveland...

...Otherwise, the courts might impose a Taft-Hartley injunction, breaking the strike because of the "national emergency...

...He deserves no praise for that piece of foolishness— but a good deal of praise for owning up to it...

...They had higher rates, the best representational pattern, and more benefits...

...Upwardly mobile people, including those past their youth, who see that technological innovation is irresistible, wish to be re-educated...

...The Reuthers must have known that full disclosure could only be an embarrassment to them...

...Perhaps they are more attentive to the words of a delegate dilating on executive salaries...

...The widely publicized rift between Reuther and Meany may or may not eventuate in a break...

...But, we have a political party in Canada...

...A substantial increase in take-home pay will certainly be demanded, but many delegates regarded the substitution of "salaries" for "wages" as mere word magic...

...The sticking point is how to contractualize those standards...

...He downgraded the guaranteed annual salary and upgraded work standards...

...They had predicted he would foster prolonged debate over whether to split or not to split, thereby deflecting worker unrest onto essentially extraneous matters...

...The International should do it for them...

...When the topic at hand is workers' rights, they are still concerned about, but not obsessed with, civil rights...

...Some jobs get automated and go down the drain...

...Giant will be pitted against giant, each giving, both compromising, neither rocking the boat too much...

...That recovery appears to be a product of determination, grit, and patience...

...by April, 1967 there were over 400,000...

...American-style collec tive bargaining has conditioned management to make economic concessions —when necessary and under heavy pressure...

...Or, this from a representative of the much aggrieved Auto Parts Suppliers Council: "Brother, may I read you a letter...

...Plainly, the union could be sundered by a division like this one...

...In 1965 there were only 100,000 Americans in Vietnam...

...I take all this to be highly symbolic: we now have reason to hope that the left arm of labor, paralyzed for well over a decade, will once again be put into motion...

...specific jobs may be surreptitiously "subcontracted out" so that cars are less and less frequently "100 per cent union-made...

...Obviously skeptical about the efficacy of prayer, Reuther professes to pray for the day when the power of persuasion will triumph over the persuasion of power...

...Or by workers (pipe-fitters, electricians, stamp operators), whose jobs are sometimes farmed out to "alley shops," as against workers fortunate enough to stay put...

...That, after 31 years, these are not yet soporific is a tribute to the magical effect Walter Reuther can still produce...

...Listen therefore to the arithmetically-minded delegate when he asks, "How about our kids, our health, our strength...

...in other respects, he is ahead of his members...

...The Dirksens and the Dixiecrats will play them, and we will act like empty shells, sitting on our status quo...

...Workers employed by small companies used to fare better than those in the Big Three...

...Any man should be laughable who publicly "recnizes" dangers and says that he is "gonna" overcome them by "tran-salating" principles into action—and who keeps on mouthing threadbare cliches and tired old jokes...

...The switch did not excite them...

...Y What about the disagreeable conditions of work...

...The UAW Negro knows that he belongs to a disadvantaged people most of whom continue to be mercilessly exploited...

...So, "You've got the money now...

...While "not looking for a fight," he has prepared his cadres to "struggle as free workers," reminding them that "In totalitarian society, you get industrial peace because bayonets are behind every worker...

...TULC, the Trade Union Leadership Council, which sparked A. Philip Randolph into a national effort directed at betterment of Negroes' working conditions, was first begun among UAW Negroes...

...A Canadian exclaims, "We were a fullfledged colony of Great Britain...

...No answer...

...Besides, stock options made up for the reduced salary, with the president's total income amounting to over a $1,000,000...

...What follows...

...They liked better Reuther's admonition, "Let us never forget that this union was organized against the inhumanity of the speedup, and not just to add nickels to payrolls," his allusion to "gold-plated sweatshops," and the need for applying as much ingenuity to human problems as to technical problems...

...Why not let qualified journeymen do the job when they are fully capable of mastering the necessary techniques...

...At this writing, a strike seems likely...

...1I Quite a long time has passed since an unknown sniper shot and injured Walter Reuther, shattering an arm few people thought would ever regain its old mobility...

...A union that encompasses the aerospace industry could not convene this spring without mourning the death of four Apollo astronauts who might still be alive but for the poor workmanship that went into their spacecraft...

...Women were heard, and that alone should be newsworthy...

...III The UAW is a bread-and-butter, pragmatic trade union serving the special interests of relatively privileged factory workers...

...He promises to strive for the best possible settlement with corporations grown fat on increasing productivity and expanded profitability, and thereafter, no matter what happens to his feud with George Meany, energetically to organize the unorganized masses...

...It is both palpable and mysterious...

...If not, then maybe they do when a representative of Local 600 claims, "Our 33 resolutions will prove to industry, and most important to the young people, that we are never satisfied with the status quo...

...It always does...

...The top command wanted above all to bargain for a new concept in labor relations, the guaranteed annual salary, designed to wipe out invidious distinctions between blue-collar and white-collar workers...

...Some go on their own time...

...Finally, just a few of the 3,000 delegates voted against a belated motion which most of them enthusiastically cheered...

...On top of that list was a radical idea which, if implemented, would revolutionize the status of industrial operatives...

...These people have plenty of political savvy...

...We want it in '67...

...These matters formed the substance of their discussion, a lively affair that Reuther would not allow to be prematurely terminated...

...About one third of the automobile workers at General Motors, Ford, and Chrysler are Negroes...

...If this is logical, then, "Walter, send our people to school for six months...

...In this area, moral discomfort, and the heat that it generates, will not come from within his own organization, but only from outside, from the unaffiliated ranks of those who dissent...

...We are not going to be a full-fledged colony of General Motors or of International Harvester...

...At the convention, Reuther decisively confounded his critics...

...They had to defy Reuther by opposing the incumbent Mayor Miriani of Detroit, and they probably tipped the balance for Cavanaugh, a man more responsive to their demands...

...General Motors keeps shipping work from U.S...

...It gave the leadership a blank check on whether, when, and how to secede...

...More money, yes, the case for raises was compelling, but, they maintained, humanization and improved work standards should be the first order of business...

...That day is not yet...

...They see much more readiness for the fulfillment of this historical aspiration among the leaders then among the men who remain unprepared for the sustained struggle, the class war that would be required...

...A Congressional expose of this situation might make Teapot Dome look harmless...

...On an issue like Vietnam, external influence by the liberal-left might be usefully brought to bear...

...If it comes to that, the strike will be selective, hitting only one corporation and in such a way that "defense" production is unimpaired...

...Reuther referred to the war only obliquely, within a context of strike strategy...

...Observing Reuther preside over the Special United Automobile Workers Convention in Detroit late this April, one could hardly doubt that he is the living refutation of his own general indictment...

...Either way, we have here a model for how to abolish that poverty of the human spirit which is our greatest affliction...

...He solicited, and received, enough argumentation to reveal a dozen in ternal fissures, and as many fundamental grievances welling up from the ranks...

...A more hostile delegate, spurning Reuther's plea for flexibility, argued in favor of "firing up the troops for war on General Motors" which "stopped workers from getting a 30-hour week on account of the Korean War...

...Whatever the failings of Reuther and his colleagues, it is good that they are a force in American life...

...As a continuous influx of automated machinery takes place, should old workers be given the first opportunity to train for new jobs...

...The Canadian government, with its advanced welfare state, does not yet permit conciliation and allegedly tarries over compulsory arbitration of labor disputes...

...Thus, a provocative remark from the floor causes Reuther to wag his finger: "Brother, you're getting into deep water...

...Would any other labor leader taunt his people, as Reuther did at one point in the convention, by saying, "If I were in the shop, I would be raising hell with this union...

...Executives are not the only ones with these concerns...

...Men within the same factory feel unequally victimized...

...All in all, the case for high work standards is unanswerable...

...They talk as uninhibitedly and unselfconsciously as the critical majority around them...

...But it did, as Reuther proves with a flourish while he chops and cuts the air persuasively with both hands...

...Management has the trump cards...

...They'll be in those offices until they retire...

...The delegate who came back to this matter did some calculating of his own: It would take an average worker at General Motors 120 years to make the president's reduced salary...

...More significantly, Negroes constituted an articulate and sometimes vociferous presence...

...The loan companies are doing a land-office business in workers' homes...

...What about us, Walter...

...The creators of TULC, men like Horace Sheffield, are actively engaged on every front...

...so do those in the shop and those in the office...

...Not a word from him about his private misgivings on foreign policy, nor any acknowledgment of the 1965 UAW resolution according to which further escalation in Vietnam should be opposed...

...They carried the day...

...IV The generational gap is underscored again and again: "Young skilled tradesmen work 12 hours a day...

...Failure to take a stand, either by repudiating the old resolution or by condemning the enormous escalation on which Lyndon Johnson did embark, cannot be lightly dismissed...

...But to ask for joint decision-making, which by another name is co-determination, or, by two others, workers' democracy and socialism...

...Such epithets would fit even better than they do if Walter Reuther had not recently applied all of them to other leaders of the AFLCIO, the federation he helped to create 12 years ago...

...Furthermore, in speaking up vigorously they by no means limited themselves to the woman question...

...On the first day, Reuther presented a list of priorities he proposed to lay on the bargaining table in July when negotiations begin for a new contract with management...

...Something about him, possibly his basic incorruptibility, grips us and compels our respect...

...Cracks show anyway...

...But big business would ferociously defend its so far unchallenged prerogative to control production...

...These isolated outbursts were disregarded by Reuther...

...Reuther can be counted on to placate the dissatisfied by securing some of their objectives, and even to goad them when they do not goad him...

...If the break does not occur, labor-at-large may gain by responding to pressure from the Left for overall liberalization...

...In fact, only a last halfday was devoted to the intramural dispute...

...Why," says another spokesman for this group, "A young fella working 40 hours a week can't educate his children...

...A tool-and-dye man reports that in the cutting-grinding department, one new tool replaces I5 men...

...Who will be taught to use the new tool...

...Walter, go on out and organize those babes in the woods...

...Many young, middleclass radicals know little more about organized labor in the United States than that it is "stagnant," "sclerotic," and "inert...

...These men and women have been given an opportunity denied most of their black brothers...

...Surely, Victor Reuther had his brother's approval when he clamored for severance of the CIA tie more than a year ago, before newsmen had sensationalized the complex, scandalous, and ugly affair...

...Will it...

...He doubts that industry is ever persuaded by eloquence or by logic, and he asserts that it is impressed by only one thing: the power of a mobilized rank and file...

...Organized labor cannot get moving in this climate...

...Or, from an old-timer, "What's all this talk about whether we want $300 or $400 or $500 pensions...

...But, optimism is justifiably high in every executive suite— from which the specter of an increase in production to 13,000,000 cars per annum, and conversion of America into an enormous parking lot, has lately emanated...

...It is signed, "Your stepsons and stepdaughters," with a postscript asking for full acceptance into the family...

...Muscle will be applied...

...They did much to elect a Negro councilman and a Negro member of the 21-men National Council of their union...

...The UAW Negro does not suffer from fantasies of violence...

...Help us win...

...Today, many of these workers, and there are approximately 300,000 of them, feel that they fall below a decent standard of living, receive unequal compensation for equal work, and scrape by from payday to payday...

...Change the lumpenproletariat into a working class, and you get human beings like these who need not be lectured about the dignity they have already come to possess...

...Work standards rather than wages were the motif of this convention...

...Delegates did not warm to the idea...

...The Negro delegate to a UAW convention cries out just as manfully as the whites around him (for they are animated by the same militant tradition) for his "measure of justice...

...After 1945, the big companies tightened up and squeezed the suppliers so hard that they were unable to maintain previous standards...

...Reuther listened, joined the quarrel—and yielded to a clear preference other than his own...

...Here, however, the fraternal salutations end, and this letter begins, "Dear Daddy Walter: We know you need flexibility, but .....and there follow complaints about subcontracting, scab labor, preferential hiring, and arbitrary contract termination dates...

...In some respects, he is goaded on to do things by a following that constantly grumbles about its dissatisfactions...

...Indeed, the subject of civil rights received attention mainly because Reuther chose to dwell upon it...

...Reuther, who needs all his genius as a labor prestidigitator just to keep the UAW from getting unstuck, is more realistic...

...Not at all...

...I left the Convention, and the Reuther aura, convinced that trade unionism in America has a vital future...

...The point is made that when Studebaker moved out of South Bend, retirees lost their pensions, and that management outside the Big Three continually threatens to close down and move out or invoke some legal ruse to avoid payment of pensions...

...The problems that interest them are common to industrial workers who divide here and coalesce there, but scarcely ever do so along sexual or racial lines...

...They set up a useful and efficient school for Negro drop-outs, staffed it with teachers of business English and typing, enriched the curriculum by adding art and music, placed their graduates in white-collar jobs, and did much more on that community, grass-roots level which Sargent Shriver never seems able to reach...

...Most of us have forgotten what it's like to work a 40-hour week...

...The earnestness with which each side backs the other sounds a trifle forced and artificial...

...In numerical control centers, salaried employees do the programming...

...Older workers need money too...

...We are already accused of disrupting the war effort...

...To be sure, the Boy Scout image has been tarnished, but by ever so little...

...But GM will talk at the table about having lost money...

...Actually, they make money on our sweat...

...And the UAW is pledged to rectify this inequity at the bargaining table...

...Now and then in these deliberations, humor emerged—laced with touches of bitterness—as delegate and chairman sparred with each other...

...And now it's the lousy Vietnam War...

...Reuther's complicity (to the tune of $50,000) in a CIA effort to shore up democratic French and German trade unions is a matter of record...

...The Reutherites believe they know their men: a short strike, a holiday, a fishing trip, temporary suspension of the customary drudgery would greatly please them...

...In the UAW, at least these two ordinarily voiceless minority groups have found their tongues and learned to swing their weight...

...Banners and buttons and pamphlets re-echoed the same slogan: "Humanize Work...

...Other delusions evidently hold sway over office workers, mostly "women who too often fool themselves that they aren't going to work long...

...Despite a common duty-free North American market, Canadian auto workers are paid less for the same output than workers just across the border...

...That the president of General Motors took a voluntary salary cut from $825,000 to a measly $790,000 was page one news for Detroiters as the UAW convention began—Reuther noted that the new salary came to 96 times more than an average worker earns, and he added, "No human being is worth 96 times more than another human being...

...These issues do not much concern the young...

...Our pension is $60 a month...

...Yes, brother you may...

...to Canadian plants, which is good corporate economy and real labor oppression...

...And the Canadians sound off for wage parity, currently unavailable to them...

...and in yet other respects, external influence would be salutary...

...A special feature of UAW contracts is that they allow workers to strike over work standards, and the men around Reuther boast that their International Executive Board has never refused to authorize such a strike...

...Speaker after speaker rose to repeat a single slogan that reverberated through Detroit's Cobo Hall for three days...

...How persistent the old dream of escaping from manual labor by acquiring a chicken farm or a small business still is, we do not know...

...Brother, being a production worker, I know how to swim...

...Nowhere else in America is there such a nucleus of Negroes, self-confident, with high morale, free of want, militant in deed as well as word...

...And it is an entity that to some extent embodies other more admirable qualities, without which one's references to "the human spirit" would be incongruous...

...The widely publicized rivalry between craft workers and production workers is papered over with affirmations of solidarity...

...Total separation would be costly to both sides, but costliest in dollars and cents to the Federation which would lose a cool million in annual UAW dues...

...They come by it through a unique experience garnered over decades by long and hard participation in industrial unionism...

...Young and old diverge...

...Limited struggle, gradually expanded, is Reuther's essential message...

...Do the young, not a few attending their first convention, prick up their ears at this...

...Can we say as much for George Meany or Jay Lovestone who, although much more deeply implicated, continue brazenly to deny everything...

...No doubt about it, the industry did suffer a decline this year (for which some jokesters suggest that Ralph Nader be rewarded with the GM presidency...

...Yet, they pressed the issue which others sought to squelch...

...When you see such a reversal take place before your eyes, you can hardly accept the fashionable thesis that union democracy is wholly a dead-letter, a term to be used only ironically as a cover for bureaucratic control...

...I'm from a small plant...

...Whether he finds himself agreeing with union policy or strongly opposed to it is irrelevant...

...Banter aside, a divisive and sufficiently serious situation is uncovered...

...Should there be a break, if nothing else, the UAW will have demonstrated (a possibly contagious) capacity for rejuvenation...