A TALK WITH OWEN BIEBER OF THE UAW
Widick, B. J.
In mid-July, on a hot Detroit afternoon, I came to Solidarity House—the national headquarters of the United Automobile Workers Union—to have a talk with Owen Bieber, the union's new president. The...
...Our organizing and political programs depend in large part on changing the atmospherics...
...B.: Our current national agreements with Ford and GM attempt to limit both foreign outsourcing and the sourcing from nonunion suppliers in this country...
...I don't think there will be a retreat on that...
...B.: We argue strongly that the Japanese companies' supposed quality advantage is rapidly disappearing and has already disappeared in some segments of the market...
...B.: The UAW board recently condemned the auto companies' extensive use of overtime while over 200,000 laid-off workers are anxiously waiting to come back...
...Product quality is really a matter of commitment, and we have that commitment now on the part of the companies and the union...
...There is a natural tendency and pressure to turn inward during difficult times, but 1 believe that abandoning our social activism would be self-defeating...
...He is of a later generation—a proud union man, a plainspeak ing liberal in the best sense of the word...
...B.: Lane Kirkland may hold strong views on foreign- and defense-policy questions, but he is an intelligent and reasonable man and open to persuasion...
...W.: Given the expansion of the American auto industry on a world scale—General Motors, for example, has more employees abroad than in the United States—what can the UAW do to prevent "outsourcing" of supplies and expansion of production abroad at the expense of American jobs...
...Besides, grasping what the UAW is about is as much an intellectual process as it is a matter of experience...
...Nor was he shaped by the radical politics of the '30s...
...A larger portion of our membership will probably consist of white- and pink-collar workers, since these are all areas where we've stepped up our organizing efforts...
...Ken Robinson [a talented regional director whose death a few years ago was a great loss to the UAWJ helped me a lot...
...The pariah character of organized labor is therefore nothing new, and it is constantly reinforced by media stereotyping and antiunion bias in news reporting...
...B.: Well obviously, Reagan or any other Republican candidate would try to play it that way and represent the Democratic candidate as the captive of "special interests...
...Owen Bieber expects to be listened to, not only at the many difficult auto negotiations that now confront him but also on a whole range of public issues...
...Bieber is a genuine Midwesterner and of solid blue-collar background...
...What do you think...
...But precisely because all the other "special interests" are tightening up their endorsement processes, it's not clear that the AFLCIO endorsement would come in for any special attack...
...The new Ford and GM light trucks, for instance, are rated as good as or better than their Japanese competition...
...But there were some pretty tough struggles waged against the companies in the '50s, '60s and '70s, too, and these also helped to form attitudes and mold leaders...
...He is a man who personifies the legacy of the UAW—and the generation succeeding that of the union's launders in the '30s...
...And he has the capacity to succeed...
...If it wasn't for people like him, I wouldn't be here...
...We also negotiated a union board seat at American Motors, but the Federal Trade Commission blocked it...
...All of labor's civic and charitable contributions can be wiped out of the public consciousness overnight when unionconnected scandals are spread across the front pages of the newspapers...
...There is a shifting consensus on many of these matters within the AFL–CIO executive council, and Lane has not tried to resist the change although he has advocated his position energetically...
...but I doubt it will be a less powerful institution...
...But the basic situation you outline—higher profits with fewer workers—is a long-term structural problem that is difficult to address...
...B.: We want to become more involved in company policy matters, and a board seat for the UAW president was part of the Chrysler rescue package...
...The real solution to the export of auto jobs, of course, is enactment of domestic content legislation, which would affect the U.S.-based companies every bit as much as foreign producers...
...So the only rational way to address the problem is to push for a readjustment in exchange rates rather than push U.S...
...He has shared the UAW experience at all levels of leadership—serving as shop steward, organizing, setting up picket lines, running a local, servicing local unions, and as regional director...
...B.: It's possible that, five years from now, the UAW will be smaller than it is today...
...Can that be overcome...
...B.: My toughest challenge is to guide the union through the shoals of massive restructuring in the industrial economy—our bread and butter—while maintaining and, we hope, intensifying the UAW's role as a leader in the liberal community...
...Without a strong activist movement in this country and Canada, the UAW's political programs—such vital measures as auto content legislation and a 421 progressive industrial policy—will fail, and if they fail, our members' jobs will be increasingly threatened...
...Do you foresee that disagreement changing...
...Labor must learn to think of itself more as a "party" in its own right...
...In a 1961 filni illustrating how the UAW was training a new generation of leaders, Brendan Sexton, the union's educational director, and Guy Nunn, its TV and radio commentator, chose to focus on the experiences of a typical student at the Black Lake, Michigan, educational center created by Walter Reuther...
...A lot of people helped me get here...
...Is any of this labor's fault...
...We favor income and health insurance maintenance for the structurally dislocated workers, and we also need much more extensive retraining programs to prepare them for new kinds of jobs in auto as well as for jobs outside the auto industry...
...At the UAW, for example, we're starting to use television along with radio and print...
...I've heard people say that participation in the struggle to create the union was a unique and priceless experience, and I agree...
...his folks were...
...B. J. WIDICK B. J. WI DICK: How would you describe the new generation of leaders of the United Automobile Workers Union and the labor movement in contrast to the veterans of the 1930s...
...A big, burly, and friendly local leader was shown attending classes, listening to a European trade union delegation, and otherwise absorbing the ideas often referred to as "Reutherism...
...We won't get the programs we need without a major political redirection and a national commitment to full, secure, and decently compensated employment as a basic right...
...It's Owen to everybody—not Mr...
...The U.S...
...President...
...He raised his Catholic family in the part of Michigan known as Dutch Reformed country, built his house himself, and then his small cabin "up North" in the Michigan woods...
...W.: How do you foresee the character of the membership and status of the United Auto Workers five years from now...
...Neither the producers nor the local leader had the faintest idea that 22 years later Owen Bieber, the man in the film, would be the successor to Douglas Fraser as the UAW's president...
...The result follows below...
...W.: American unions generally appear to be in the public's doghouse...
...W.: Given the many blunders American carmakers have made in policy decisions for which the auto workers have paid a high price in concessions to give the companies a "breathing spell," shouldn't the United Auto Workers become more involved in management decision-making...
...It cannot afford to sit on the sidelines when the interests of its members are at stake in the political process...
...W.: In quality and price the Japanese car-makers appear to have a major competitive advantage over our domestic manufacture...
...At Ford and GM, we have the right to address the boards and consult regularly with senior management...
...Another is to grab a piece of the mass media ourselves, using the new communications technology...
...W.: Given the prospect of auto-industry prosperity for the next few years—high profits with fewer workers what can the United Auto Workers do to help its permanently unemployed workers, who number thousands...
...And he is a product of the UAW political and educational process...
...W.: What is the toughest challenge you face as the new leader of the United Auto Workers...
...administration policy on Central America and Chile than those made by Lane Kirkland, the president of the AFL–CIO...
...W.: The AFL–CIO and the UAW have often disagreed on foreign policy...
...I had seen the film just before meeting with Bieber, so I asked, "Owen, did you ever dream in 1961 that someday you would sit in Walter's chair...
...The companies also agreed to a 24-month moratorium on plant closings owing to outsourcing...
...With a healthy laugh Bieber replied, "No...
...We are meeting with management over this issue and hope to make some progress...
...Bieber's candor and lack of pretention are among his most appealing characteristics...
...For the present, 1.1 million active and 300,000 retired UAW members still form a rather large organization...
...W.: Some political pundits are arguing that an 420 endorsement from labor in 1984 may be a kiss of death...
...He was not molded by the Great Depression...
...wages down...
...And we may have additional "high-tech" production workers as well...
...Would labor on the boards of directors be a step in that direction...
...The auto industry will never again employ as many production workers as it did five years ago...
...How do you propose to overcome this prejudice...
...One is to demand history and economics curricula in our schools and colleges that do justice to labor...
...And he feels ready for his new job...
...As far as price is concerned, it's now clear that three-fourths of the Japanese price advantage is the result of the overvalued dollar against the yen, whereas only a small proportion is caused by labor costs in Japan...
...I n general, we have more access to information and more influence in management decisions than ever before...
...OWEN BIEBER: I would say there's more continuity than discontinuity between today's leadership and the UAW pioneers...
...Not only must the companies give us advance notice and an opportunity to reverse outsourcing decisions, but we won the right to bring previously outsourced work back into UAW plants...
...companies have greatly improved the "fit and finish" of their products, and Japanese cars continue to do poorly in safety tests when matched against corn422 parable U.S.-built models...
...In five years, our members in production industries—auto, farm equipment, aerospace—could be down in numbers but probably up in skills and relative income...
...B.: America is culturally a middle-class society that tends to identify with business and business values rather than with workers and their organizations...
...For example, UAW statements have been far more critical of U.S...
...There are a number of ways to combat the negative image, although we should never expect to succeed fully...
...He is prepared to grow in it...
...The political strength of the union has never been strictly a function of its numerical size but has flowed in equal part from the quality of its ideas and the degree of its activism, neither of which we expect to diminish...
...Walter Reuther was above all a man of ideas and principles, and the commitment to ideas and principles is alive and well among today's UAW leaders...
...I would also say that it's important for the labor movement to unify its political activity and boost rank-and-file awareness and enthusiasm as much as possible, even though this could produce a backlash...
...Part of it's our fault in that we have just enough rotten apples and bad incidents to provide grist for the media's mill...
Vol. 30 • September 1983 • No. 4
