American Notebook: When the Recession Came to Michigan

...It has also been a way of finding a new work force which, even if formally organized, is still likely to be more pliable than that in the Michigan plants...

...Since then there have been largescale shifts in American population, particularly toward the West coast...

...and many UAW officials, who had been lulling themselves into deep sleep with dreams of certified prosperity, are beginning to show signs of disturbance...

...This kind of talk has not often been heard in America during the last two decades, but no one listening to this man could suppose it was anything but an ut terly authentic statement...

...Still another factor prompting decentralization has been the obsolescence of the old-style multi-storied plants...

...In 1953 and 1957 approximately the same number of cars were produced-6.1 million—but the number of workers employed in Michigan auto plants dropped from 364,000 to 278,000...

...The Kaiser company moved from Willow Run to Toledo and then stopped producing cars entirely...

...but it is both significant and troublesome that, while so substantial a number of workers remain without jobs, the auto industry has meanwhile reached a point where it is producing the same number of cars per month as in 1957...

...No one seriously expects the auto industry to rehire the thousands of laid-off men...

...Because the UAW has concen trated in recent years almost entirely on wages and fringe benefits, it has allowed the bitch goddess of progress —and in the Michigan jungle that dusty old phrase takes on a new vivid ness—to become the rationale by means of which the companies have deter mined the kinds and amounts of auto• mation, decentralization and overtime without considering the human conse quences...

...Lincoln closed its Detroit plant and moved elsewhere...

...Lots of people are suffering—physically, morally, psychically...

...The union leadership's role in this case has been to offer no real resistance and at times, even aid management in getting workers to accept these higher job standards...

...For the first time in its history, almost half of the 150,000 people working for Ford now live outside of Michigan...

...This concentration, as it happened, proved advantageous for another reason: the major population center of the country, and thereby the biggest market, was in the nearby Northeast and Midwest...

...1958 the number receiving relief almost doubled in Michigan and more than doubled in the city of Detroit...

...How far this process has gone even in the Ford empire is suggested by the fact that between January 1953 and January 1957 (I use this latter date as a cut-off to avoid complicating recession effects), Ford increased its total work force by some 26,000 men, while at the same time there was a ten per cent drop in the number of its Michigan employees...

...There has, it is true, been a certain movement into the Detroit area, but for the most part it consists of minor companies which employ small numbers of workers...

...So let me confine myself to the three that do...

...Inevitably, this was followed by setting up throughout the country new parts plants that were more modern than the pioneer ones in Michigan...

...Most important among these is the idea of fighting for a short er work week—since by any rational or humane standards, that is the prop er result of technological improve ments...

...No issue has created stronger feelings among the UAW ranks: a division of sentiment between employed and unemployed that hardly distresses the companies...

...The tradition...

...Within the Big Three there were similar developments...

...But now, with the increase of "fringe benefits," the cost of training new workers, and the need to pay unemployment insurance, the companies find it cheaper to give the employees more work, even at overtime rates, than to add new workers or reemploy men who have been laid-off...

...Overtime and the speedup are major targets for union action, and in general, there is a need for the UAW to press for the right of the workers to share in the determination of future changes in the industry...

...When the recession came to Michigan, it did not create a sudden crisis as much as bring to a climax socio-economic trends that had been gathering for some years...

...In human terms, what we have in major areas of Detroit begins to resemble an old-style depression...

...The results are even more striking if a similar comparison is made between 1952 and 1958: about 117,000 fewer workers were required to produce approximately the same number of cars...

...And decentralization has followed from the discovery of the giant corporations that they had previously been extremely vulnerable to a concerted union campaign—as during the sitdowns, when it became clear that production of the Chevrolet, the GM bread-and-butter car, could be halted if the union closed down Plant No...

...Only during the last contract negotiations did the UAW press for and win certain rights for workers affected by plant shutdowns...

...For some years now, in order to better its competitive position, Chrysler has been conducting a ruthless campaign to increase job standards and to speed up production on the lines without adding or even while decreasing, manpower...

...It results from major changes in the structure of the dominant industry and in methods of production...

...but anyone who cares to probe beneath this surface can find plenty of human misery, plenty of bewilderment and desperation...

...No matter what appearances may suggest, the auto industry remains far from reconciled to the power of trade unionism...

...Transporting thousands of cars each year from Detroit to California came to be too costly, and the companies found it more economical to make parts in Michigan and then ship them to distant assembly plants...

...In 1958 unemployment in Michigan reached a peak of 460,000 or 15.7 per cent of the labor force...

...The union's response to unemploy ment is too complex a matter to be discussed in a brief report of this kind...

...Hudson moved to Racine, and stopped producing cars...

...Some unemployed union members, resentful of the fact that in certain plants the employed workers had overtime while they remained out on the streets, picketed both the Chrys ler plants and the UAW headquarters, Solidarity House...

...Ford began decentralizing in the late forties, when Henry II replaced Old Henry...

...Meanwhile, despite the various "cushions" provided by social legisla tion, the consequences of major eco nomic and technological changes can still be traumatic for large numbers of workers...

...Now, apparently in response to the rumblings of unemployed UAW members, Walter Reuther has begun to talk about the moral indefensibility of overtime when there is so much unemployment...

...On the surface things may be quiet and the casual stroller through the city might be struck by nothing more ominous than an unusual number of closed-up stores...

...Consider this one fact: between Dec...

...During its year of early growth, the auto industry bunched most of its plants in Michigan for a number of reasons: closeness to raw materials, a large supply of skilled labor cheaply available, the fact that technological pioneers like Ford and Olds came from and worked here...

...Automation...

...nor does anyone propose any significant measure for creating jobs...

...PROFESSOR WILLIAM HABER, an expert student of the Michigan economy, has suggested four reasons for the continued economic crisis: • Shifts in defense spending from conventional weapons to missiles...

...According to statistics of both the UAW and the Michigan Employment Security Commission, car production in the decade between 1948 and 1958 increased by 50.5 per cent, going from about 4 million to over 7 million per year—while the number of men employed in the industry increased by only .5 per cent...

...I hope DISSENT turns to it in a future issue...

...UNEMPLOYMENT, AS IT now exists in Michigan, is not merely or even primarily a recession phenomenon...

...But such immediate developments apart, everyone in Michigan who is concerned with the problem agrees that the most significant long-range factor in reducing employment is automation...

...This may provide diversification of industry, but it has not yet made a serious dent in the problem of employment and there is no reason to expect that it will...

...1957 and Dec...

...New production methods associated with automation require singlelevel expanses where there can be a free flow of parts...

...But it surely isn't mere "radical carping" to suggest that problems of this kind might have been put on the bargaining table some years ago, so that the men now suffering the consequences of economic "progress" could have gained some voice in controlling it, and some protection from it...

...Major reasons include overtime and speedup —each of them bitterly-disputed issues in the shops, though word of this seldom reaches people outside of Detroit...

...Other responses have also indicated desperation...

...There are various proposals being discussed in labor circles on how to meet the crisis...

...4 in Flint, where all Chevrolet motors where then produced...

...There are no reliable figures on the proportion of unemployment that can be directly attributed to automation, but it is surely the one factor that is certain to increase in importance— and the one that will be most difficult to cope with through traditional union methods...

...In General Motors decentralization has been a studied policy since at least the late thirties, and with the exception of Cadillac, GM no longer has any major concentration in Detroit...

...Over the past decade decentralization has been used as a way of escaping from the more experienced and militant unionists who had gone through the Michigan sit-down strikes and formed the backbone of the UAW...

...Plant shutdowns...

...Now there are certain local reasons for this dramatic shrinkage in the number of workers needed to maintain previous levels of production...

...Decentralization and automation, though not these alone, magnified the difficulties faced by the smaller auto companies during the past several years...

...When one looks at the automobile industry, with its ethical barbarism, its maniacal wastefulness and its human indifference, one rediscovers the meaning of the idea of democratic and socialist planning—rediscovers it by measuring the distance between what could be done through the use of humane intelligence and what is actually happening...

...We have reached a crucial turning point in the economy of the mass production industries: employment no longer follows Production...

...and often the companies found it cheaper to build these new plants in distant states than to rebuild the old ones in Michigan...

...The weapons revolution has, of course, struck a heavy blow at the Michigan economy, but this is a probIem that does not arise from within the auto industry itself...

...On a recent TV program sponsored by the UAW, an unemployed worker, when asked what he planned to do now that his compensation was ending and he had several children to feed, blurted out, "There's always the river...

...The idea of jobless workers picketing the office of the most progressive union in the country, is not a pretty one...

...but it hopes, for the first time in twenty-five years, to weaken the union's bargaining power considerably...

...In response to Big Three pressures, the independents began a gradual process of pooling resources, mergers and liquidations—a process that seems not yet at an end...

...Packard moved to South Bend and ceased independent production...

...Decentralization of the auto industry...

...For the present, it has no expectation and, perhaps, no desire to crush the UAW...

...Until the last few years, when the companies needed more production they hired more men...

...al socialist indictment of the anarchy of capitalist economy—an indictment that, for obvious reasons, has been somewhat muted in recent years— would seem suddenly to hold with new force...

...Chrysler, it is now rumored, plans to shut its plant in Hamtramck, the industrial suburb of Detroit...

...There has since been some improvement, the latest figure, as of April 15th, being 300,000...

...Soon whole cars were being produced far away from what had once been the exclusive center of the industry...

...But let me indicate my opinion...

...And one rediscovers, too, the truth that Nathaniel Hawthorne, very far from being a radical, noticed a century ago: "In this republican country, amid the fluctuating waves of our social life, somebody is always at the drowning point...

...There was another reason for decentralization...

...When Ford built a new automated press steel plant in Buffalo, it cancelled a long-standing contract with the Murray Body Corporation— and the latter went out of business...

...Chrysler, lagging as usual, has begun to decentralize recently...