Trouble in Auto
Marquart, Frank
The auto workers are facing serious trouble these days The trouble was dramatized by an incident reported in the Detroit News (Feb. 16): The UAW's 24-year tenure as spokesman for 550,000...
...Latest figures show that 165,000 or 11.7 per cent of Detroit's labor force was jobless in January...
...mains to be seen...
...Not only tens of thousands of auto workers, but whole communities will pay a terrible price because a few oligopolies command the social power to determine cold bloodedly what is to be produced, how much is to be produced, at what prices the products are to be sold, what plants are to be built and where, what kinds of machines are to be installed, how production operations are to be rationalized, when workers are to be hired, and how many are to be thrown on the industrial scrap heap...
...The permanently unemployed are not the only ones who feel demoralized in Detroit...
...Officials of those corporations dismissed the conference with the cynical remark that the best way to fight unemployment is to sell more cars...
...2—The use of overtime—instead of added workers—to increase produc tion...
...Sooner or later the UAW must do what it has failed to do so far: speak out for the crucial idea that the men who make the autos have a share in determining their fate...
...In October 1960, unemployment was 95,000 or 6.8 per cent of the labor force...
...But the real significance of the "rank and file committee" is that it puts into sharp focus the basic problem plaguing auto workers in the Detroit area...
...Institute of Labor and Industrial Relations, University of Michigan and Wayne State University, 1960...
...Detroit News, January 29...
...And those who are temporarily unemployed do not know when they will return to work...
...Secondary leaders at the local union level insist that union morale was never so low as it is today...
...This problem was studied in all of its ramifications after the Packard Motor plant closed down in Detroit.* In the section dealing with the psychological impact of unemployment the authors of the study found that responses indicated feelings of helplessness, apathy, pessimism, and personal futility about the future...
...They know that thousands of their fellow workers who have been laid off will never again be called back...
...Is it any wonder that workers in the auto plants feel bewildered, frustrated and afraid...
...Such an atmosphere is hardly conducive to union solidarity...
...In modernizing its plants Chrysler, for many years Detroit's biggest employer, trailed behind General Motors and Ford...
...And all the time the large companies continue to decentralize, to automate, to shift their operations in order to get out more production with fewer workers...
...Compare this figure with the average case load of 4,700 for the period 1955-56...
...Ouster of the Union as bargaining agent for employees at the Nine Mile press plant of Chrysler Corp...
...No matter what formal demands the convention decides on, there will be teeth behind them...
...Two principal factors account for the sharp drop in hourly rated employment: 1—Increased efficiency and a general tightening of production stand ards—particularly at Chrysler...
...The spokesman said some of the Nine Mile men had already been bumped by the follow-the-job-operation employees with greater seniority...
...Chrysler was still building its cars in obsolete multi-story plants after General Motors and Ford had erected assembly plants tailored to fit automated machinery, in strategic market areas across the country...
...UNTIL THE UAW holds its special convention in April to draft its economic demands, any speculation about the major issues that will be raised at the bargaining table would be premature...
...Almost as alarming as the January figure is the rate of increase in this city's jobless...
...The union's strike fund now containing more than $31,000,000 is expected to grow to $40,000,000 by July...
...We haven't got a man on welfare," the official said, "who wouldn't rather be working than going through what he has to go through to draw his welfare check...
...Employees in Chrysler's other Detroit plants are also "greatly worried...
...Denise did not reply to this during the debate but later sent a letter to the union snubbing the idea...
...In this dynamic productive process there is no level at which the labor force becomes stabilized, no level at which those who are still working can feel secure about their jobs...
...There are no figures to show how many of the permanently un employed workers are aware, or unaware, that they will never again be recalled to their jobs...
...The Nine Mile employees feared they would be bumped from their jobs, because of a UAW agreement with Chrysler that when operations are moved to a new location, the employees performing the operations move with the job...
...This February the Detroit Welfare Department reported 1,350 relief applicants per week for the past six weeks...
...The UAW is taking steps to suppress the rift for fear it might have damaging effects on this year's contract negotiations...
...The Union will be in a weak bargaining position and the big corporations will plan their strategy accordingly...
...was demanded in petitions circulated by a rank-and-file committee...
...So the Nine Mile workers are greatly worried...
...Old timers in Chrysler plants insist that speedup is now more intense than at any time since the thirties...
...Already the Big Three have arrogantly declined invitations from Walter Reuther to attend a union-sponsored "Get America Back to Work" conference...
...Taken together, these factors produce results such as were summed up in a Detroit News report, January 21, 1960: The auto companies will hit peak production this quarter with about 136,000 fewer production workers on their payrolls than they had during the previous record year in 1955...
...But if it can't match GM and Ford in capital investment, it can and does pursue a policy of pitting its workers against the machines of its competitors...
...Those drawing unemployment compensation hope they will be back to work before they exhaust their jobless claims and use up their savings, and are forced to apply for welfare relief...
...Those displaced workers are the victims of technological and structural changes in the auto industry since the post-war period...
...What happens to auto workers who are permanently dropped from a firm for which they worked a long time...
...In addition to technological and structural unemployment, Detroit has more than its share of cyclical unemployment...
...The Detroit welfare load in January 1961 amounted to 12,471 cases—about 55,000 persons...
...A union spokesman at the Nine Mile plant explained how the trouble started: "On February 7 Chrysler announced a transfer of stamping operations from another plant to its Nine Mile plant...
...Parts plants are closing their doors as the big producers fabricate their own parts in order to make their automated equipment pay off...
...During the debate Bannon said the union "may feel it necessary to put some restrictions in our contracts as to where management locates new plants...
...16): The UAW's 24-year tenure as spokesman for 550,000 Detroit-area auto workers was challenged today...
...To survive Chrysler was forced to follow the pattern of decentralization and automation...
...Chrysler is of course the weakest of the Big Three...
...But one thing is certain: Regardless of what gains the Union wins at the bargaining table, the process which is creating an ever larger new lumpen proletariat in the auto centers will continue so long as management's "sole prerogatives" remain intact...
...To what extent the UAW is prepared to show or use its teeth re * Too Old to Work—Too Young to Retire: A Case Study of a Permanent Plant Shutdown...
...Plants which once employed over 15,000 workers are now operating with a labor force of less than 3,000...
...To DECENTRALIZATION, automation and speedup, add the UAW policy of permitting the company to force overtime on its workers when thousands of their fellow workers are unemployed...
...in three months unemployment increased by 70,000 or 73.7 per cent...
...Another UAW suggestion was rebuffed after Ford's labor relations vice president, Malcolm Denise, engaged in a debate with UAW's Ford Department director, Ken Bannon, on automation...
...THE PHYSICAL HARDSHIP of living on welfare is by no means the worst that a displaced worker has to endure...
...Prepared by Harold L. Sheppard, Louis A. Ferman, and Seymour Faber...
...This development is the first of its kind since the United Automobile Workers Union forced General Motors to its knees in 1937—and then won contracts from Chrysler, Ford and the lesser companies...
...To make matters worse for the Union, the 1961 negotiations will take place in a year which began with close to a million unsold cars in dealers' stocks...
Vol. 8 • April 1961 • No. 2
