Mapping Out Auto: An Introduction
It is no news to anyone that we are experiencing the second major energy crisis of the decade. Everything from President Carter's unpopularity to the disaster at Three Mile Island seems to...
...and beleaguered Chrysler tails behind with under 12% of the market share...
...From now on we will have to map out strategies on a global scale and deploy our forces dynamically...
...2 (Spring 1979), p. 192, and Gerald Bloomfield, The World Automotive Industry (Newton Abbot, England: David & Charles, 1978), p. 162 ff...
...The ratio of supervisors to workers had to be tripled in order to control production...
...Time, March 19, 1979...
...The conveyor is the master...
...Cost estimates for the massive re-tooling vary widely, but somewhere between $18-80 billion will be spent by the U.S...
...AUTO COMPANIES ca...
...Bloomfield, op...
...industry as a whole), but from 1960 to 1971 it fell to 3% per year and has since dropped further...
...CAFE requirements refer to the average mpg figures of a company's various models rather than the figure attained by each car model...
...Compulsory overtime, an endemic feature in the industry, can extend to 53 hours a week under the contract, but extra "voluntary" overtime is in practice often non-negotiable...
...At Ford's main plant, turnover reached 400% in the first few years...
...For all three, the processes involved tend to be highly capital-intensive and by and large are done by the Big Three companies themselves...
...The workers were assaulted by the combined attack of increased speed-up and the de-skilling of their jobs...
...The number of autoworkers soared from 12,000 in 1904 to 76,000 in 1909, and by 1916 the AWU had 13,000 members...
...Ibid., p. 32...
...6 Aside from the 760,500 production workers directly making and assembling a car, thousands of others make the estimated 20,000 components that go into one automobile.' Key inputs include steel (20% of all that is produced in the United States), glass, tires (60% of all rubber), batteries, radios and upholstery...
...ILER, op...
...UNTIL NOW, THE BIGGER THE BETTER For years, Detroit had pushed gas guzzlers as the most desirable way to travel because, as is commonly understood in the industry, the larger the car the higher the profit.1' The auto companies had relied on the glamour of annual model changes with progressively lower levels of fuel efficiency...
...Caldwell, op...
...The upshot is that the auto industry and its suppliers as a whole are laborintensive and capital-intensive at the same time...
...Another path to labor intensification is using the fewest workers for the maximum amount of time...
...3 ' GM expressed it more obliquely back in 1958: "If GM has said it once, it's said it ten thousand times: 'a good used car is the answer to the American public's need for cheap transportation.' "40 The only change in 20 years is that now, they are celebrating the world car as the cheap solution for the public and the most profitable solution for them...
...Some noses are going to get bloodied...
...Report published inJune 1979 by National Transportation Policy Study Commission, as quoted in Newsweek, July 16, 1979...
...Throughout the 1920s internal struggles, economic crises, employers' anti-union tactics and jurisdictional disputes plagued organizing efforts...
...Dan Georgakas and Marvin Surkin, Detroit: I Do Mind Dying(New York: St...
...As quoted in Stephen Geisler, "GM and the Destruction of Urban Transportation," Win, August 17, 1978...
...Business Week, November 20, 1978...
...They require high-volume production in order to attain economies of scale, and to some extent, specialized factories have developed as a result...
...Additionally, it is possible that other jobs will emerge for computer programmers, designers and engineers, builders of advanced technology, etc...
...6. Time, March 19, 1979...
...2 2 A second consequence of the moving assembly line was that many less efficient producers were driven out of business...
...Business Week, November 20, 1978...
...market for the first five months of 1979...
...Briefly, the U.S...
...See Table...
...Although he vastly exaggerates the task at hand and the government's role within it, the "next five years are really the heart of this century for the automobile industry," according to Lee Iacocca of Chrysler...
...For example, in 1978 General Motors earned an operating profit of $1,362 on each full-sized car it sold, compared to just $449 on each compact and a mere $147 on each subcompact...
...The UAW was part of the general labor upsurge of the mid-30s that argued for industrial organization and representation...
...New York Times, June 19, 1979, for 1979 figures...
...Industrial workers in Germany, for example, receive 40% higher wages than comparable workers in the United States...
...On the other hand, the mechanisms at work in auto graphically reveal the fundamental processes of capitalism...
...4. Fortune, July 16, 1979...
...The industry has been instructed to achieve corporate average fuel economy (CAFE) requirements* of 19 mpg in 1979 and 27.5 mpg by 1985, accompanied by both environmental controls and greater safety requirements...
...This great technological advance of the conveyor belt did not put new tools into workers' hands, but did imply drastic plant reorganization and sharply raised the capital-labor ratio by expanding the necessary economies of scale...
...But since auto production involves so many different components, generalizations can be quite misleading...
...Although wages are higher than the national average for industrial workers, they are currently low enough to give the companies a competitive edge over some of their European rivals...
...of forthcoming pamphlet, p. 3. 22...
...And these tremors occur regularly since auto sales are particularly vulnerable to the economy's boom/bust cycle: when times are hard, people simply put off buying a car...
...Re-tooling requires additional labor and, especially in the skilled trades, employment is up...
...They are using this period to streamline all aspects of production and to bring onto line as sophisticated techniques as possible...
...The conveyor's speed invariably determines the worker's speed...
...3 4 Although conditions vary considerably within the Big Three's plants-- Chrysler being in notoriously bad shape-in general, autoworkers' jobs are physically exhausting and mentally deadening...
...cit., p. 17...
...To manufacturers, a 1% market share can be worth $700 million in revenues...
...Emma Rothschild, Paradise Lost: The Decline of the Auto-Industrial Age (New York: Random House, 1973), p. 48...
...The description of this process, explained by a visitor to a Ford plant at the time still holds true today: When the conveyor is speeded up the workers are forced to follow its dictates, and to hurry with their jobs accordingly...
...And large fuel-eating monsters simply won't sell in those markets...
...In this sense, the clamor over the world car is a bit of a hype...
...motor vehicle industry comprises three large terminal producers (i.e., those producing fully-assembled vehicles), all of which are among the largest transnational corporations (TNCs) in the United States...
...There is no doubt that some technological changes have been striking...
...usually one workman performed all of the operations necessary on a small part 21 Since only simple technologies with low capital requirements were needed, entry into the industry was easy...
...The union had originally organized carriage and wagon workers through the Knights of Labor, and in 1891 became an AFL affiliate...
...this early application of the moving assembly line reduced production time by one-half 6JulylAugust 1979 had already seized 90% of the U.S...
...Within the first five years of its introduction, production costs were cut by 50% and the price of a Model T fell by one-third...
...By World War II, the UAW had become the largest union in the country with a membership of over one million workers...
...The river and lake system, supplemented by rail, facilitated transport...
...The AWU was effectively replaced by the United Automobile, Aerospace, and Agricultural Implement Workers of America (UAW...
...3 In the last year, Volkswagen (VW) has stolen fourth place from American Motors Corp...
...For example, during World War II, when the industry nearly stopped producing cars and converted to military production, real wages fell and the number of strikes more than doubled...
...3 The work itself has only superficially changed since the early days...
...But in the course of this struggle more American workers have died than in all the four major wars...
...sales worldwide.s About one out of six jobs in the United States is directly or indirectly related to automobile production, with some 14 million workers engaged in vehicle manufacture and its dependent industries...
...Al Fabar, "Auto in the Eighties: Uncars and Unworkers," Radical America, Vol...
...Fabar, op...
...2 8 INTENSIFICATION OF LABOR Since World War II, the push to squeeze maximum production from every worker has continued...
...But soon thereafter, Ford had a better idea...
...This is a violent struggle...
...Source: Counter-information Service, CIS Anti-Report: Ford...
...However, the combined effects of the recession of the early 1920s, open-shop drives and the Palmer raids, all but decimated the AWU...
...government has entered the scene to regulate the industry's 45 transition to greater gas economy...
...Final assembly is quite another story, with many working on one car simultaneously...
...3. First two statistics from New York Times, April 27, 1979...
...28-9...
...For workers, it means speed-up...
...On the one hand, due to the industry's size and scope, a shake-up in auto reverberates throughout the economy...
...The introduction of mass production was met by massive worker resistance- sabotage, slowdowns, and absenteeism...
...Between 1919 and 1930, annual productivity increased by more than 8.6% (as compared to 1.9% for U.S...
...They never tire, they never sweat, they never complain, they never miss work...
...industry before 1985.91 Ford and GM, with record sales in the first quarter of 1979, will not suffer from the expenditures and are prepared to get their money's worth...
...When walking through a plant, the distinctions between operations are readily apparent...
...Close to five million cars were coming off the line by 1929, owned by one out of every five adults.2" CENTRALIZATION IN U.S...
...XLIII, No...
...13, No...
...Senate Subcomittee on Antitrust and Monopoly in 1974: ". . . three powerful automobile companies...
...Sometimes it is organized and guided...
...But the new world car differs from its predecessors in several respects...
...Imports of smaller foreign cars have sped up from 6.3% in 1965 to more than 21% of the U.S...
...Although the use of robots and numerical control (see third article) are the most apparent changes, the overall proportion of fixed costs for machinery has increased steadily in the last two decades...
...In response, all new car advertising now focuses on "miles per gallon" (mpg) and even the Cadillac is being billed as a "Long Distance Runner.'" 2 However, the energy crisis has implications for the motor vehicle industry that go far beyond superficial expressions of real or contrived shortage...
...The Ford Motor Company," Counter Information Service (CIS) Anti-Report (London, 1978), p. 4 for 1975 figure...
...Among the original bicycle producers were Henry Ford, Glen Olds and the Chevrolet brothers...
...The market had expanded so quickly that by 1925, "ownership of an automobile reached the point of being an accepted essential of normal living...
...1910 181 1923 108 1927 44 1931 35 1941 12 1954 6 1979 4* * 5, if VW is included Source: Rhys Jenkins, Dependent Industrialization in in Latin America and current industry sources...
...It is no secret that the United States, with the most advanced auto industry, maintains the worst system of public transportation in the developed world...
...For example, as explained by a union official at GM's Lordstown plant: When they took the Unimates on, we were building 60 an hour...
...By the first year of the Depression, Detroit registered the highest unemployment rate in the country, and hundreds of thousands of autoworkers were jobless everywhere...
...market...
...At that time, the energy crisis induced cutbacks in production, and about one-third of the labor force was laid off...
...3 " Not surprisingly, the two are related...
...Chrysler is the exception to every rule, and rather than improving old plants, WORLD PRODUCTION OF AUTOMOBILES Number of cars Percentage of North produced American Production* 1950 7.8 million 85% 1971 21.7 million 41% 1976 37.5 million 34.7% *U.S...
...But not only cars will be made in different countries...
...This process of economic centralization and concentration was rapid...
...Philip Caldwell, Vice Chairman of the Board, Ford Motor Company, "The Fiesta Factor: Turning Point in Multinational Management," speech delivered in Dearborn, Michigan, April 19, 1978, p. 5. 15...
...Forbes, March 19, 1979...
...According to a document submitted to the U.S...
...Pressure to downsize not only persists, but has gotten worse...
...In addition, the U.S...
...market, though still the largest in the world, is approaching the saturation point with one car for every two people in the country...
...cit., p. 38...
...JulylAugust 1979NACLA Report Transportation currently consumes 55% of all U.S...
...ENTER THE WORLD CAR With much fanfare, the business press has announced the coming of the "world car...
...However, the squeezed-out firms were not the only casualties of the moving assembly lines...
...since parts are increasingly standardized, they, too, will be produced across national borders and then assembled into one vehicle...
...For renewed competitive strength, Detroit is presently conducting the largest overhaul in its history...
...This facility will allow manufacturers a flexibility they've never had before...
...Athough the workforce has expanded by about 20.4% since 1948, motor vehicle production has increased by 144.5%.29 As impressive as these figures appear, they are considered low relative to the spectacular productivity gains attained in the early years of the industry...
...Soon after, disputes arose with the AFL over its craft orientation, which was becoming increasingly inappropriate for autoworkers as the effects of mass production de-skilled their jobs...
...By 1922, 65% of Detroit's working population was unemployed and the AWU's national membership was reduced to 800...
...s All in all, autoworkers have been hard hit by speed-up, hazardous or unhealthy working conditions and job insecurity, while auto executives make millions...
...Partially, the excitement is a cover for the companies to jack up small car prices to levels that would have been unthinkable a few years ago...
...From a social point of view, a logical answer to the energy crisis would be to resurrect a mass transit system...
...cit., p. 189...
...their tendency is to shut them down, rehabilitating what they can...
...And the "Bug" was only competing for the small economy car market, then the least important sector in Detroit's eyes...
...petroleum, 85% of which fills the tanks of automobiles.' And gas prices have skyrocketed from 35 cents per gallon four years ago to $1.00 a gallon and up as of mid-1979...
...But for the motor vehicle industry inparticular, the consequences of the crisis are especially drastic...
...See Table...
...Because plant closures, automation and recession continue to threaten their jobs, workers often try to get the extra money while they can...
...Within a decade, nearly half of all autoworkers lived in Michigan alone, making 75% of all autos...
...And to varying extents, the "Big Three" producers-GM, Ford and Chrysler-hoped that the crisis would soon pass...
...Unionization- although a crucial and hardfought victory-- hardly marked the end of the workers' struggle with the auto companies...
...Roger R. Keeran, "Communist Influence in the Automobile Industry, 1920-1933: Paving the Way for an Industrial Union," Labor History, Vol...
...9. These figures for 1974 are taken from the Motor Vehicle Manufacturers Association (MVMA), Motor Vehicle Facts and Figures, 1978, p. 69...
...Thirdly, the world car is essentially redefining the type of car North Americans drive, which will be more similar to cars the world over...
...Business Week, March 12, 1979...
...2 0 Initially, the production process was quite underdeveloped, as revealed by Ford's account of the early Model T: In our first assemblying, we simply started to put a car together on a spot on the floor and workmen brought to it the parts as they were needed in exactly the same way that one builds a house...
...Threefourths of the terminal-end autoworkers still work in the Great Lakes Region, about 40% of them in Michigan...
...number of components according to UAW sources...
...8. Percentages taken from William Serrin, The Company and the Union (New York: Vintage, 1974), p.5...
...Other parts, like upholstery, which are needed in lower volume and vary significantly from model to model, remain less mechanized...
...As this crisis has once again heightened competition, the auto companies are forced to decisively change their past practices...
...It enabled Ford to dramatically increase annual car production from 12,000 in 1909 to two million in 1921, and to thereby capture a full 55% of the U.S...
...3 FURTHER CHANGES DOWN THE PIKE Since World War II, the number of transnational auto corporations competing on a world scale has sharply increased and the percentage of U.S.-produced vehicles has drastically fallen...
...To top it all off, the U.S...
...cit., p. 2. 19...
...GM's then-president Harlon H. Curtice as quoted in Lawrence J. White, The Automobile Industry Since 1945 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1971), p 184...
...It was primarily centered in the Great Lakes Region, which was to become one of the world's largest industrial complexes...
...A general restructuring has been accelerated, which will affect the industry, workers and the overall economy...
...by 1930 Ford, GM and Chrysler, three out of the 30-odd producers, Magneto assembly operation at Ford Motor Co.'s Highland Park plant, 1913...
...Many of the operations in these plants have been greatly affected by mechanization...
...NACLA interviews with autoworkers in Michigan and Massachusetts, June 1979...
...7. Bureau of Labor Statistics figures for SIC 371, Employment and Earnings, 1978, for number of production workers...
...9 PAST DEVELOPMENT The origins of the industry date back to carriage and bicycle production, the latter being the first mass-produced transportation vehicle reaching its heyday in the 1890s...
...2 Therefore, foreign markets in both Europe and the underdeveloped countries are fast becoming crucial areas for expansion...
...I (Spring 1979), p. 4, 13, 18...
...Although the full product line will still exist (luxury cars, compacts, subcompacts, etc...
...193-223...
...For example, Time, March 19, 1979, says lower figure and Business Week, March 26, 1979, cites higher one...
...MVMA, 1972 Automotive Facts and Figures, pp...
...Keeran, op...
...third statistic from Detroit Free Press, June 10, 1979...
...cit., p. 10...
...Fiesta) began a new chapter in multinational business co-operation with management implications far beyond the European continent or Ford...
...cit., pp...
...Ibid., p. 40, p. 20...
...Moreover, the world car has become the focus of a new level of international competition, ushering in a period of global restructuring for the industry...
...must work ten percent faster...
...ILER, op...
...and Canada...
...But with the gas crisis of 1973-75, a trend toward "downsizing" began, so that even the largest and flashiest models became more compact...
...To some extent a world car is not an earthshakingly new idea...
...a new emphasis will be placed on fuel efficiency and competitive advantages with imports...
...But small changes can make big differences...
...Everything from President Carter's unpopularity to the disaster at Three Mile Island seems to relate to the "shortage" of energy...
...As a result of these pressures, Ford estimates that by the 1980s, one out of three cars will be subcompacts, as opposed to the one in five ratio of the late 1960s...
...There are three essential parts to any vehicle: engines, transmissions and gearboxes, and stamped-out bodies...
...5. Ward's Automotive Yearbook, 1978, p. 9 5 , for a number of vehicles...
...A world car is simply one built from standardized parts and sold, with few changes, in any major market...
...They go by them about 110 an hour...
...cit., p. 32...
...General Motors (GM) is the largest, currently capturing almost 60% of the U.S...
...For many workers, the memory of 1973-75 is still9 very vivid...
...Before describing the details and analyzing the meaning of the world car in the third article, we turn to look at the development of the industry in Latin America...
...After all, Ford pioneered the idea with its Model T, building it in the United States and shipping it unchanged to Europe...
...A Unimate is a welding robot...
...1 6 The combined effect of all these factors has indeed accelerated the motor force of increased capital accumulation: competition...
...The AWU was suspended from the AFL, became an independent and by early 1920, had 45,000 members...
...Time, March 19, 1979, for sales figures...
...market...
...Martin's Press, 1975), p. 107...
...Also attractive was the fact that Detroit was notorious as an antiunion, open-shop town...
...But the most graphic illustration of worker unrest was the high level of labor turnover...
...But not until VW's Beetle was there large-scale penetration of a foreign market with a versatile car...
...However, change comes slowly to an industry that takes three years to translate new car designs from paper to assembly line...
...As a Ford executive so graphically put it: "It's going to be a hell of a dog fight...
...Most times it is unorganized and spontaneous...
...AMC) whose auto share is a meager 2.1%.4 All together, 9.2 million vehicles were sold in the United States in 1978 and these companies totaled $100 billion of * These figures are approximate since the unpredictability of auto sales translates into shifting percentages...
...Does not include Mexico...
...But, outside of the Model T, none seems likely to have such a long-lasting and decisive effect on the management of our world-wide operations as an 11-foot-long little car called The Fiesta...
...Secondly, the world car represents an internationalized production process, not just the marketing of finished vehicles...
...When we came back to work with the Unimates, we were building 100 cars an hour...
...As quoted in Institute for Labor Education and Research (ILER), Work in a Gold-Plated Sweatshop, unpublished mss...
...It looks like a praying mantis...
...First, it reflects an increased interpenetration of traditional international markets...
...Then came the Big Crash in 1929...
...It secured its position in the industry in 1936-37 with the well-known sit-down strikes at GM plants...
...It goes from spot to spot to spot...
...MAPPING OUT AUTO 1. Newsweek, July 16, 1979...
...Rhys Owen Jenkins, Dependent Industrialization in Latin America: The Automotive Industry in Argentina, Chile and Mexico (New York: Praeger, 1977), p. 17...
...The effect has been apparent in motorists' anger on long gas lines and in the unprecedented back inventories of large cars in factory parking lots...
...Between 25% and 30% of the total labor force is absorbed in final assembly and body trim...
...Labor militancy reached a high point in 1944 when there were more strikes, involving more workers, than in any other period of the industry's history...
...Time, March 19, 1979...
...The workers are bound to the conveyor the way the galley slaves were bound to the vessel...
...Passing by the manufacture of engine blocks, almost no workers are visible, the parts falling from one machine to the next...
...3 0 The auto executives maintain that these productivity increases mainly accrue to new machinery and what is known euphemistically as good management...
...20, No...
...Ford was forced to hire 52,000 workers just to maintain a workforce of 13,600.26 UNIONIZATION The companies' use of incentive pay systems (piece rate), acute job insecurity, and dangerous working conditions with an exceptionally high accident rate made the need for labor organization compelling...
...In the early period, a total of 181 companies were producing cars...
...Organizing was undertaken by many groups, but by 1919 the only major trade union was the United Automobile, Aircraft and Vehicle Workers (AWU...
...market;* Ford follows second with a little more than 27...
...Workers merely supervise...
...Productivity jumped from two cars per worker per year in 1904 to more than 20 in 1925.25 This productivity increase was largely accomplished by the intenification of labor, not by the introduction of more sophisticated machinery...
...Workers took over the plants to ensure that production was not shifted to scab labor for less organized shops, and led militant battles against the companies and police until the 7NACLA Report right to organize was finally won...
...When 60-hour weeks go on for too long, workers have resisted, but for the most part, the overtime is welcomed...
...Business Week, March 26, 1979...
...After instituting a series of measures to heighten efficiency, including fragmenting tasks to their simplest operations, and reorganizing the shop to reflect an uninterrupted sequence of production, the moving assembly line was invented, which revolutionized auto manufacture...
...In 1893, the Duryea brothers built the first successfully gas-propelled vehicle, and by the early 1900s, a primitive auto industry was developing...
...Roger R. Keeran, "Everything for Victory: Communist Influence in the Auto Industry During World War II," Science & Society, Vol...
...Keeran, op...
...And again, Ford was at the forefront of this development: In the three quarters of a century since its founding, Ford has built nearly 150 million vehicles...
...Worker militancy has not again reached the level it was at a decade ago but as a leader at that time stated: There is literally a war going on inside the American factories...
...l(January-February 1979), p. 32...
...This uneven automation feeds right into the old routine of speed-up and job de-skilling...
...Unlike the crisis of 1973-75, however, the momentary effects of increased automation have not witnessed extensive job loss, at least at GM and Ford...
...4 Ex-Transportation Secretary Brock Adams has asserted that Detroit, forced by federal regulations, is doing "nothing less than reinventing the car...
...2. Taken from an advertisement appearing in the New York Times, July 17, 1979...
...If the management in a factory decided to increase its speed by ten percent.., tens of thousands of hands...
...secured control over rival bus and rail industries and then maximized profits by substituting cars and trucks for trains and streetcars, subways and buses...
...Many of these strikes were wildcats over intolerable working conditions and low pay...
...8 Workers in road construction, auto service and repair, retail and advertising are all intrinsically affected by the industry...
...This dual nature of the industry has meant that when technological changes are implemented on the line, not only is efficiency enhanced and the number of jobs reduced, but usually only one segment is automated...
...It releases that thing and it jumps back into position, ready for the next car...
...As the president of Nissan Motors explained: We find ourselves on the eve of intense international competition with American automakers in the small-car market, which hitherto has been the Japanese makers' stronghold...
...Bureau of Labor Statistics figures for SIC 371, Employment and Earnings, 1909-75, and yearly report for 1978...
...2 4 Each job was so broken down that work amounted to repeating the same small task hour after hour, day after day...
...The area was well suited to supply the myriad of necessary parts, and JulylAugust 1979NACLA Report was the home of the engineering industry which supplied the necessary machine tools...
Vol. 13 • July 1979 • No. 4
