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| Bob King, left, in photo op. Bosses aren't scared |
It was in his office I found a book on management psychology with the following advice for bosses:
“If you're going to strive to motivate workers through autonomy and empowerment, it's important to remember that the primary burden is to make sure employees believe what you say.
Don't tell them you want them to be empowered to increase the company's profits. Tel them you want them to be empowered because it's the best way to remain competitive and guarantee everyone their jobs." (1)
In other words, lie to them.
This supervisor was such a kind man and used to invite me, a humble shop steward and low level Union official, up to his ranch to hang out. I always refused and always told him the truth that it would not be proper for me to take up his offer as nice as it sounded. My co-workers would not like it. Even if I was clean, it was not appropriate. This is a basic for any genuine workers’ representative no matter what their politics. Our co-workers are not that stupid. It would bring their trust in to doubt.
What reminds me of this is the disgusting report in the Wall Street Journal a couple of weeks ago of UAW president, Bob King’s new leadership for that Union. (2) The bosses are feeling very secure in their efforts to drive the conditions of US workers down to the levels of China, Vietnam and Mexico. The UAW and Ford are in negotiations and before negotiations began, the UAW leader and Ford CEO Alan Mulally, a right thug, sat with each other on a chartered jet to Washington. Sharing was the “most expeditious way” to get the two to the same destination says King. How conscientious they are about money these days.
But it gets worse. The “old Us vs Them mentality” is a relic, the Union head says. The UAW “learned the hard way” referring to the bankruptcies at Chrysler and GM. “that the Union has to keep the auto makers profitable. We have to understand the other side,” says King who is the son of a Ford Labor-relations executive. To show how much he cares about the auto bosses’ point of view King has lunch with them once a month; "Dan’s very pragmatic, he tells it like it is” King says of Dan Akerson, head of GM.
This head of a once proud and mighty Union that arose out of the great struggles of the 1930’s where lunching and golfing with the boss was not part of the general approach to Union organizing, is thrilled to be so close to company like this and they have nothing but kind words to say of him. After meeting with the CEO of the parts maker DANA, the CEO was pleased. They talked of “Bob’s vision” and how the Union president, “realized that the company needs to be successful for the employees to be successful.” The CEO was happy that the Union man wanted to know what the Union could do to ensure the company remains “competitive in the industry.”
The Wall Street Journal has encouraging news for its readers--- the UAW leadership is firmly on their side. “I think Bob is going to try and make the UAW symbol like a Good Housekeeping symbol—a sign of approval…” says one auto executive.
Good housekeeping isn’t what comes to mind for the average UAW member, especially in auto where the UAW leadership has brought good housekeeping to a fine art. King intends to continue this pro management strategy lowering wages and benefits, increasing the pace at work and sowing division between workers and increasing bootlicking and tension by tying pay to profits. “Performance based pay has been a regular topic” in the UAW president’s dinners with the GM CEO, says the Journal. It’s a regular love fest. The employers must think they've died and gone to heaven.
All this bootlicking is the Union leaders’ strategy for survival, not for the Unions, for workers organizations, but for them. The UAW has fallen to less than 400,000 members from 1.5 million in 1979 and if things keep going the way they are with bargaining rights disappearing and all, they’ll have no job and no reason to exist and the boss won't want to have dinner with them then.
Throughout the exchanges the term “competitive” keeps coming up. Chrysler’s boss, Sergio Marchionne is confident a deal will be made in their contract talks. Chrysler and the UAW “are committed to crafting a future path that rewards employees for the success of the company while ensuring Chrysler will be able to remain competitive.” He says.
The comments from the UAW leader as disgusting as they are reflect the thinking of the entire Labor hierarchy. None of them opposes the Team Concept and all agree that their job is to help the boss compete with their market rivals at home and abroad. They see themselves simply as Labor brokers, providing Labor power at the cheapest, most profit friendly price and ensuring the workplace conditions reflect the same.
It is their hope that as King believes, that auto capitalists will bring jobs back to the US and allow them to be Union members therefore increasing the numbers in the organization as well as the volume of revenue keeping them in a job. One million members earning $8 an hour is better than 200,000 earning $20 is their warped logic. In order to maintain their position as heads of these once proud organizations they are actually contributing to their increased irrelevance and actual demise; they have almost accomplished their task of turning them in to Labor Ready.
It is hard to imagine that a Union leader so open about his willingness to make paupers out of his members can get elected. If they want to have the auto bosses build cars here they just have to offer lower pay than Vietnamese workers, $3 an hour should do it, plus no strike clauses. Maybe it is because such a huge number of the UAW members are retirees or older workers that this occurs without an explosion from below, I am not sure. I do think that it is maybe likely that any uprising occurring in auto will begin in the non-Union plants or the new hires that the UAW leadership has screwed contract after contract.
King’s strategy flows from his view of the world which is the same as the employers. He accepts that workers have to compete to make their bosses more profitable than their rivals. This is the death knell for workers and our organizations. In order to do that, we have to work cheaper, faster and in an environment that offers the least obstacles to production and profit. We built Unions to protect us from competition not facilitate it.
The one aspect of this that the Wall Street Journal doesn’t take in to consideration is the working class. It is natural for the auto execs and all the other wasters and coupon clippers that live off the Labor of others to feel so confident given the predominance of folks like Bob King and others at the helm of organized Labor. But they are making a mistake in being so cocky, the crisis of capitalism is wreaking havoc in peoples’ lives and at some point here there is going to be an explosion. Every worker I talk to agrees with this, knows it in their gut. Because of the failure of people like Bob King and the rest of the Labor hierarchy as well as the considerable number of left forces in this country that fail to connect to ordinary working people, it won’t be pretty either; but sometimes history is what it is.
Only good can come of it in the end.
(1) Carl Robinson, Vice President, Organizational Psychologists
(2) UAW Boss Makes Nice, Touts End of Us vs Them: WSJ 8-04-11
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