The auto bosses at Chrysler and GM who received a nice $81 billion rescue from the US taxpayer* are gearing up for contract talks with the UAW that will take place this year. The auto bosses are feeling very confident. With the help of the UAW leadership they have taken back many of the gains that autoworkers won form the heroic battles and factory occupations of the 1930’s and beyond.
But, as they say, weakness breeds aggression. GM and Chrysler want more. They want Merit Pay back. They want to tie pay to performance. Previous blogs have talked about how the bosses’ media uses all sort of linguistic tricks to manipulate and lie in order to influence thinking and the consciousness of the working class.
“We need to somehow link the performance of the business to the workers.” says Chrysler CEO Sergio Marchionne.
“GM wants more flexibility to entice workers to strive toward improved productivity and quality ..” GM execs said at the Detroit Auto Show this week. “Entice” is the word here; it should read "terrorize". What the bosses want is to return to the days before Unions when working at GM was like a prison work detail. They want to play favorites, pay the younger, faster, healthier and less worn out workers more than those they have used up and have harder time keeping up. They want to be able to fire workers at will and eliminate any Union protections on the job that might cut in to profits. And this is the magic word, profits.
“Union wages for factory workers should be tied to employee performance and the company’s financial well-being…” GM bosses argue.
When workers think of well being, profits don’t occupy the same level of thinking in our minds because we don’t live by the profit on capital, we earn wages. But it is profits the auto execs want to increase as they are forced to compete with their rivals at home and abroad, and in order to accomplish maximum profits; wages, benefits and working conditions must suffer. There was a reason "belt speed" was a major issue in the struggle to win a Union at GM.
We built Unions to protect us from the market and the bosses rapacious quest for profits. The present Union leadership on the other hand are fully integrated in to the business model and it is this mindset and view of the world that leads to their collaboration with the employers and subsequent betrayals of the members, interests and the interests of all workers. They don't have to work under the contracts they negotiate.
Look at what Bob King, the UAW president has to say about the auto bosses efforts to drive us back 70 years. Bob wants to make sure his, “Members are getting their fair share of the upside and have a fair system to do it in the long term.” **
It’s staggering that a Union leader could even talk about members getting their “fair share” after the savage beatings we’ve taken over the past period. On the Merit Pay system the employers want, the bootlicking system is what it is, King says, “I really believe in the sacredness in keeping that confidential. You can make a lot more progress if people aren’t in a public forum”. The only progress the UAW or any Unions have witnessed in contract negotiations is the employers. Warren Buffet said that there is a class war and his class is winning. This is only partially right, his side is the only class that is turning up and we, the US working class including in the Unions, need to correct that and that means overcoming the obstacle of our own leaders.
King adheres to the same type of “diplomatic protocol” the capitalist class uses and that Wikileaks has exposed. No worker is fooled by it. King is signaling to the auto bosses is advance that he is willing to make a deal, give more concessions. If you were prepared to fight you’d be as open as possible about it and begin the mobilization necessary to win.
But let’s not forget, the geniuses atop the UAW already promised GM and Chrysler not to strike until September 2015 as part of the bankruptcy deal. Some UAW members are hoping they will get back some of the concessions they made over the last four years as part of the US working class’ bail out of capitalism. Part of that deal was that the auto makers could p;ay new hires $14 an hour, half the pay of existing workers. But how can you win without the strike?
This wage concession s standard practice for the Union Bureaucracy as new hires, being what they are, can’t vote on a contract and are defenseless victims of the Union leaders' collaborative policies.
The UAW leadership wants to organize the non-Union foreign owned plants as we commented previously and expects workers to jump at the chance to join a Union whose president tells them that “a company with UAW representation is better equipped to compete in an increasingly competitive auto market.” His secret for success is a deal with the bosses, (if they talk to him at all) a signed statement that, “Both Union and management will avoid promising better wages or benefits based on a workers vote for or against the UAW.”
No worker in their right mind would consider joining a Union and paying dues to an organization with the UAW leadership’s record of betrayal and concessions.
By refusing to resist the employers’ offensive, any Union leaders/activists, not just at the top but also in individual Union locals, are willingly or not, paving the way for further defeats and cutbacks. The leadership of the three Unions at my former public sector workplace chose to roll over the contracts without raises for another two years and recommended this to their members as a victory.
But it is a defeat. It is done under the assumption that things will get better and all indications point to the likelihood that they won’t. And even if things improve, the bosses will not give back what they took away even in better times without a major struggle. But by presenting the membership with a fait accompli----- there’s nothing we can do, everybody’s giving stuff up so vote for the status quo and you can go home, is the wrong message. It tells the members that we have no strategy for winning. It leaves the members powerless and with no idea of the potential power that they have; it doesn’t involve them in their own defense, just the opposite, members become willing partners in the destruction of their own living standards/.
It offers the members what seems an easy way out and the leadership avoids having to lead in a time of increased and open conflict. It is one thing if a strategy to resist is put forward and the members reject it, they will learn the lessons of capitulation. But to concede from the beginning is another matter.
It leaves us in a weaker state next time---------and there will be a next time.
*To coax investors to invest in GM the US treasury sold a huge portion of its shares very cheaply rather than wait for a higher price. This “greatly reduced” the likelihood that the taxpayer would be paid back. Says the WSJ. Another gift to the folks that caused the crisis in the first place.
** New Pay Pressure on UAW WSJ, 1-13-11
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