UAW Members at Volvo Plant Reject Contract a Second Time. What's Next?

UAW Local 2019 members strike Volvo's Dublin Virginia Plant

 

By Richard Mellor

Afscme Local 444, retired

6-11-21

 

Reading the article in Labor Notes on the ongoing struggle of workers at the Volvo plant in Virginia brings back memories of similar battles union members have been fighting for years.

 

The Volvo workers, members of the United Auto Workers Union, have voted a concessionary contract down twice. It’s very much the same old story. In so many contract disputes where the membership pushes back against the concessionary approach of their own leaders, the power of the union hierarchy mobilizes against them.

 

There are so many examples of this like the rejection of a UAW leadership proposed contract by the workers at the Chrysler plant in Kokomo some years ago. We had the same here in the Bay Area when public sector workers in SEIU working for the city rejected a contract the leadership was forcing on them. Rather than build on the contract rejection, top Union officials attacked their members for voting down the contract claiming they were “confused” and ensured the bosses that they would “take another package of concessions to their members for a vote…”

 

The Boeing workers suffered the same fate in November 2013 overwhelmingly rejecting their contract by a 67% to 33% margin only to pass it two months later. Threats by Boeing bosses, union officials and their allies in the Democratic Party that the company would leave Seattle if the workers didn’t accept concessions, played a role but the main reason was the intervention of the National Association of Machinists International (IAM) leadership that fraudulently forced it on the members on behalf of the employers.

 

As far as the UAW is concerned, I was involved some years ago with the Cleveland Five, members of the bargaining committee of a UAW local at a Freightliner plant in  Cleveland North Carolina who fought back aggressively for their members and ended up going on strike.  The UAW hierarchy collaborated with the employers in undermining these five members of the local. There have been other sellouts by the UAW top leadership including in 1998 at Accuride, a supplier of steel wheels in Kentucky.

 

What is happening at Volvo in Virginia has been going on for a long time. The reader can get the details of the issues at stake from the Labor Notes article and will see that its nothing new. The UAW is also not the only national leadership of a major union that plays this role, the entire leadership of organized labor in the US, the AFL-CIO and Change To Win Coalition play the same role. The most important aspect of this treachery is to understand why.

 

Anyone that follows Facts For Working People blog is aware that I do not claim that it is simply corruption, and by that I mean corruption in the sense of criminal behavior such as we have witnessed atop the UAW of late; nor is it the excessive perks and obscene salaries the labor hierarchy receives although they are connected but they are secondary features in my opinion.

 

The primary reason for this treachery, or more accurately, class collaboration, is that the labor bureaucracy has the same world view as the employers. They support the so-called free market, see it as the answer to all things and they see no alternative to capitalism; if only Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and their colleagues could just be a little less aggressive, not so greedy. With this view, whenever the system goes in to crisis, whenever profits are threatened, the labor leadership moves to bail it out and restore profitability and that means suppressing any rank and file movement of workers that threatens this view. It is encapsulated in the Team Concept that workers and capitalists have the same interests.

 

This powerful combination of corporate America-------the investors, hedge fund managers, speculators and other parasites that actually determine social and economic policy in our society-------and their allies within organized labor and specifically those at the helm, will wear down resistance such as we have seen time and time again. Workers cannot be on picket lines forever they have mortgages and they will face the moneylender who will send the sheriffs to remove them from their homes if they fall short. We also get our medical care from our jobs. The first thing my employer did during our strike was to send us a letter reminding us that our medical benefits ended at the end of the month

 

For the labor officials trying to sell a bad deal, it's different. They don’t lose out when workers stand on picket lines for weeks on end. They leave locals isolated, standing alone against a global corporation backed by Wall Street, the media, the judicial system, the police and the National Guard along withthe two big business parties.

 

What’s The Alternative?

 

A short distance from where these brothers and sisters are leading an heroic battle against a global corporation (Volvo is the world’s second largest producer of heavy duty trucks) we saw a huge union struggle that took place in a right to work state, I am referring to the teachers/educators strike in West Virginia in 2018. This clash with the state, as teachers are public sector employees, was opposed by the official trade union leadership. The West Virginia strikes and protests and those that followed in other Red States, were rank and file led, generally opposed by the official trade union leadership and were organized completely differently from the narrow, isolated and passive approach of the union hierarchy that has failed us for decades.

 

In Kentucky, where teachers and parents shut down schools and also fought for the Kentucky Education Association, affiliated with the country’s largest union, the NEA, to include social issues like police violence and gang ordinances that overwhelmingly affect communities of color in their demands, were not only opposed by leaders of the teachers union but also by other union officials from  Afscme, the Teamsters and SEIU.  A press conference was called where these officials publicly attacked the most militant sections of the teacher and parents around Jefferson County and Louisville. You can watch this disgraceful assault on teachers and parents by union officials here.  Scroll down a little.

 

In Arizona, Oklahoma and other areas there were educators strikes and mass protests that took place. The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) for 2018 recorded the highest percentage of work stoppages in three decades. This caused concern among the top echelons of organized labor as they are terrified of victories that would inspire millions of workers and encourage other union rank and file to take action. In the Red states, the official leadership was too weak or non-existent in these areas to hold back this militancy. Had the reverse been true they would have crushed it as they are attempting to do with the workers at the Volvo plant. Read more about this significant labor uprising here  here and read an excellent account of how the strikes and protests were organized here.  I should also add that teachers/educators in Puerto Rico have also played a huge role in the struggle against capital and the efforts to destroy public education.

 

During these events, Fact For Working People suggested that a conference be called, perhaps in Kentucky at that time, or somewhere similar where labor was on the move. Such a conference could unite all the struggles in education as well as invite rank and file and shop floor representatives from other industries and unions. In this way, a permanent structure could be built, learning the lessons of these victorious teachers battles and building a national movement against the disastrous Team Concept and for a fighting trade union offensive.

 

A similar effort along these lines occurred during the Hormel strike in 1985-86. As Peter Rachleff puts it in his excellent account of the Hormel Strike, Hard Pressed in the Heartland, “Between June and December 1985, union activists from around the country who shared a commitment to local P9, came together to organize “National Rank and File Against Concessions”. More than 600 delegates attended that conference and I was one of them. It gave me great hope for the future but was unfortunately undermined through the intervention of sectarian left organizations that place recruitment and building their own groups ahead of helping to build a mass movement of working people directed at the offensive of capital. I was not aware of why the NRFAC disappeared until I read Peter Rachleff’s account which is unfortunately an all too common occurrence when the self-styled socialist groups, enter the workers’ movement.

 

The Volvo workers are fighting an heroic battle, but they are against a formidable foe in the form of their own leadership. To prevail in this most difficult of all struggles, the internal one, what I suggest is the road they have to take, I can’t see any other alternative. In the strike in my own workplace in 1985 we stressed the same points, we cannot win alone, no local can, no union can. There was clearly an upsurge in class and union consciousness in West Virginia in 2018. While the hierarchy has managed to ensure that movement never spread causing a retreat for now, it is indisputable that lessons have not been learned and the bosses will not stop, so the retreat is temporary. 

 

Labor Notes and DSA

It would be important to reach out to these workers or any other workers that have been in struggle in the area in the past period. It is patently obvious that the UAW leadership will not do this, will not reach out to labor both organized and unorganized to help win a victory at Volvo not just for those involved but for all workers, union or non-union. The labor hierarchy didn’t refuse to build on the teachers’ movement in 2018 and it is their hope that the Volvo bosses, with their help, will wear down the Volvo strikers.  Victories terrify the labor hierarchy because they inspire labors the rank and file, the folks that pay the dues.

 

It seems an impossible task but it could be made a lot easier with the help of organizations like Labor Notes and the Democratic Socialists of America. My difference with Labor Notes’ approach in the labor movement is well documented on Facts For Working People Blog, but LN built a caucus after the teachers strikes. I attended one of its zoom meetings led by a LN Staffer. It was dismally depressing to be honest and I can’t image a worker not coming away from that caucus meeting extremely depressed and disillusioned, but Labor Notes has a certain respectability and resources and could play a different role. Labor Notes' article on the Volvo strike is useful and informative. But it simply reports on events. That is not in itself harmful but is not very inspiring from an organization whose movers and shakers claim to be socialists. Labor Notes’ approach consciously avoids a clash with the present pro-management leadership of organized labor that cannot be avoided for any group or individual that claims to offer union members an alternative to the present concessionary clique.

 

But Labor Notes has the capacity to, and has organized, very successful large meetings and gatherings with many rank and file workers in attendance. DSA on the other hand has some 60,000 members and also has resources. Combined, these two groups could organize what I suggest here. DSA is overwhelmingly middle class it appears to me and inexperienced in struggles on the job and union work. Consequently the leadership of DSA has contracted out its union work to Labor Notes and other left types, many former members of the union bureaucracy themselves like Jane McAlvey and others. DSA has done some good work around housing struggles and rent issues from what I understand which is applaudable, but I am sharing my differences here with LN and DSA on working in the unions primarily.

 

I would like to think that given the wealth of the Volvo corporation and the economic growth of late that that workers on strike at the plant will achieve some if not all of their gains. I’m keeping my fingers crossed but that might not be enough.

 

More reading on the labor movement:

DSA, Labor Notes and the Trade Unions    (Labor Day 2018)

A Fighting Union Leadership Will be Built by Rank and File Activists