A three day strike by several thousand workers at an automotive plant in the south-eastern province of Jiangxi has reportedly forced the provincial government to intervene and suspend plans to restructure the company.
China’s fourth largest automotive company, the Chang’an Group, based in Chongqing, had planned to transfer the vehicle production license of its subsidiary Chang He Auto in the Jiangxi city of Jingdezhen to a new joint-venture with Japanese car maker Mazda. However, the plan was not discussed with either the local government in Jingdezhen or the workers’ congress at the plant, and as such it provoked a massive worker protest when it became public knowledge.
Workers feared that the cancellation of the production license at the factory (currently joint-owned by another Japanese company, Suzuki) would lead to job losses and poorer pay and conditions.
After negotiations between Chang’an, Chang He, the provincial and municipal governments, it was agreed that there would be no major changes at Chang He at present. The company would continue to consult with the government and employees, and any major changes would have to be approved by the workers’ congress. The company stressed that if the workers had any other issues, they could communicate them through formal channels.
Some reports claimed the concessions were sufficient to end the protest, while other reports claimed many employees were still on strike.
This is a message of solidarity sent by participants in the International Council of Car Workers (CITA) to the European Conference of Workers in the Car Industry, held at the International Institute for Research and Education in Amsterdam on May 28-29, 2011. We have also published Declaration of the European Car Workers’ Conference an overview at Creating cross-border links between militants and Ford Blanquefort, an example from the same event.
Dear colleagues,
As participants in the International Council of Car Workers (CITA), we give greetings and wish you much success for your European meeting of car workers. Thank you for your invitation. Unfortunately, for reasons of timing, we cannot be with you.
At the 6th international Council of Car Workers, in late 2009 in Germany, with 450 participants from 17 countries, we adopted an international program of struggle for car workers. It took into account a comprehensive restructuring of the global industry and the consequences of the battle of mutual destruction of the carmakers for car workers and their families.
In fact, tens of thousands of jobs have been destroyed, wages have been reduced, in particular in the United States, Russia, Spain and Italy, not to mention the closure of the Opel plant in Antwerp. In Europe, Opel has reduced its workforce by 10,000, or 20%. Opel workers in Bochum (Germany) have been informed of massive layoffs of about 1,200 jobs.
The initial impact of the world economic and financial crisis was attenuated by partial unemployment and, often, an increase in compensation. With scrappage schemes and significant discounts an even deeper collapse of production was avoided in many countries. But now, the increase in exploitation, the concentration of car companies and considerable job destruction has become more apparent.
In many companies, daily struggles are on-going against increased exploitation, for higher wages and so on. The huge expansion of production capacities, particularly in the BRICs, is based on each group’s hope of outdoing its competitors. We must therefore expect new restructurings related to closures of factories, massive layoffs and so on.
Against the various attempts at division by management, it is necessary to forge the unity of workers around the whole world!
In the factories, political debate is lively and not only on the immediate issues of work. Because the capitalist system is showing its overall decay, like its inhuman energy policy, indifferent to deaths, like the nuclear disaster in Japan, its economic and financial crises and its wars in Afghanistan, Libya, Ivory Coast and so on.
The Fukushima nuclear disaster brought hundreds of thousands of people onto the streets in Germany. The international working class should get even more involved in the fight for the preservation of the natural environment. Among other things, this question is very important in our activities because the crisis of the environment and the exploitation of workers have the same cause: the pursuit without end of the maximum profit. The fight to save the bases of life for humanity, the struggle for a better future, without exploitation and oppression, requires class awareness and organization. Our Council has always said: we will think beyond the system of capitalist profit and we will discuss a social alternative.
We hope that your meeting will be a success and we want to take this opportunity to invite you also to our 7th Council of Car Workers from May 7-20, 2012 in Munich, Germany (more information can be read on our site: www.automobilarbeiterratschlag ))
Militant greetings and solidarity,
Fritz Hoffman, Ulrich Ittermann, Birgit Schumann
(participants in the International Council of Auto Workers)
In 1968, the world was transfixed by global student unrest. Less attention was paid to factory uprisings that occurred at the same time and overlapped with campus protests in places like France. In one small corner of the Ford Motor Company's huge production complex in Dagenham, England, several hundred women did their part in the "year of revolt." Toiling in their own-sex-segregated department, the only females in a plant of 55,000 had walked out many times in the past, over strike issues dear to their male co-workers. Now, it was their turn to shut down sewing machines, stop production of seat covers, and picket Ford over a pay dispute with broader social implications.
Made in Dagenham is the story of their strike -- born of working-class feminist consciousness in a labor movement even more dominated by "the lads" forty years ago than it is today. Schmaltzy, upbeat, and out of synch with our current workplace gestalt of hopelessness and defeat, this filmis just what the head doctor ordered for holiday entertainment. It is, by far, the best popular depiction of union activist creation since Ken Loach's Bread and Roses and Martin Ritt's Norma Rae. If unions don't use it to train shop stewards and bargaining committee members, that failure of labor education imagination will be understandable because Made in Dagenham captures the frequent tension between labor's full-time officialdom and its working members, particularly during strikes.
The strike leader played by Sally Hawkins in Nigel Cole's new movie is a very British version of the Southern textile worker portrayed so famously by Sally Fields in 1979. Rita O'Grady is not even a union steward in the film's early scenes of shop-floor life and work. She steps into that role only because her older co-worker, Connie, is dealing with the suicidal depression of her husband, a damaged survivor of wartime duty in the RAF. Unlike the mill where Norma Rae toiled, the Dagenham plant is completely organized. Unfortunately, with the exception of Albert, a loveable chief steward ally (wonderfully played by Bob Hoskins), the union, which is a composite of several actually involved, seems to function as an arm of Ford's HR department, a labor-management relationship not unknown to autoworkers in this country.
The political traditions of British trade unions give this arrangement humorous left cover. In one memorable scene, a clutch of worried officials, in jackets and ties, are trying to talk Rita out of strike action that might upend some murky, big-picture strategy the leadership is pursuing. While condescending to the only worker in the room, they address each other as "comrade" and invoke Marx as the final authority on what should and should not be done!
Rita's first bargaining session is a face-to-face meeting with Ford officials about their misclassification of the sewing machine operators as un-skilled labor. Both Rita and Connie (Geraldine James) get a day off from work and overdress for the occasion. Monty, their full-time union representative (played by Kenneth Cranham), first takes them out for a well-lubricated lunch, a perk designed to put Rita and Connie (Geraldine James) in his debt. Monty has obviously been off the job and out of the plant for years; his main preoccupation now seems to be eating and drinking at dues-payer expense, dressing nicely, and seeing the company's side of things. When the union delegation finally sits down with management, Monty does all the talking and fails to give Ford a firm deadline for fixing the problem.
Shocked by the incompetence of her own union negotiator, and his coziness with employer representatives, Rita commandeers the meeting. She interrupts Monty and pulls out samples of the seat covers stitched by the workers in her department. She explains the complexity of the labor process involved and insists that Ford properly reward the skill and experience necessary to do the job. The scene is a great tutorial in how to make effective job upgrade presentations -- and, believe me, they're always done best by those who do the actual work. The bosses are so taken aback that one can only respond with a threat of discipline for Rita's lifting of the material used in her demonstration.
The radicalization of Rita that follows is a sight to be seen. Hawkins' character in this film is no Poppy, the loopy Cockney in Mike Leigh's Happy-Go-Lucky that won her a Golden Globe and a slew of other awards in 2008. She is a mother with two children, working the proverbial "double shift" in a traditional marriage to a fellow Dagenham worker (played by Daniel Mays) who is sweet but weak-willed. She's a woman previously lacking in personal self-confidence, a stranger to public speaking, and bereft of "political experience" (as Ford officials discover when they scour her file expecting to find evidence of left-wing party connections).
Under the tutelage of Albert (a far more appealing version of the union mentors played by Ron Leibman in Norma Rae and Adrien Brody in Bread and Roses), Rita finds her own voice, a streak of determination, and the capacity to move others. As in many strikes, rank-and-file unity is stronger at the beginning. Then, as the job action spreads, thousands are thrown out of work and the recriminations begin to fly. For some workers, organizing strike relief, attending rallies, maintaining picket-lines, and meeting other union members is a learning experience, liberating and even euphoric. Others -- in this case, mainly fearful or disgruntled guys -- slink away to the pub. There, they watch strike coverage on the telly and grouse about the economic hardship inflicted on the real breadwinners in the community by a handful of unreasonable women.
Rita's own Norma Rae moment occurs at a union conference, not standing on the picket-line or a work bench in the plant. Monty and the other "comrades" have scheduled a vote, among the entirely male conference delegates, that will end this costly "industrial action" at Ford, without a favorable resolution of the job grading issue. Rita and her roving pickets are the only women at the meeting. Rita takes the stage and delivers a moving, but simple, speech recalling the wartime courage of her co-worker's husband, the now deceased RAF veteran. "Men and women, we are in this together," she tells the stone-faced crowd. "We are not divided by sex. Only by those willing to accept injustice." Moved, shamed, and/or inspired by her message, the delegates vote to continue union backing for the Dagenham strike, which, by then, was creating widespread disruption of Ford production.
The company responds by sending a hard-nosed executive from Detroit to read the riot act to Britain's then-Labour Government. If the strike is not ended, Ford strongly hints, it might shift Cortina production to a land where the blokes and birds aren't so strike-happy. The prime minister at the time was the wishy-washy Harold Wilson. His First Secretary of State was Barbara Castle, a longtime member of parliament (played with flair by Miranda Richardson) who takes charge of the situation when Wilson doesn't. In the film, with a little waving of Castle's magic wand, a dispute over pay-grading in a particular auto plant job classification gets transformed, for PR purposes, into a broader demand for "equal pay." Two years after the walkout was finally settled with an increase for the sewing machine operators (that still left them earning less than men in the same job grade), Parliament did enact legislation against pay discrimination, based on gender. The measure was not fully implemented until 1975.
But the social reality, in the meantime, was a bit more complex, as several British commentators, including Sheila Cohen, have noted (see Cohen's critique of the film at thecommune.co.uk.) The real-life Labour Party feminist shown negotiating with Rita and her friends in London triggered a trade union revolt in 1969 with a white paper entitled "In Place of Strife." Castle (who would later become Baroness Castle of Blackburn) created a backlash against Wilson's government and contributed to Labour's electoral defeat in 1970, when she tried to curb union rights and quell the broader strike wave that the women of Dagenham surfed so impressively.
The finer points of British left and labor history aside, if you liked Brassed Off, The Full Monty, or Billy Elliot, Made in Dagenham is the film for you. The lyrics for its theme song, performed by former Dagenham worker Sandie Shaw, were written by the British protest rocker, Billy Bragg (who has a street in Dagenham named after him). It's not coal miners or steelworkers who take center stage this time, but sewing machine operators who were no less skilled in the hard work of union solidarity.
Steve Early was involved in telecom and manufacturing strikes and bargaining for 27 years as a New England representative of the Communications Workers of America. He is the author of Embedded with Organized Labor: Journalistic Reflections on the Class War at Home. His new book, due out February 1 from Haymarket Books, is called The Civil Wars in U.S. Labor. He can be reached at . For speaking event information, visit: .
The campaign against the closure of Ford in Bordeaux: A history Philippe Rouffigne
The Ford factory in Bordeaux has been the subject of a long struggle between the managers, intent on closing the plant, and the CGT union. Successive actions mean the plat remains open, but there are hard lessons for workers in similar positions.
The Ford factory at Blanquefort (near Bordeaux, France), which employs 3,500 workers, has been threatened with closure since 2000. It manufactures automatic gear boxes for the U.S. market and manual gearboxes for the European market. It is the part of the plant manufacturing automatic gear boxes and employing 2500 workers that has been under threat.
The automatic gear boxes are an ageing product nearing the end of their life, and production has been declining until today. The speeches from the company directors about the future of the plant were sometimes contradictory reassuring, and at other times threatening.
The official reason given for these job losses was to ensure the survival of the plant. The CGT was the only union that attempted to organise opposition to this round of job losses, but mobilisation and industrial action was weak. We were in a factory which had not seen any action during the previous 20 years, and the idea that these job losses were unavoidable was widespread. The offer of early retirement and voluntary redundancy was made to buy peace and avoid conflict, and management announce that the future of the plant is safe until 2014. But in November of that same year, there is another offer of 165 early retirements. The CGT tried to fight to improve the offer, but the mobilisation of the workforce was still too weak.
From then on, the CGT steps up its campaign against the job losses by warning that management was gradually going to empty the plant of workers until it closed it down completely. In February 2007, we organised a demonstration in defence of jobs in the town of Blanquefort. No other union joined the demonstration, but it was a success because 250 employees from the plant were on it. This was the beginning of our campaign.
From then on, other unions join in the campaign, creating a joint union committee that lasts 12 months. We then have two years of actions and mobilisations which were eventually successful.
In 2007, there are several demonstrations: 500 in March in Bordeaux, then 1000 in the same month. We organise a conference on jobs in April with local councillors and state organisations. The aim was to warn the local community and to put pressure on the state organisations so that they intervene. It took a very long time, but eventually they do respond.
The first outcome of the demonstrations was the creation of a working party convened by the Prefecture, and including Ford management and local elected officials. Ford had announced earlier that year that it would withdraw from the plant in 2011, and this working party was trying to develop a plan by 2007 for the future of the plant. Each time the working party met, we organised strikes and demonstrations.
Ford gave virtually no information and continuously tried to stop mobilisations. It denounced “agitators”, but was nevertheless wrong-footed because it had never had to deal with such a campaign. The management argued that it was trying to find solutions, but never mentions closure. Gradually, the feeling develops amongst the workforce that there is a grave threat.
Furthermore, the working party offers no perspectives as it claims that despite trying it had no solution for the plant. We step up the pressure, and in October 2007, we organise a strike that is supported by 800 workers. For the first time ever, the union for technical and supervisory staff supports the action. In November, a one-day strike closes the factory and 1400 demonstrate in Blanquefort.
Reports in the local media are widespread, the local population is informed and pressure is growing on local elected officials. From the beginning, we argue for the defence of all the jobs inside Ford, but also of all those indirectly employed which is about 10,000 in the whole region.
The working party meets for the last time in December, and we organise a demonstration in Bordeaux. The mood is angry as the working party has nothing to report and inside the plant the atmosphere is tense. The next two days, there is a spontaneous strike just before the Christmas break. Management seem unable to control the situation.
The return to work in January 2008 is difficult. Management try to take the initiative by announcing the closure of the site for April 2010. The atmosphere becomes again fatalistic, but we try to relaunch the mobilisation with pickets at the end of January. We are relatively few, but the media is there and management realises that there is still a determined group of union activists.
There is a discussion that starts amongst the activists about whether the fight is for jobs or for generous terms for early retirement and voluntary redundancy. This is a debate that continues to the end. Management attempt to get us to abandon the fight for jobs, while the other unions have an ambiguous position as they say that it is utopian to try to save jobs.
The determination of the CGT allows the struggle to be re-launched with a new strike organised by the joint-union committee. Because some unions are hesitant, preparations are clandestine. We start a strike on Saturday 16 February with 30 pickets at 5am. This is the beginning of a 10-day strike during which we block all gates, and organise food, patrols and braziers (it was very cold). During 10 days, the workers are mobilised, although some don’t go on strike. The strike is picked up by a national and regional media, with mobile studios outside the gates. This gets the local population informed who come to support us and start to establish support/solidarity committees that are key to building a bridge between the workforce and local people.
During the strike, the reports in the media increase as Olivier Besancenot (LCR) and Segolene Royal (PS) turn up to show their support.
This strike had one important effect: to force the management of Ford Europe to get involved who up till now had kept clear. Twice they come to Bordeaux to get us to stop the action and to calm us by making a ridiculous financial offer. The strike is ended following legal proceedings that threaten us with heavy fines. But in any case we would have been unable to keep the action going for much longer. Management go again on the offensive as they saw the strike as an insult to them.
During the strike, there were two demands: save all jobs and also generous financial offers (although at the CGT we were not in favour of the latter). Management will use the demand for a financial offer to break up the joint-union committee, and to sow confusion and demobilise amongst the workforce. They are partly successful as the joint-union committee breaks up.
Management proposes an agreement for financial compensation in case of redundancies in the next three years. We continue fighting against this attempt to make job cuts. Four unions sign up to this deal, but the CGT and the CFTC refuse. As these two unions represent the majority of the workforce, we are in a position to get this agreement cancelled. Management attack the CGT and tries to bribe the workforce by making an offer of a minimum of 50,000 Euros in case of redundancy. We faced hostility from some workers and a declaration of war from the unions that had signed up to the deal.
We go through a difficult period as management with the unions that had signed-up organise a referendum to isolate the unions that were fighting. We called for a boycott, which may have been a mistake, but as more than a third did not vote, the small majority for the deal was meaningless.
From July 2008, we plan with the local support committees for a demonstration in Paris at the Car Show. We finance the transport with bingos, meals, and a concert organised by the Council of Blanquefort. We eventually organise 600 people to go up by train to invade the Car Show, resulting in a big splash in the media and the exasperation of the management with this campaign that never ends.
In the summer of 2008, the possibility of the plant being taken over becomes a serious option as pressure is beginning to pay-off. We have no faith in the statements from management, but those of the government and local public bodies indicate the possibility of a take-over with at least 500 jobs safe.
At the end of October, management announces the closure of the site for ten weeks. This is a shock to the workers and we demand full-pay as compensation during the close-down period. On the eve of the closure there is a meeting of the works council were management refuse to improve compensation. We invade the meeting and block management in the car park. There is a physical confrontation and the atmosphere is very tense. It was only the CGT there with 200-300 militants. Management is shaken but denounce political manipulation by the extremists and refuses to make any improvements. The CGT is now alone as the CFTC break-off, repeating the criticism of management against this demonstration.
During the closure of the last two months of 2008, the CGT organises weekly union meetings, and two demonstrations in Bordeaux. We keep up the pressure and a presence in the media, with the objective of saving all jobs.
Finally, there is an official announcement on the 2 February 2009 that the plant will be taken over by HZ, a German holding company, in co-operation the German industrial group Hay. It is a strange return to work, which gives the impression that Ford is trying to stop the mobilisation, to make itself forgotten and to sub-contract out the closure. Nevertheless the promise is that all jobs will be safe. The local public bodies and elected officials declare that they have worked hard over the last two years but forget to mention the campaign by the workers that forced them to find a solution.
From the 1st May, the plant has officially be bought up by another company, but Ford is still has a presence on the board. Ford finances everything until 2011, and we carry on with the same production while we wait for new products to be brought in over the next three years. We have little confidence in management, and most workers don’t believe them, but the campaign has stopped.
It is both a victory and a trick by management. The CGT is alone in continuing to keep up the pressure, and argues that to really defend jobs we need to be vigilant and continue the struggle as soon as there are new attacks.
Philippe Rouffigne is a militant of the CGT in the Ford plant outside Bordeaux, this article was originally published in the June edition International Viewpoint
The letter below was sent by the Canadian Auto Workers' GM Master Contract bargaining committee to the CAW's membership. It follows the demand on May 7 by the Canadian and Ontario governments that GM and the CAW come to a new à greement to secure government bailouts for the sector.
GM and the CAW had already reached a new agreement in March, however the Ontario government has insisted that a new contract be drawn following Chrysler forcing greater concessions from the CAW in their contract.
There are also signficant battles looming in Europe following FIAT's take over of Chrysler which has also included FIAT taking over GM's European subsiduries Opel, Saab and Vauxhall. There are battles looming accross Europe acrross all FIAT's plants over jobs losses and to defend conditions.
The struggle in the global auto-industry reflects the extent to which both capital and governmetns are attempting to use the current crisis in order to both restructure and deepen the neo-liberal offensive against workers and unions.
Chris
An Open Letter to GM Workers We Are Fighting For Our Lives
Dear Brothers and Sisters; This has been an unbelievable, frightening time for auto workers. Our industry was weakened for years by government neglect and a one-way flood of imports from offshore. Then the global financial crisis hit, auto sales seized up, and we’ve been fighting for our lives ever since.
As you know, the CAW has been pro-active in trying to be “part of the solution” to this mess–a mess that auto workers did not create. Our contract in May 2008 provided $300 million per year in cost savings to the three companies combined. Then this March, as instructed by the government, we signed and ratified an extraordinary contract with GM that provided further savings as part of GM’s restructuring plan.
However, on March 30th U.S. President Barack Obama, in a televised address, rejected the GM plan, and told all stakeholders to go back to the drawing board. The Canadian government rubber-stamped this decision.
General Motors is already technically bankrupt: it cannot pay its bills without government aid (including the first $500 million in Canadian aid that flowed earlier this month). The federal and Ontario governments rejected our March contract, and have ordered the CAW to reach a new deal with GM or else they will pull the plug on the Canadian arm of the company. Without government support, GM Canada would be liquidated. Our plants would close, and our pensioners would be left to fend for themselves.
We feel angry and betrayed about having to negotiate a new collective agreement with GM, for the third time in one year. We know that you share that frustration.
But your bargaining committee has decided that we must respond positively to the government’s ultimatum. GM’s future in Canada is too important for us to walk away. However, it will be a massive challenge to try to reach a fair deal in the coming days. Because the governments and the company are trying to make workers pay for this economic crisis that we did not cause, and that we cannot possibly fix.
In particular, the government has made an outrageous demand that GM’s labour costs must be equivalent to Toyota Canada’s – including the cost of GM’s pension deficit! Toyota Canada has virtually no retirees. GM Canada has almost 25,000. What’s worse, thanks to GM’s greed and government’s incompetence, the GM pension fund is many billions of dollars in deficit.
The Ontario government allowed GM to underfund its pension for decades, through its special funding regulations, which the CAW is on record as opposing. Yet now they want workers to bear the cost of the resulting massive deficit through massive cuts in our pensions.
It can’t be done. Obviously, the active GM workforce cannot solve a multi-billion dollar problem that took the company and the government decades to create. Remember, the pension deficit grew and grew even when GM was the most profitable company in Canada (GM Canada earned over $30 billion in profit, in inflation-adjusted terms, from 1978 through 2007), including periods when GM fully funded its U.S. plans.
The CAW has committed all along that our active labour costs will remain fully competitive. The CAW has consistently reminded GM Canada that our plants are 23 per cent more efficient than Toyota Canada’s (according to the independent Harbour Report).
But the long-term crisis in pension funding was not caused by the workers. And it can’t be fixed by the workers. We are holding the line on this issue – to defend our current retirees. And to defend you – the active workers of today, and the retirees of the future.
Stand by for more updates. Above all, be ready to support your union in the coming crucial days. We will not allow the workers to be made the scapegoats of this crisis.
Thank you for your continuing solidarity.
Signed, The CAW-GM Master Bargaining Committee
What does CCAA mean for our jobs? It is possible, and even likely, that GM will file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in the U.S. in coming weeks, and for CCAA protection in Canada. What does this mean?
First, it does not mean that GM is bankrupt. Rather, GM is receiving court protection for a period of time, to restructure its business and escape from some of its debts.
The Canadian government has confirmed that if we reach a new deal with GM, they will protect that agreement through the CCAA process (so that no further bargaining is required).
This also means that the Canadian and Provincial governments will continue to provide the financing needed to assist GM through the CCAA process.
The best case is that GM would quickly exit Chapter 11 and CCAA protection, with the active support of the Canadian and U.S. governments, and then begin operations as a revitalized company.
Without government financial aid (which the government says is contingent in part on a deal with CAW), then GM Canada would likely be liquidated.
In any event, the CAW will use all its bargaining and legal resources to protect the interests of our current members and our retirees.
Furthermore, the CAW has been in the forefront mobilizing its membership on a range of issues from pension security to fighting for fair trade (instead of free trade), pulling out all stops in defence of our members, our families and our communities.
The activism of our leadership and members has been very much appreciated and those actions must continue if we are going to influence elected parliamentarians in defending the interests of the Canadian economy.
Lisbeth Latham
[The following article was written in July last year but had previously not been published. Considering the depth of the crisis in auto manufacturing globally and failure of auto unions to effectively respond to both save jobs and conditions I'm posting it now as start to more detailed articles that I'm hoping to write over the coming weeks]
The North American car manufacturers (Chrysler, Ford and General Motors) like many other car manufactures are facing increasing difficulties of profitability. In response to these pressures on profits the US United Auto Workers (UAW) have sort to limit job losses by entering into agreements that give up working conditions in exchange for the auto-manufactures giving commitments for ongoing production. In late 2007, the UAW signed new agreements with Ford, GM and Chrysler. The most dramatic elements of these agreements included the shifting of the risks of future health care costs for workers from the companies to the union, and the acceptance of a permanent two-tier structure with new hires being paid half the wages and less than half the benefits of current workers and the first time creating a differentiation between “core” and “non-core” workers, with “non-core” workers receiving half there former wages.
In April the Canadian Auto Workers (CAW), which had split from the UAW in 1982 as they rejected concession agreements, approached the North American manufacturers with a proposal for a new agreement which while rejecting the permanent two-tiering of the UWA contracts, included a number of concessions including the freezing of current Ford workers’ wages for the life of the three-year deal, cuts 40 hours of vacation pay per year, and freezes cost-of-living (COLA) adjustments for the remainder of the current contract and the first year of the new deal. The CAW’s offer was made five months prior to the expiry of their agreements and two prior to the CAW’s Collective Bargaining Conference. Initially only Ford accepted the proposal, however following the agreements ratification by 67% of the membership (the lowest ever return in favour of an agreement, with one plant rejecting the agreement); both Chrysler and GM accepted the proposal which was subsequently ratified by 87% and 84% of members respectively. I spoke to Sam Gindin about the significance of these agreements for the auto industry unions and the broader North American labour movement. Gindin is a former CAW research director who has been a prominent opponent of concession bargaining and of the shift in orientation by the CAW’s leadership. He is a regular contributor to the Socialist Project’s publication The Bullet.
The approach adopted by the CAW’s leadership reflects a sharp departure from its historic approach to bargaining. Gindin told Green Left “at the Big Three, the three year agreements were due to expire mid-September. Normally the period leading up to involves mobilization of the members as well as putting our case before the public via the media. A particular focus for the union is the Collective Bargaining Conference in the spring that was scheduled in June, where all sections of the union get together to establish general priorities and to support the big three negotiations because of their prominence and influence within the union and nationally, despite the Big Three now represent under 15% of the total membership.
“This time, the union itself asked Ford to open early negotiations early in April, the rationale to the members being that conditions would get worse in the fall. The result was that discussions amongst the members, the conference itself, and especially any mobilization were pre-empted”.
The offer by the CAW reflects an embracing of concession bargaining by the union’s leadership, which reflects a significant shift in the orientation. Gindin said “Historically, the CAW saw jobs as depending on political factors and lead in the creation of the 'Auto Pact'. In essence, anyone wanting to sell and profit from the Canadian market had to make a commitment to jobs and investment here. As well the union opposed concession bargaining to get jobs - seeing this as a diversion from the real issues as well as undermining the union. This was especially important in the early 1980s, when the first round of major concessions in North America. The Canadian resistance to concessions led to a split in what was then an international (Canada-US union)”.
More recently, the Canadian union has moved in the same direction as the US union, though it has not gone nearly as far as the UAW. In the context of the general shift to neo-liberalism and free trade, the CAW argued for subsidies (public concessions) as a way of limiting private concessions in bargaining, but the logic of having to 'buy' jobs from the companies soon spread into the reality of both public and private (bargaining) concessions”.
The change of course by the CAW leadership has the capacity to the broader Canadian labour movement. “In the earlier period, the CAW inspired the rest of the Canadian labour movement. Now it is more likely to reinforce the general sense of fatalism and defeat in Canadian labour. Particular struggles do of course occur in the Canadian labour movement, but they are sporadic and their cumulative impact is limited”.
Gindin argued that following the low vote at Ford, including the agreement being rejected at the Oakville plant, the leadership of the CAW moved to limit discussion amongst the membership for the GM and Chrysler agreements with “the settlement reached on a Thursday and the vote quickly held on the Friday and Saturday of a 4-day long weekend”. However even if “workers had been given the democratic time to discuss the agreements, it is unlikely that these votes would have been overturned. Workers voted in fear of losing their jobs, a fear both reflected by the union leadership but also reinforced by that leadership the difference in Oakville were both the limited impact of fear because some hiring was occurring and initiatives taken from below”.
Although the high votes at both GM and Chrysler appear to vindicate Gindin explained that “below the surface, there is a great deal of frustration and some anger, and a network of activists across plants determined to revive the union as an independent working class institution has surfaced (Workers for Union Renewal)”.
According to Gindin the CAW’s change in course reflects the pressures on the auto-industry internationally, but particularly in North America.
“In the immediate period, the issue is the economic uncertainty in the US and the explosion in gas prices, which are now affecting the Japanese based companies as well. Both are related to the particular kinds of vehicles the NA majors have emphasized because of their higher profit margins: pickup trucks and SUVs. Both are gas guzzlers and pickups are also used in construction, which has been especially hard hit. The growth of an environmental consciousness - still in its infancy - seems to be becoming an additional factor in the most recent dramatic turn away from SUVs.
“On the cost-of-production side, the NA companies have been very hard hit by the cost of healthcare in the US, where no public system exists. These costs include not just the present workforce but the growing numbers of retirees (at GM, for example, there are now five retirees per active worker). The Japanese plants, because they are newer have a younger workforce and virtually no retirees have dramatically lower costs. To offset this disadvantage, as well as models which have seemed less attractive to consumers, the NA producers offered large price reductions (especially since 9/11) and those subsidies have undermined corporate bottom lines.
While all car manufacturers face these challenges, the CAW’s difficulties at the North American Big Three, are partly of their failure to organise the Japanese transplants. Gindin says that “in Canada, the Japanese companies have largely followed the Big Three monetary settlements in order to avoid unionization and thereby maintain 'flexibility' in dealing with 'their' workers (e.g. speed-up; overtime - Toyota has scheduled 60 hours overtime on a regular basis; accommodation; workers with injuries are often let go). The inability to unionize these plants affects the membership base and therefore the finance's of the union but, more importantly, it means greater competitive pressures on the Big Three workers, even if the larger issue goes beyond Canadian labour costs to the models available and the health care costs in the US which affect us through integration into the US industry”.
Gindin said that it is also important to “note that we are especially affected by developments in the US Big Three, where though unionized, the union has been in such a headlong retreat. The two-tier system is the best/worst example of this”.
Gindin also identified the substantial excess capacity in the sector as a major issue, at a more general level. “The US has been attracting investment because of its market and costs even before the collapse of the dollar and this means excess capacity and closures elsewhere. In the short run, the economic downturn aggravates the capacity issue and the effectiveness of strikes, but there are two qualifications:
“Even in bad times, sales are uneven, some models are still selling, and the corporation is dependent on those sales so a strike MAY be possible, if the concessionary demands are severe enough;
“Conditions for striking the companies may block the feasibility of striking, but its crucial to distinguish between recognizing the limits of the moment and waiting/preparing to respond a different day versus turning that moment into a permanent defeat - i.e. by accepting the corporate logic, teaching workers that the world has changed and they can not fight anymore, reinforcing fatalism re the longer term;
“To sustain our fights we DO have to think about the larger context and this means joining with others in those fights. But if there are no fights going on in daily life, people are unlikely to have the confidence to join larger battles. That's why, even in bad times, unions must find some ways to resist in the workplace and in the community”.
For more of Sam Gindin’s writings on the North American auto-industry visit The Bullet.
Revitalising Labour attempts to reflect on efforts to rebuild the labour movement internationally, emphasising the role that left-wing political currents can play in this process. It welcomes contributions on union struggles, internal renewal processes within the labour movement and the struggle against capitalism and imperialism.
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