The 34th Constitutional Convention of the United Auto Workers opened on June 12 as the union faced what is shaping up to be one of the most decisive contract negotiations with the Big Three U.S. auto manufacturers—General Motors, Ford and Chrysler—in 2007.
On the one side are the over 250,000 members of the UAW. Through decades of struggle, the UAW has won contracts that have enabled autoworkers to earn a livable wage with adequate medical care. Workers retire with a life-sustaining pension.
On the other side are the Big Three, accounting for over half of all cars and trucks sold in the United States. In spite of huge losses in 2005, Ford and GM are awash with huge cash reserves of over $40 billion. These reserves represent past profits made from the labor of UAW members.
At the convention, delegates heard UAW president Ron Gettelfinger confirm in a “State of the Union” talk what autoworkers already knew: The U.S.-based auto companies are in dire financial straits and are trying to solve their problems on the backs of the autoworkers.
“Everything the UAW has fought for at the bargaining table is under attack by a number of multinational corporations who want to rip up our contracts and impose poverty-level wages on workers,” Gettelfinger noted.
Workers at GM, Ford and Delphi have always been under attack by the auto bosses. But those attacks have become more severe over the last 20 years—and especially in the past year.
Using their declining market position and profitability in the domestic automobile market as an excuse, the three companies have won mid-contract concessions from the union. Delphi, the auto parts company spun off by GM in 1999, filed for bankruptcy in October 2005. Delphi is threatening to use the filing to void all union contracts.
Earlier this year, Ford and GM announced massive layoffs and plant closings affecting tens of thousands of workers. Both had already sold off their parts suppliers in efforts to raise revenue and shed expenses.
Gettelfinger raised these threats in his speech. “Things that once seemed rock solid—jobs we’ve done and done well, the retirement and health-care coverage we’ve earned, our right to a collective voice in our workplace—are threatened by many corporate CEOs, right-wing politicians and anti-union groups,” he claimed.
Gettelfinger referred to the union’s rich history of struggle and talked tough. But he failed to offer any alternative strategies to counter the deteriorating situation facing the union.
Responding to the unparalleled job losses over the past five years, he offered this uninspiring assessment: “Like it or not, these challenges aren’t the kind that can be ridden out. They demand new and farsighted solutions—and we must be an integral part of developing those solutions.”
Rank-and-file activists were rightly skeptical of what solutions the UAW leadership had in mind. In 2005, in an unprecedented move, the union leaders agreed to mid-contract concessions that resulted in UAW workers paying for healthcare for the first time since the union has been negotiating contracts.
Buyouts: a vote of no confidence
Delegates reelected Gettelfinger to a second term as president. But there was not the same enthusiasm among the union rank-and-file activists that characterized earlier assemblies.
An unprecedented number of workers at GM and Delphi accepted early retirement or buyout offers just a few weeks after the convention. About 35,000 GM workers and 12,500 Delphi workers will get either a small cash settlement and benefits with early retirement or a lump sum payment and the forfeiting of all retirement benefits except vested pensions.
 UAW strike against Delphi in 1998 cost GM $1.2 billion in losses. Photo: John C. Hillery/Reuters |
Rank-and-file union activists who want to fight back see the buyout stampede as a vote of no confidence in Gettelfinger’s leadership. Buyouts might make sense for some workers who are close to retirement. In making their decision, a fighting program for the upcoming contract talks could generate enthusiasm to stay, fight and win. The huge number of buyouts is a sign of the lack of such a program.
UAW activist Greg Shotwell, a member of the anti-concession caucus Soldiers of Solidarity, explained, “We don’t want buyouts, we want buy-ins. Buyouts mean lost jobs, and we don’t want to lose jobs.”
Workers accepting the buyout are replaced by temporary workers hired at lower hourly wages and with no medical or retirement benefits.
Capitalist investors are thrilled with the exodus. David Healy, an analyst at Burnham Securities told the June 23 Chicago Tribune, “The savings are astronomical. This is what got [Wall Street] excited about the deal two weeks ago.”
Capitalist restructuring
The UAW and other unions are facing a structural change affecting U.S.-based manufacturing. Beginning in the 1980s, the vast expansion of computer technology into all sectors of the economy signaled this structural change in the U.S. economy, with more jobs in the service sector and fewer in the manufacturing sector.
Productivity increased. But wages dropped as the skills necessary to perform jobs declined. The introduction of the new technology was accompanied by plant closings and massive layoffs.
This trend was further compounded by capitalist globalization, an economic trend enshrined in various “free trade” treaties like the North American Free Trade Agreement and the Free Trade Area of the Americas. Under these “agreements” pushed by U.S. imperialism, weaker capitalist countries are forced to open up their economies to U.S. corporations.
For workers in the oppressed countries, this has meant the destruction of local agriculture and increased exploitation. All the wealth generated by workers in Latin America and Asia is extracted and centralized in the hands of the imperialist banks and corporations.
In the United States, this has meant dangling the threat of moving plants overseas or across the border every time unions ask for better wages or working conditions.
Prospects for struggle
In spite of the difficulties facing the U.S. labor movement, the working class is still the producer of all wealth. Without our labor, the capitalist class is unable to make profits.
The strike—withholding labor—is still an effective weapon in the arsenal of the working class. In 1998, Delphi autoworkers went on strike and production at GM factories around the country came to a halt due to a lack of parts.
In his convention speech, President Gettelfinger noted that the union’s concessions on healthcare reflected a national crisis that goes beyond the scope of isolated contract negotiations. He’s right.
And the issue is sure to be one of the key points in the upcoming negotiations with the auto industry.
What’s the solution? Gettelfinger called for a national single-payer health-care system. Sounds good. How can it be won?
Gettelfinger outlines the union leadership’s perspective: “We’re going to keep fighting for what we believe in at the collective bargaining table, in the courts, in the state houses and the halls of Congress, in our communities and where push comes to shove, on the picket lines.”
Most union militants can read between the lines. The UAW is going to pour millions of dollars into the elections, mostly into the pockets of Democratic Party politicians. Union stewards will be instructed to staff political phone banking operations rather than picket lines.
This is a losing proposition. The politicians and judges are part of the apparatus that runs society in the interests of the ruling class—the same class that owns GM, Ford and Delphi.
A real strategy would draw on the union’s greatest strength—its ability to shut down a key sector of the U.S. economy—with its militant history as pioneers for the whole working class.
The right to healthcare is an issue that affects not just the UAW members or even the 43 million workers without healthcare. It affects the entire working class.
What if the union made a class-wide appeal to all workers to fight for national healthcare in a real grassroots way? What if the UAW organized a mass march on Congress or the White House, or on the National Association of Manufacturers, to demand national healthcare for all funded by a tax on corporate profits?
The UAW could take the lead in organizing buses, as they have done in the past, to transport people to the rally. Community groups and other unions could be encouraged to join in.
It could set the stage for a one-day national strike for healthcare.
Union activist Shotwell addressed the UAW convention on the need for militant action. “We need to hear boots on the pavement,” he said. “If immigrants could organize a national day of solidarity, why can’t the UAW?”
An appeal rooted in the union’s strength and militancy, directed toward the whole working class, steeped in international solidarity with autoworkers in plants in Mexico and around the world—that could change the balance of forces in the upcoming contract negotiations. It would be a first step in turning back the union-busting offensive of the capitalist class.
