| Topic: |
Sociology > Education |
| User: |
"nan" |
| Date: |
21 Oct 2004 04:18:05 PM |
| Object: |
Michael Moore's Myopic View:Flint Auto Industry+AW Union Factors |
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Roger and Me (1989) Review by Jay Moore -- Michael Moore's hilarious
and extremely sad documentary about his home town, Flint, Michigan --
the home of General Motors and the United Auto Workers -- and Moore's
efforts to track down GM's boss Roger Smith to talk to him about GM's
corporate "downsizing" and its callous neglect of the rotting
community...
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See Also:
UAW contract with Big Three: US auto union sanctions mass layoffs and
plant closings
[20 September 2003]
General Motors: From auto manufacturer to financial institution
[25 August 2003]
Wage-cutting deal at New Castle Machining and Forge
Pay cut for auto workers means payoff for UAW
[10 June 2003]
Career bureaucrat named president of US auto union: Gettelfinger
defended Ford in 1999 blast that killed six workers
[14 June 2002]
How the auto industry and the UAW have changed
[2 July 1998]
New union contracts clear way for US automakers to cut 50,000 jobs
By Jerry Isaacs and Colin Davis
1 October 2003
New information is surfacing about the extent of the job cuts and
other concessions the United Auto Workers (UAW) bureaucracy has
accepted in the agreements concluded earlier this month with General
Motors (GM), Ford, DaimlerChrysler and their two largest parts
suppliers. The four-year deals, which cover 307,000 auto workers at
the Big Three and Delphi and Visteon, sanction the continued
restructuring of the US auto industry at the expense of tens of
thousands of jobs and the further undermining of working conditions,
wages, health care and retirement benefits.
According to industry analysts, the UAW agreed to the shutdown and
sale of 20 factories and other facilities, employing 17,000 workers.
Moreover, it granted the company further "exemptions" from contract
language, which in the past required that automakers fill a portion of
the positions left vacant by retirements and resignations. Nearly half
of the UAW workforce will be eligible to retire within five years.
Under the terms of the new contracts, the auto companies will be able
to eliminate 50,000 jobs through attrition over the next four years,
bringing the total number of jobs cut at the five companies to more
than 100,000 since 1999.
The agreement will allow DaimlerChrysler to sell or close up to six
plants, which collectively employ 8,160 workers, including the McGraw
Glass plant in Detroit (500 employees) and Indianapolis Foundry (988),
which will be permanently shut. In addition, another four plants,
employing 8,000 workers, will be shut when the contract expires if
they do not improve productivity and profitability.
The UAW also signed "side letters," not included in the contract, that
will allow the layoff of 400 salaried UAW car designers and eliminate
the jobs of 5,000 of the Chrysler Group's 12,000 skilled trades
workers through an expedited retirement program.
Ford will close assembly plants in Edison, N.J. (1,600) and Lorain,
Ohio (1,700), as well as smaller facilities in Woodhaven and Dearborn,
Mich., and Brook Park, Ohio, near Cleveland. Ford will also get rid of
1,500 contract workers and 50 salaried workers in North America as
well as 1,700 blue-collar and salaried workers at its German division,
Ford-Werke AG.
GM will shutter its Baltimore assembly plant (1,100) and Saginaw,
Mich., powertrain plant (378). The company will also sell its
LaGrange, Ill.-based locomotive division—the world's largest builder
of diesel locomotives.
Delphi Automotive, the parts division spun off by GM in 1999, will
shut down or sharply reduce production at plants in Flint, Mich.;
Tuscaloosa, Ala.; and Olathe, Kans.
Pressed by falling profits and the loss of market share to European-
and Asian-owned companies operating nonunion "transplants" in the
southern US, the Big Three automakers are drastically downsizing their
operations in line with the production glut in North America and
general crisis of overcapacity afflicting the global auto industry.
Despite the cost-cutting efforts of the UAW, the Big Three are
continuing to outsource thousands of jobs to lower-cost suppliers in
the US or in countries like Mexico, where Delphi Automotive is the
largest private employer.
The UAW closely collaborated with the auto companies in choosing the
plants to be shut. In line with the union's policy of pitting workers
in UAW-organized factories against each other, the plants targeted for
closure failed to keep pace with productivity increases and other
cost-cutting measures imposed by UAW officials on workers at other
so-called "competitive" plants.
The auto companies also based their plant-closing decisions on how
many tax breaks and other concessions they could extract from state
and local governments. Last-minute concessions made by the state of
Missouri—including $9 million in tax breaks, job-training incentives
and other enticements for Ford—temporarily saved a 2,700-employee
plant outside of St. Louis. The number-two carmaker chose to close a
plant in Ohio instead. The mayor of Lorain, Ohio, offered Ford a
15-year, 100-percent tax abatement to no avail.
Dozens of working class communities, already reeling from the loss of
jobs and tax revenues due to the economic downturn, will be hard hit
by plant shutdowns and mass layoffs. The job cuts will, in turn, have
a ripple effect throughout local industries, since some 13.3 million
jobs in the US—or one out of every 10 jobs across the country—are
related to the auto industry.
Workers received little or no notice while management and the UAW
bureaucracy decided their fate during negotiations in Detroit.
Instead, they were simply informed after the fact. According to the
Indianapolis Star, workers at the DaimlerChrysler foundry said the
closing announcement came without warning and was made by plant
manager Robert Varsanik during day and evening shifts. "He read four
sentences, and he and the union took no questions," said Jerry Smith,
a skilled tradesman at the plant. "He said we would be closed sometime
in the next four years."
In other cases, factories have been dying a slow death and the
contract was the coup de grace. At the McGraw Glass factory in
Detroit, renamed "McGone Glass" by some workers, windshield production
had already been outsourced to nonunion companies and more than 50
percent of the workforce had already been laid off before final word
of the closing came.
Earlier in the year, McGraw Glass workers, members of UAW Local 227,
picketed the UAW International Headquarters, located at the misnamed
Solidarity House in Detroit, to protest the closing of their plant.
After voting for the contracts last week, many workers expressed anger
that they had voted to eliminate the jobs of the next generation of
workers.
"It will be hard for younger workers to get a decent-paying job for
the next 15 or 20 years until there is time for more people to
retire," a McGraw Glass worker told the World Socialist Web Site. "The
UAW is no longer a union. They are all sellouts. They are just looking
out for their own interests. They have been lining their pockets for
years and now they are telling us that the contract is good, but they
are getting something good out of this just like when [former Chrysler
CEO Robert] Eaton told us that the merger with DaimlerBenz was the
best thing that ever happened. He took off with all the money. The
company and the UAW are going to sell us off, piece by piece.
DaimlerChrysler does not need us. Maybe the company will hold onto the
Jeep and the minivans—that's it."
Another worker pointed to the ongoing assault on the living standards
of auto workers throughout the world. "If there were truly a good
policy about human rights, not only here but also abroad, then you
would not be exploiting the new Mason-Dixon line or Mexico. Slavery
was supposed to have been over in 1865 and Jim Crow in the 1960s. We
have found a new way to enslave, especially when you give them a
dollar or two and they're living in shanties.
"There is this talk about the race to the bottom, but through the
means of credit they want everybody to feel all right for two, five or
seven years. That is just another form of indentured servitude."
DaimlerChrysler workers ratified the contract last week. Auto workers
at the remaining companies continue to vote. The ratification was due
not to any support for the agreement—the largest concession contract
signed by the union since the Chrysler bailout in 1979-1980—but
because rank-and-file workers had no confidence, the union would bring
back anything else if they rejected the deal. The UAW bureaucracy
explicitly opposed any talk of striking and boasted that it was in a
partnership with the US auto bosses against their European and Asian
rivals. As the Detroit News noted, UAW president Ron Gettelfinger "has
changed the union's tune, painting overseas automakers as the real
enemy of the UAW—subtly turning the Big Three into would-be allies."
Summing up the union's corporatist outlook, UAW vice president Bob
King said: "There's no longer an oligopoly in the auto industry. If we
want to keep manufacturing jobs in the US, we can't be fighting
management... Our number one charge is to make sure that we [are]
value-added, that the UAW-represented plants are at the top for
quality."
The ratification votes at Chrysler and other automakers were an
exercise in cynicism. In many cases, votes were held inside the
factories, depriving workers of any ability to collectively oppose the
contract. Where union meetings were held, local officials read out
"highlights" to conceal the extent of the betrayal of auto workers'
interests and refused to answer questions.
"We went to our union meeting Sunday and all they did was read the
contract," a McGraw Glass worker said. "They did not answer questions.
They did not have answers. I am sure they [local officials] have
positions waiting for them in the International. I think the UAW
leaders like to take the money. For the rest of us it will not be a
good future. These shutdowns will affect the whole economy."
After the ratification, many workers were surprised and angered to
learn that they have voted to eliminate their own jobs. Designers at
Chrysler's Auburn Hills, Mich., technology center and Detroit Jeep and
truck engineering complex, for example, learned that the UAW had
signed a "side letter" not included in the contract, which allowed the
elimination of 400 of the salaried UAW jobs. "The letter/agreement was
signed and agreed upon with the full knowledge of the union
representation and was not disclosed prior to the ratification vote,"
read an angry memo circulated among Chrysler designers last week.
The UAW also jettisoned the principle of "equal pay for equal work" by
agreeing to lower wages for new hires at Delphi and Visteon (the parts
company spun off from Ford), which currently employ 30,000 UAW
workers. The companies are seeking to establish a permanent two-tier
wage system, in which new hires work for vastly lower starting wages
and benefits—in line with other suppliers—and can never catch up to
workers who were hired before the current contract.
The UAW and the two parts suppliers will meet within 90 days of the
contract ratification to work out the extent of the wage and benefit
cuts. Delphi and Visteon workers will have no vote on the matter.
As one worker noted, the two-tier wages will further break up the
solidarity of auto workers. In future contracts, the companies are
sure to tell newer workers the only way they can pay for wage
improvements is to vote for pension reductions for the company's tens
of thousands of retirees.
In exchange for the wage cuts at Delphi, GM has reportedly agreed to
the UAW's demand that it give its former parts division $1 billion in
work. This will have the effect of retaining the present number or
even expanding the number of workers covered by the UAW at Delphi. In
other words, the UAW bureaucracy will be ensured of a future income
flow, while its members receive drastically lower wages.
The UAW worked out a similar deal with DaimlerChrysler to offset the
financial impact of the further loss of dues-paying members. The
company reportedly agreed to allow an expedited unionization vote at
its nonunion plants in the South—where the UAW has repeatedly been
rejected—in exchange for the union's blessings for plant closures in
the Midwest that will wipe out thousands of jobs. [www.wsws.org -
World Socialist]
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