The UAW's Disastrous Bargaining
The United Auto Workers union has forced 8,700 Caterpillar workers to hampered broader support. But, during the lockout, and as a result of the Dr. King marches initiated by the African-American caucus, Jeanette Hawkins, the first
African-American woman to be hired into the plant, was elected to the Bargaining end their strike. But it couldn't make them approve the "total flexibility" Committee. Three white male candidates contract the union has negotiated with management. But UAW who supported diversifying the leadership leadership's "bargaining relationship" will let Caterpillar's "lean and withdrew their own candidacies and campaigned for Hawkins' election. Prior to the King marches, only one African American had been traveling regularly with the Road Warriors. After the marches, a number of locked-out African Americans went on the road, sometimes as a Black caucus but most often with the white workers and appealing to the previously untapped support of African Americans within the labor movement. At the beginning of the work-to-rule campaign, weekly solidarity meetings were initiated and spouses and children were invited to attend. The support from the spouses, mostly wives, cannot be understated. The wives and women workers later formed a bi-monthly support group during which the women would share the hardships of the lockout on Garnering support from other women, many wives were empowered to sustain being the main family wage-earner, and others were encouraged to enter or reenter the work force. FIGHT OF THE DECADE No other local has drawn the line and waged the fight as the Staley workers have done. And the pain of knowing that Pepsi was soon to collapse from the pressure is almost unbearable. Yet this one tragic defeat also holds 1,000 lessons for the next union to take a stand for the labor movement. Local 7837 should be proud of those who gave of their lives for thirty long, grueling months and left workers and labor history forever changed Thank you, Local 7837. We shall never forget you! * This article was originally published in the March-April issue of Against the Current, with the title "Snatched from the Jaws of Victory? Staley Workers End Lockout". It has been edited here for space reasons.
by Kim Moody THE OFFER WAS AN ENDORSEMENT OF WHAT labor relations professor Victor Davinatz calls "Caterpillar's three-and-a-half-year commitment to restructuring its relationship with the UAW and freeing itself from the union's penchant for pattern bargaining."
As the Wall Street Journal put it, the major theme of this restructured relationship is, "Management is in control." They will now attempt to control the shop floor and implement total flexibility to a degree they couldn't have dreamed of under employee participation.
The agreement, which 78% of strikers refused to approve, would have carved this new regime into stone for the next six years. Management will unilaterally implement much of the contract anyway. TERMS OF SURRENDER
A look at the defeated contract shows that the issues go far beyond the deep economic concessions it contained. As Larry Solomon, president of UAW Local 751 in Decatur, Illinois, says, it "dismantles representation in the plant."
The plant bargaining committee would be cut by half, with no full-time representatives and no stewards at all in some areas of some plants. The remaining representatives have to get company passes to do grievance work. Further, there are restrictions on the amount of company time the union can use to write, investigate, and negotiate grievances. The number of arbitrations is reduced.
Perhaps most outrageous, the company would have the right to unilaterally reject grievances it regarded as "repetitive" or "frivolous"; there would be no appeal. To enhance in-plant competition among workers, the union's own bargaining structure would be reorganized along the lines of new "business units."
A "Temporary Special Moratoria" on free speech would ban use of the word "scab" and bar workers from in any way harassing scabs. Nor would they be able to wear apparel with anti-CAT slogans. To head off future in-plant actions, the no-strike clause would be amended to ban about every form of "concerted" activity once guaranteed by U.S. labor law.
In case all of this is not enough to teach the workers who is boss, UAW leaders have agreed that the 150 strikers who were fired for alleged picket line militancy will be denied arbitration.
As if to mock their own pretensions to labor-management cooperation, the settlement would have made participation in employee-involvement groups a mandatory condition of employment. LEAN OR JUST MEAN?
The settlement swallowed every piece of "flexible" work organization Caterpillar wanted: permanent two-tier wage and benefit structure for new hires; 12-hour alternative work schedules that are "voluntary, if possible"; a part-time or temporary workforce amounting to 15% of total employment; nonunion employees doing bargaining unit work; more company authority over job reassignments; and the downsizing of the workforce as people leave or retire.
Most of the economic features are similarly lean and mean. Over the next six years, the company would take $1.50 off the cost of living allowance. The medical plan would restrict workers to companypicked doctors and hospitals; they would have to pay 300% more to go elsewhere.
The one thing that was in the settlement for the union was the union security clause, making everyone - scab or striker — a dues-paying UAW member. In the eyes of the International union, this union security clause defines the union's relationship to management. And what hovers over the history of this long fight as a theme is the UAW leadership's continued effort to treat Caterpillar like a normal bargaining partner.
Even in the face of a company-written proposal and an overwhelming rejection, the UAW leadership will continue negotiating in what it thinks is a "bargaining relationship." Perhaps the legacy of the oneKim Moody is editor of Labor Notes, a monthly bulletin for the left in the American labor movement. This article is reprinted from the March issue of Labor Notes
International Viewpoint n° 276 31
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