Caterpillar
Unionised auto-workers at Caterpillar have ratified the same contract they rejected in February, but with one big difference. The company has reinstated all 160 union members fired for disputerelated activities. Kim Moody* CAT workers voted down the offer by 58% in February, when the company proposed to take back only 110 of the 160 sacked members of the United Auto Workers (UAW) union, leaving 50 to face an uncertain future in arbitration. The majority of the workers realised that if the best fighters could be fired, there wouldn't be much of a union left.
Mike Legel, who works on the UAW Local 974 newsletter The Unionite, said
"Hopefully, Caterpillar will come to the realisation that we are not about to abandon our brothers who were illegally discharged." Ratification did not mean that the majority were happy with the contract. As Legel told the Detroit Sunday Journal, "Our only victory is that
Union members at Caterpillar have sent a strong message to management, union leaders, and to the 4,000 scabs who were not paying union dues before the ratification and couldn't vote on the contract, Whatever the content of this contract, union workers will fight on. Resistance from the war zone
It should come as no surprise that the heart of the rejection movement came from some of the plants in the Illinois "War Zone." The centre of this movement was Decatur, scene of long struggles at A.E. Staley and Bridgestone-Firestone, as well as Caterpillar.
Even with all 160 illegally fired workers back, Decatur CAT workers voted down the offer by 7 to 1 (in February 9 to 1) Workers at the giant East Peoria plant voted "No!" by 6 to 1 in February and only barely passed it in March.
The new contact is big on "flexibility." It includes expanded use of temporary workers, management's right to introduce flexible schedules as required, a new incentive system tied to unit production, and a two-tier hiring system, with new workers starting at 70% of the union wage, and reaching parity only at the end of their six-year contract.
Throughout the prolonged struggle, Caterpillar seemed almost invincible. Its sales soared and its stock tripled between 1993 and 1997. Its profits for those years 12 International Viewpoint #301 leapt from $626 million to $2.3 billion. In the plants it conducted a reign of terror against union members.
Saving the union in the plants was no small achievement at the end of this sixand-a-half year battle. From co-operation to confrontation
In the 1980s Caterpillar had been a model of labour-management co-operation. CAT management used that period to restructure the company by building non-union facilities in the US and abroad.
Union members were reduced to about 25% of the workforce as CAT quietly expanded and the UAW leadership looked on silently. Then in 1991, management decided the time to reorganise its union workforce had arrived. It broke the industry practice of following the contract pattern set by the UAW in negotiations with another employer, John Deere.
The UAW struck, but ordered the strikers back to work in April 1992 when the company threatened to bring in permanent replacement scabs. This sent shock waves across the labour movement. The UAW then attempted to run an "inside" campaign to force Caterpillar to back down, but CAT wouldn't budge.
The UAW struck again in 1994, but ended the strike in December 1995, in what appeared a total defeat. The union presented CAT's final offer for a vote, but the members voted it down overwhelmingly.
The UAW attempted to keep some pressure on the company by continuing to amass unfair labour practice charges through the National Labor Relations Board -(NLRB). By the time they recommended the February 1998 agreement, there were 441 Unfair Labor Practice charges against the company.
The company too had a legal strategy. In December 1995, just as the strikers returned to work for the second time, CAT went to court with a suit that would have completely undermined the UAW's traditional system of shop floor representation.
CAT contended that the UAW system of full-time, company-paid workplace representatives was illegal. Caterpillar, the "Big Three" car producers, and most major firms under UAW contract had allowed this system to flourish informally for decades: they recognised its utility in containing potential conflicts.
The Big Three automakers even opposed Caterpillar's new strategy in court. Through the American Automobile Manufacturers Association, they complained that making company-paid workplace representatives illegal would "significantly disrupt both the companies' operating practices and the structures of collec-
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tive bargaining relationships in the U.S. automobile industry."
For the UAW's ruling Administration Caucus, such a decision would cost millions of dollars, undermine its shop floor presence, and eliminate its main patronage device. Company-paid full-timers are a mainstay of the Administration Caucus in the workplace and the local unions. They frequently collect overtim even when not in the plant, and sor make as much as $100,000 a year.
In January 1998, the U.S. Suprem Court agreed to hear the case. It appear that the acceptance of the suit by the Sup reme Court was motivation enough for the UAW leadership to represent to member essentially the same offer that was rejected in 1995. They thought workers were desperate enough to desert fifty of their fired comrades. They underestimated them. Fites fumbles
Building on the restructuring of the 1980s, CAT Chief Executive Officer Donald Fites launched an ambitious expansion program in the 1990s that saw the company go from 39 plants to 74, half of them abroad. By 1997, 51% of Caterpillar's sales were overseas.
Following the big Pacific-rim craze of the decade, Fites targeted Asia in particular. The 1997 economic crisis in East Asia opened a period of deep industrial restructuring, and austerity. The kind of measures that make CAT's heavy equipment am avoidable luxury.
Not only did Caterpillar's Asian market collapse, but products it had sold there during its targeted expansion came flowing back as second-hand, "grey market" competition for its new US sales.
CAT wanted this contract because it would drastically lower costs in this new competitive situation. CAT Vice President Wayne Zimmerman said it was "tailored to Caterpillar's needs." The workers, however, had convinced management they would hold the contract for ransom until their comrades were reinstated
The savings from the new contract would be substantial indeed. About 4,000 of Caterpillar's 12,900 union workers
were eligible for retirement. The new agreement, which increased pension benefits by up to $500 a month, was designed to encourage them to take it.
In their place would come thousands of new hires at 70% of the old wage, who would remain cheaper until the end of the contract, when thousands more would retire and a new wave of low-cost workers would come along. The six-year deal guaranteed this, and took some of the guess-work out of planning in an uncertain world market.
UAW leadership, long accustomed to being guardians of the corporate bottom line, saw no way to turn CAT's new difficulties to the union's advantage. The members, many of whom were less aware of management's serious fumble in Asia, used their veto to make the best of a bad situation. sometimes, just sometimes, the out-of-control world economy can help workers in struggle. Nothing is over
CAT's union workers face a difficult situation —a management with blood in its eyes, 4,000 former scabs as co-workers, and a top union leadership that is praying for peace. Donald Fites wants costs cut by any means necessary, and he wants them more than he wants labour peace. He has proved that he could run his plants during a self-imposed class war and make big bucks. He reduced average manufacturing time in his U.S. plants by 75% over the last five years and now he wants more.
Strikers, line-crossers, and new hires alike are in for some serious labour intensification, downsizing, and long hours. The militants, at least, understand their long fight was just one battle. Camron Austin, a supporter of the Decatur plant's Kick The CAT newsletter says, not over." "If organised labour has to fight for its survival, so be it, let it begin here," writes Rick Corbin in The Unionite.
This kind of consciousness is not isolated to CAT veterans. In the recent rank-and-file rebellion at Saturn, inexperienced UAW members fought the company's *team concept organisation, and local and national union leaders, to tie their contracts to the "traditional" GM contract.
They lost the vote to dump the Saturn contract when the union threatened 2,700 layoffs, but as Saturn worker Tom Hopp told a Labor Notes school on union democracy in March, "Two thousand people agree with us. That's a start." The fighters at Staley, the Detroit newspapers, the activists in the long string of strikes at GM from 1994 through 1997, and the victors at UPS all displayed this new consciousnes.
Win or lose their immediate battles, more workers today are seeing the "big picture" - capital is on a world-wide rampage, and union leaders are in retreat or following their own agenda. The result is not only strikes, but spreading rebellions within the unions.
Recent years have seen victories and near-victories for rank-and-file reform movements in the Teamsters (the country's largest union), the 50,000-member
Brotherhood of Maintenance of Way Employees, the 40,000-member California State Employees Association, and the 35,000-member Transport Workers Union Local 100, which represents public transport workers in New York city. Conservatives in Local 100 stole the union election in December 1997, but it will be re-rerun later this month.
Coming behind the victors and nearvictors are those newer to the rebellion in countless locals across the country. What can we learn?
Rank and file persistence is a powerful force. On the other hand, the UAW's entire approach to Caterpillar reads like a negative text book.
A union that lets itself become a minority of the company workforce is unlikely to win a traditional business union-style strike. The union should have followed the company as it expanded, and attempted to organise each new plant. This lesson applies to the UAW across the automobile industry, and to far too many other unions, even in their core jurisdictions.
Both old and new experience points to the use of volunteer member organisers as the key to success. That, however, requires a certain trust in those members, something missing in the UAW. This distrust of the members also undermined the union's "inside" strategy between the strikes. Pioneer workplace strategist Jerry Tucker is one of the many who say that campaign was run too much by "remote control"
Effective inside campaigns must not simply mobilise the members episodically, but draw on their initiative and involvement in designing the actions.
The union's failure to take advantage of the changed international position of CAT last year flows from its embrace of company competitiveness as a strategy for preserving the institutional basis of the union. The lesson is clear: If you are not willing to at least wound the giant, don't expect to win.
A broader lesson is that union democracy is not a luxury. In the final analysis, the members and their position in production are the strength underlying any such [Losers and winners involving 1,000 workers or more
Sources: Department of Labour, Bureau of Labour statistics, Caterpine confrontation no matter what tactics or alliances accompany it.
If members are accustomed to passivity in union business; if, in fact, they are excluded from real decision-making in union affairs, influence over bargaining, and the ability to make their leaders accountable, then the hope they can be mobilised at the "right" tactical moment is illusory.
When the members can use the union and its structures to mobilise themselves, then you have power.
The Caterpillar workers, like so many others, did not control their leaders above the local level. In a 14-plant strike over a national contract such as that at Caterpillar, local influence is not enough. Centralised headquarters' control over bargaining goals and negotiations, over dispute strategy and tactics, and over the timing and procedures for presenting an offer to the members is a recipe for keeping the members disorganised.
To be a force in the struggle, the members must have collective power and influence over these processes. This the Caterpillar workers did not have.
The 1997 UPS strike was an example of this. The Teamsters had taken important steps toward democratisation and membership power. In preparation for a major confrontation with UPS the Teamster leaders solicited grassroots input in to bargaining goals; members were kept informed regularly about bargaining progress; rank and file initiative was encouraged in the mobilisation against the company's Team Concept programme from 1995 on, and then in the 1997 contract campaign.
The existence of Teamsters for a Democratic Union made much of this possible, reminding us that rank-and-file power and union democracy are not just about good structures and fair elections.
In the era of multinational corporate giants, this is a strategic lesson for all labour. The more union members realise the need to organise themselves and fight for union democracy, the fewer will be the setbacks such as that at Caterpillar-and the faster the real growth labour needs. * * The author is director of Labor Notes and author of An Injury to All and Labor in a Lean World (Verso). This article reprinted from Against the Current
Caterpillar share price latest 1991
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