From: "Paul Johnston" To: Subject: Re: Questions Re: GM Strike Date: Thu, 9 Jul 1998 21:36:28 -0700 charset="iso-8859-1" Jody writes: >I'm not sure what Paul Johnston means about UAW organizing >"internationally". The UAW has ceded Canada to the CAW and is (except for >one or two Canadian locals that refuse to join the CAW) an entirely >domestic organization. UAW organizing efforts in Mexico or elsewhere would >obviously be fraught with all sorts of troublesome issues, but I suppose >that shouldn't necessarily rule them off the table. I would venture to say >that it is not immediately clear that a Mexican auto or auto parts worker >would be more eager to join or have more to gain by joining the UAW as >opposed to FAT or a CTM affiliate. > In the era of global work, it is not credible to claim that we cannot stimulate and support organizing in places like Mexico because of international union jurisdictional issues. At the very least, now, today, the union should recruit and train teams of strikers as solidarity organizers, and send them to every corner of GM's global commodity chain. >I am more skeptical than Paul Johnston seems to be >about the union's ability to have affected the course of events via >strategic behavior in earlier periods. The crisis at GM is driven >primarily by two events mostly outside the union's influence: the dramatic >decline in GM's North American market share and the Toyota-inspired >transformation of automobile production over the last 20 or so years. >Under these conditions, it is hard to imagine circumstances in which the >union wouldn't have found itself in the present predicament. The union is not a helpless victim of circumstances. The historical trends which put the union in this position have been clearly visible for a long time, so that the question becomes, what is the union's strategic response to those conditions? Productivity, downsizing etc. are of course the central issues of the strike. GM of course has made a deliberate decision to spend a bundle to break the union. We have witnessed the opening weeks of a classical industrial-regime-shaping strike episode, calculated to end in bitter and demoralized defeat for the workforce and in much more malleable workplace relations. One thing which will be essential for the union to win will be a change of heart, direction, power and even people at the decision-making heart of GM. To win this inside political struggle the union has to persuade certain management decisionmakers to abandon the present agenda-- both that it will not succeed, and that there is a preferable alternative. This demands that the union have an alternative management strategy and the means to promote it. This kind of capacity comes from active participation in the politics of productivity, as advocates of pro-worker and pro-consumer improvements in productivity. This kind of labor-management process involves not just partnership but-- often and in this case especially more important-- campaigns against mismanagement. One strand of the strike campaign itself is precisely this kind of pitched battle, the mother of all campaigns against mismanagement. The ultimate partner is the consumer, and the ultimate weapon is the boycott-- our boycott-- of GM products. The threat that some significant market share might not come back for some time. All of us GM owners should promise to dump our cars and buy from another company. The boycott threat should be driven by a campaign that ties GM's downsizing to low-paid and temporary jobs represents what is happening in all our communities: the loss of jobs which pay a living wage, so that more and more young adults in particular are unable to afford to support a family. Vivid examples of this trend, and clear examples of pro-worker, pro-community productivity improvement possible with better management at GM: these are essential weapons in the media battle which UAW strikers should be waging on TV and radio and in our local streets every day. Every labor council in the country should mount a "Stop Downsizing America!" solidarity campaign. But organizing the competition, articulating and advancing a pro-worker management agenda, summoning up strategic alliances-- these things can't be done very well in the midst of a strike if the groundwork has not been laid over a long time. That's why I say that the basic possibilities have probably been set already. That said, I'll go a step further from Jody's fatalism and say that the main factor determining the outcome will be the creativity and organizational capacity of the strike leadership. Economic circumstances and management resources and management decisions aside, what the strike leadership does now make will make a decisive difference. Suddenly, the union is transformed from a small circle of well-paid professionals and their rank-and-file partners into thousands upon thousands of full-time anxious members. The question arises: will the union be able to open up, vastly expand its division of labor and the scope of its activities, draw this enormous pool of creative and productive capacity into its strike operation, marshalling them into strike committees with a multiplicity of clearly and creatively defined tasks? Will it activate and inspire them, taking advantage of the effervescence of this moment to help change their lives and help turn many more of them into labor movement activists? Will it mobilize them as a guerilla army, using every cultural and social and political as well as economic weapon that creative imagination and openness to opportunity can bring to hand? Or will it treat them, as in the traditional economic strike, like mere machines? Turn them off, stand them outside the workplace, idle them until economic pain makes one or both sides compromise or capitulate? Which it does will determine more than what resources it can bring to bear in this titanic fight. It will shape the character of the union for years, and likely decades. I would like to hear stories from the strike council. -----Original Message----- From: Jody Knauss To: Labor Research and Action Project Date: Sunday, July 05, 1998 8:05 AM Subject: Re: Questions Re: GM Strike > >On Wed, 24 Jun 1998, Paul Johnston wrote: > >> Questions re: Outsource Organizing and Labor-Management Strategies at GM >> >> What can observers close to the scene tell us about union's recent track >> record on organizing outsourced sites, domestic and international? also, >> about its recent track record on addressing productivity & related >> management issues? >> >> The strike is a fluid & open situation, and there's a lot of room in this >> contingency for success or failure. But the basic possibilities in this >> watershed strike were certainly defined long ago by union strategies in >> these two critical areas. >> >> Paul johnston@cruzio.com >> > >I thought this was a provocative post and in the interests of not seeing >this discussion die from lack of response, I'll put in my two cents. I >don't claim to have intimate knowledge of the present situation but I did >spend several years in the UAW's research dept before leaving five years >ago. > >The union has had very little success organizing domestic auto parts >plants - I believe that the estimates for union coverage in the auto parts >sector (not counting the parts operations of the Big 3) are in the >neighborhood of 10 percent. The formerly unionized auto parts companies >have closed most of their older (unionized) facilities and have >successfully fended off organizing efforts in their new plants. Meanwhile >lots of new companies, many foreign-based, others new start-ups >explicitly gunning for outsourced work, have entered the scene, almost all >of these also non- and anti-union. > >I'm not sure what Paul Johnston means about UAW organizing >"internationally". The UAW has ceded Canada to the CAW and is (except for >one or two Canadian locals that refuse to join the CAW) an entirely >domestic organization. UAW organizing efforts in Mexico or elsewhere would >obviously be fraught with all sorts of troublesome issues, but I suppose >that shouldn't necessarily rule them off the table. I would venture to say >that it is not immediately clear that a Mexican auto or auto parts worker >would be more eager to join or have more to gain by joining the UAW as >opposed to FAT or a CTM affiliate. > >The union has had much more success bargaining over productivity-related >issues, in large part I think because years of struggle over production >standards and related issues developed real union expertise in this area. >But no one would suggest that the work pace and/or expectations for work >effort haven't increased dramatically over the last 20 years.(You'll >notice no one from the union directly defending the rights of Flint >workers to meet quota and go home before the shift ends, only that changes >in work practices should be offset by investment commitments from GM.) > >Two last comments: I am more skeptical than Paul Johnston seems to be >about the union's ability to have affected the course of events via >strategic behavior in earlier periods. The crisis at GM is driven >primarily by two events mostly outside the union's influence: the dramatic >decline in GM's North American market share and the Toyota-inspired >transformation of automobile production over the last 20 or so years. >Under these conditions, it is hard to imagine circumstances in which the >union wouldn't have found itself in the present predicament. > >Finally, it should be noted that one under-recognized reason why >industrial relations at GM are presently much more volatile at GM than >Ford or Chrysler is that the other two slashed their workforces by more >than half in the early 80s and so have been able to restructure without >the looming shadow of further job cuts. GM was strong enough then to avoid >the same fate, but has been dying a death of a thousand cuts since then. > >I'd be interested in the comments of others. > > >Jody Knauss >Dept. of Sociology >Univ. of Wisconsin-Madison >1180 Observatory Drive >Madison, WI 53706 > >In addition to all the factors mentioned, there is a big difference in climate at the various auto companies. When I worked in Detroit, I found that Ford especially acted in a businesslike and rational way. Chrysler was more or less the same, but General Motors was very difficult to deal with. It behaved in ways that seemed irrational and to cause it more harm than good. One labor lawyer very familiar with the auto industry opined that the key motivating factor at GM was saving face -- not thinking in the longterm or about what was best for the business. Ellen J. Dannin California Western School of Law 225 Cedar Street San Diego, CA 92116 (619) 525-1449 FAX: (619) 696-9999 > >