June 28, 1998

The UAW Strike Against General Motors Is Showdown

Call it what you will -- work rules or job security - - the disturbing fact is that the United Automobile Workers strike against General Motors is showdown.

Key to settlement lies not in Flint, Michigan, where the strike started, but in Sao Jose dos Campos, Brazil.

The issue was joined three weeks ago when workers at two GM parts plants in Flint walked out. Unionists hit the ceiling when the company on Memorial weekend transferred some stamping dies for the Chevy Blazer to a GM factory in Ontario, Canada.

Worker anger had been festering over foot-dragging by GM for a $300 million expansion of the Flint Metal stamping plant.

Donald Hackworth, a vice-president of GM’s North American Operations, says the company invested $120 million in the project upon a UAW promise to revise work rules.

Hackworth is blunt about the union’s failure to keep its promise. “We’re not going to invest any more money in a facility that cannot provide a return on our investment.” He ordered an unprecedented “cold shutdown” Thursday of the three

assembly plants still running. Twenty six others, lacking parts, already had turned out the lights. Under present work rules, stamping plant workers have low quotas for eight hours of work. This, he says, enables them to meet their quotas in four or five hours and complete the remaining hours of production at time-and- half pay.

Hackworth says the Flint Metal Center plant loses $50 million a year -- $33 million of this in featherbed overtime. He avers the average wage-benefit package there last year was $98,000.

“This is hurting us, and it’s serious,” declares Hackworth. “Our whole company is headed for meltdown.”

Richard Shoemaker, UAW vice-president for GM issues, scoffs. He accuses GM of “ignoring its social contract with America by transferring jobs, technology and capital from the U.S.” He demands job security for the 148,000 production workers in U.S., Mexico and Canada. Today, those employees are idle -- their plants shut down as critical parts dwindled. Settlement of the dispute is weeks, if not months, away. Union prospects are dim. GM may be crippled.

The real problem is rapid growth of a global economy that strives for balance between consumers, capitalists and workers.

Unfortunately, labor can not be squeezed into a computer or wrapped in an overnight express package.

Also unfortunately, capital has no emotion and gravitates to the best monetary return. Competition is natural and, like Nature, ruthless as it strives for level playing fields. Right now, GM capital and UAW labor are out of balance.

General Motors’ once giant share of the automobile market has shrunk drastically -- as have those of Ford and Chrysler -- pounded by competition at home and abroad.

American car makers enjoyed a virtual monopoly for years after World War II. There were few restraints on selling prices. Costs were passed on to consumers as other nations began to produce cars. Workers and investors discovered they had nearly priced themselves out of the market. Today they need each other, and the rest of us need both of them. The model of salvation appears to be the kind of labor-management symbiosis blooming in Brazil.

Cheap, unskilled labor is the attraction. Automation makes it workable. Nothing new about this combination. The new wrinkle is an assembly line building in the shape of a L or T which accommodates a revolutionary production technique. The building configuration provides more wall space for docks. This enables independent suppliers to deliver “partially-assembled” components simultaneously just “on time” for final assembly.Suppliers are mostly non-union. Their shops usually are sparsely appointed. This may be a bastard sired by competition, but it is a reality that must be dealt with.

It is no coincidence that the last two presidents of GM’s Brazil plants, Richard Wagoner, Jr., and Mark Hogan, now are vice-presidents here calling the shots for GM’s North American Operations. It is ironic that the struggle to balance the interests of auto capital and labor should be fought in Flint. This is where GM was born and where UAW came of age in the great sitdown strike of 1936.Big business, big union and big government collaborated then to create a level playing field in the U.S. The field is world wide today. Game rules are drastically different.

Sadly the glory days for GM and the UAW are over. Each has downsized substantially. Each will have to sacrifice still more to survive in smaller measure.

As the saying goes, better half a loaf than none.

o

For an account of the 1936 Flint sitdown strike see "Battle of 'Bulls' Run in First GM Strike Rout Police"

o

PARTING SHOTS

Accompanying President Clinton to China are Hillary, Chelsea, an unknown number of Secret Service officers, five cabinet officers, six Democrat congressmen, 500 staff aides, 500 support personnel, 200 reporters, 10 armored limousines, and 60 tons of equipment. Only Buddy was left to guard the White House.

* * *

Always drink upstream from the herd.

By Lindsey Williams, columnist for Sun Coast Media Group newspapers