What next after auto contracts expire?

Contracts between the Big Three auto makers and the United Auto Workers union expire Sept. 14. On Labor Day weekend, although UAW President Ron Gettelfinger had a huge audience of UAW members available, he gave no speeches at all. As of Sept. 11 workers have received no orientation whatsoever from the UAW as to how negotiations are progressing or what to expect in the next contract.

Who is Gettelfinger talking to? On Sept. 6 he addressed the bosses’ forum, the Detroit Economic Club, where he has become a frequent speaker. There he built up a case for a national health care system.

This in and of itself is a progressive demand and sorely needed by the nearly fifty million uninsured people in the U.S. In the context of the current negotiations, however, the effect of the comments is to let the bosses off the hook for providing health insurance to workers and retirees.

For decades there has been an understanding that the companies are obligated to provide these benefits. Now Gettelfinger’s position implies that the companies aren’t responsible for the failure of the government to provide health care and that the companies shouldn’t face an unfair cost disadvantage with their foreign competitors. Thus the union should help the companies find a solution.

This is a dangerous outlook that leads to the establishment of a VEBA—Voluntary Employee Benefits Association. Under a VEBA, the companies make a one-time lump sum contribution towards health benefits costs. After this lump sum, the auto makers would be free of all future obligations for health care.

For the union to accept a VEBA is a risky strategy that could see workers’ benefits cut or even lost. The VEBAs established at Caterpillar and at Detroit Diesel, two firms with workers represented by the UAW, are now broke.

Other comments made in Gettelfinger’s speech should add to rank-and-file unionists’ concern. On the catastrophic loss of jobs, Gettelfinger said: “We have made a decision—as a nation—that we are not particularly concerned about manufacturing jobs. Other nations treasure their manufacturing industries, and develop policies to nurture and support them. We don’t.”

Really? Doesn’t “we as a nation” include workers who care deeply about keeping their jobs? It’s only the minority ruling class that profits from shifting work to low wage countries—they make the decisions to close more and more plants. There is no “democratically elected” layoff.

Yet regardless of what their leaders are saying and to whom, workers are starting to see the companies’ game plan for what it is. The Sept. 10 Detroit Free Press quotes a 37-year Toledo Chrysler employee, Dan Petersen:

“I think they’ve got psychiatrists and psychoanalysts on staff,” Petersen said. “For the last couple of years, they put a little snippet in the paper here and there. ... After people read that for a while, they get it in their head ‘I’m going to have to take something.’ I really think they play with your mind over a period of time”

Now the attitude of the workers toward the companies and their union leaders may be one of “you can’t fight City Hall.” Yet if the rank and file need to find independent forms of organization to fight for their right to jobs, pensions and health care, they will do so. A recent article in the Detroit Free Press mentioning Soldiers of Solidarity—a rank-and-file organization of UAW members that wants to struggle—led to 13,000 hits on the group’s web site.

An international fightback conference, even if called after the contracts are settled, could unite all the workers facing layoffs, foreclosures, loss of pensions, deportations and a whole host of economic attacks. This could spur a grassroots movement that could raise the level of class consciousness and snap the ideological fetters of class collaboration.

History suggests that such a break is inevitable. In March of 1937 William Green, president of the conservative craft union, the American Federation of Labor (AFL), made a point of denouncing the sit-down strike tactic and declaring it illegal. That year there were 477 recorded sit-down strikes, the most powerful action taken in organizing the industrial unions.

E-mail: mgrevatt@workers.org