Rank & file solidarity can reverse historic retreat

On Oct. 10 at 11 a.m. sharp, Chrysler workers across the country were informed by their stewards: “We’re walking.”

By 11:30 workers at the Twinsburg, Ohio, stamping plant had all seven gates covered. In an incident captured on video, a woman striker immediately blocked the way of a semi truck driver attempting to cross the picket line. Three others joined her, and then a group of about 30 was heard chanting “Back it up, back it up.” The driver put the truck in reverse.

Throughout the afternoon the energy of the rank and file could be observed. Production and skilled trades workers joined in sending their hated supervisors home, while young workers, using chisels and sledgehammers, pounded holes in steel drums so the fires warming them could get air. Veteran union activists delivered coffee and fielded questions from workers for whom this was their first strike.

Community solidarity was immediately visible, from the unbroken stream of horns honking to the donations early on of food from nearby restaurants. Workers from the Ford plant stopped by to show support. Twinsburg was not the exception but reflected a national pattern. Before the strike even started, for example, the Teamsters union pledged that its members would not cross the picket lines.

Rank and file spontaneity was most obvious outside the Chrysler World Headquarters near Detroit, where a militant picket line of hundreds completely blocked ingress and egress to the complex.

The workers were prepared to stay out longer, but at 5:30 p.m. the locals got word that a tentative agreement had been reached. The six and a half hour strike was over. By the midnight shift, production was back to normal. It was the shortest strike in the history of the United Auto Workers union.

The Chrysler contract generally follows the General Motors pattern, but its purported guarantees of job security and future work are actually weaker. The GM agreement binds the promised years of employment to an uncertain market, but the Chrysler agreement goes even further and leaves a number of plants without any future work beyond current models. On Oct. 15 local union leaders ratified it by a voice vote, but there was audible opposition.

Following the GM pattern, a two-tier wage structure is set up for jobs considered “non-core.” In the case of Chrysler some 11,000 workers would, upon retiring, be replaced with “entry level” workers starting in at half the pay of “traditional” employees. Moreover, all future hires, even if they move into the traditional pay structure, will be unable to retire with a traditional pension, having to rely instead on a stock market-dependent 401K. For them, “30 and out” is out—no retiring after 30 years on the job.

The third core component of this historic retreat is the much talked about Voluntary Employee Beneficiary Association, through which the companies are unloading their obligation to fund health care for retirees by way of a one-time large contribution. UAW President Ron Gettelfinger has claimed that the VEBA fund will be solvent for 80 years. Yet, like a 401K, this fund is only as stable as its stock market investments. How can anyone foresee a future of stability when the subprime mortgage crisis has morphed into a generalized crisis of the lending industry?

Furthermore, this disastrous surrender of hard-won gains comes at the worst possible time, with the overall living standards of the working class in decline. When wages and benefits are pushed downward in the auto industry—historically the standard-bearer for labor—it exerts a downward pressure on the price of labor power as a whole. This drags the entire working class ever closer to pauperization.

It also coincides with the greatest concentration of wealth in the fewest hands. The auto industry is no exception. Wall Street private equity firm Cerberus now owns not only Chrysler but 51 percent of GM’s financial arm and a number of auto parts suppliers. Gettelfinger, in dealing with one auto maker at a time, is using an ineffective and outmoded strategy that divides not the companies but the workers they collectively employ.

On the same day as the short-lived Chrysler strike, the final votes were tallied in the GM contract. It passed with 64 percent of workers voting in favor. The news sent GM stocks soaring to record highs. Meanwhile, Ford CEO Alan Mulally, hoping for similar concessions, called the agreement at Chrysler “transformational.” All of Wall Street is heaving a grateful sigh of relief after Getterfinger’s gracious removal of their tremendous burden—tens of billions of dollars of retiree health care debt.

Gettelfinger–who Mulally quite accurately refers to as a “business partner”–called the Chrysler contract a “milestone.”

For workers, nothing could be further from the truth! The gains of strikes past–which lasted weeks and sometimes months—are being dismantled. What worker’s pension is safe if the once-mighty UAW surrenders the security of a negotiated monthly benefit for the next generation of auto workers? The cost of labor, which the UAW estimates is a mere 8.4 percent of the average cost of a vehicle, could easily be half that by the end of these four-year agreements. Who pockets the difference?

The agreements at GM, Chrysler and potentially Ford represent a huge transfer of wealth out of the pockets of union workers and into the deep pockets of Detroit and Wall Street capitalists. The auto maker are lying when they cry poverty, when they say they can’t compete. Cerberus, which bought Chrysler in August, is awash in wealth. GM has stashed away billions from the sale of 51 percent of its financial arm to Cerberus and the sale of Allison Transmission to the Carlyle group.

Rather than guaranteed jobs, could the end result of these givebacks be the opposite? Could these concessions in fact deliver the auto makers the funds needed to finance their expansion into the lucrative global marketplace? Could the devalued labor power of auto workers here be the catalyst for the construction of new factories abroad, factories that use the most advanced technology and the fewest number of workers possible?

Future auto workers will be even more productive than those today, who have themselves cut the time it takes to build a car from 45 to 30 hours in the past four years. It is unconscionable that a labor leader—and from a union with such a proud history of struggle–would facilitate this reduction in the price of labor power, even as productivity rises. How could Gettelfinger send such a negative message to the young workers coming into the plants, that their labor power is worth only half the value of that of their parents?

The failure of leadership is not going unchallenged. Nearly 36 percent of GM workers rejected the contract, the highest percentage in 25 years. Already the talk on the shop floor at Chrysler is “We can’t support two-tier.” Even the news media report that workers are “wary.” A number of Chrysler local union leaders—by one estimate as many as one third of those voting—opposed the deal despite intense pressure from the International.

The rank and file should join the growing opposition and vote NO!

The Chrysler vote may lead to ratification, but that doesn’t have to mean four years of quiet on the part of the workers.

What is the contract but the outcome of the collective bargaining process, which is but one part of the bigger class struggle? On the surface, two sides have reached an agreement acceptable to both; in reality, a temporary truce has been hammered out between representatives of antagonistic class forces. Proof is in the arguments that follow over the interpretation of the language, each reading it their way, that continue at the plant level on a daily basis.

The workers’ resistance will face an uphill battle. They will be up against bosses who are emboldened by their latest advances in these negotiations. Moreover, no concessions are ever enough, but only serve to whet the voracious appetites of the rulers.

Still, it is certain that a new, militant leadership can and will emerge from the rank and file opposition–as it did when the Delphi bankruptcy led to the formation of Soldiers of Solidarity—able to find new forms of struggle that go outside the framework of collective bargaining. The mere signing of contracts will not stop the incredible solidarity forged during brief but powerful shutdowns of two major corporations.

How can workers ever forget the day they told their bosses, “You can’t go to work. We’re in charge today.”

Martha Grevatt has worked for Chrysler in Ohio for 20 years and is active in her UAW local.

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