New faces at Detroit auto show: angry workers

Every year Detroit is host to the North American International Auto Show. Promoted as being “among the most prestigious auto shows in the world” and “one of the largest media events in North America,” NAIAS is the premier venue this side of the Atlantic for auto manufacturers to show off new products.

This year, angry Delphi workers and their supporters will be crashing the bosses’ party.

Soldiers Of Solidarity (SOS) is a growing, grassroots movement of rank-and-file workers formed in response to CEO Steve Miller’s outrageous attacks on Delphi workers. It has called for a protest at Cobo Hall from noon to 4 p.m. on Jan. 8—NAIAS media day—around the following slogans: support Delphi workers, stop the wage cuts, preserve benefits, preserve pensions, universal health care, and, they emphasize, no concessions.

Miller, whose field of expertise is the use of bankruptcy courts to gut union contracts, has demanded the United Auto Workers (UAW) accept drastic cuts in wages and benefits, including a two-thirds cut in hourly pay. The UAW refused to go along. Delphi, the world’s largest auto parts company and a former General Motors parts division, then declared bankruptcy.

Delphi made a second offer slightly reducing the proposed wage cuts, but that has also been rejected by the UAW. The bankruptcy court, which has denied the UAW a role in its proceedings, had initially set a December deadline to rule on Delphi’s proposals, but no ruling had come down by the end of the year.

Worker rallies draw thousands

The UAW and other unions have held huge rallies in cities where Delphi has plants, typically drawing thousands. The six unions that represent the 34,000 Delphi workers in the U.S. have launched the Mobilize @ Delphi—”M@D”—campaign. UAW International President Ron Gettelfinger has warned that a strike is “more likely than not.” Strike training sessions are scheduled for January.

SOS activists, however, are determined to hit Delphi, and consequently GM, at the point of production. With meetings around the Great Lakes region drawing a minimum of 100 Delphi workers each, these rank-and-file leaders recognize that the time to act is now. They are organizing workers in their plants to “work to rule”—working in a manner faithful to the job description and nothing more. Workers will follow safety and quality guidelines strictly and won’t offer their expertise to management.

For bosses accustomed to making semi-secret, concession-laden deals with the top UAW leadership, the specter of independent rank-and-file resistance could be a major headache. Business analyst James Womack had this to say about the rising rank-and-file movement: “We’ve gone beyond the charted ocean where everybody understood what an iceberg was and what a supertanker was and what a whale was. Now there are all kinds of creatures leaping out of the water and nobody knows what these creatures are.” (New York Times, Dec. 13)

All the mobilizations have had an effect. The bankruptcy court’s date to rule on Delphi’s proposal was postponed to January and then again to Feb. 7. Delphi’s Miller has withdrawn his second proposal and expressed his willingness to go back to the bargaining table with the UAW.

What concessions will Delphi push now, and what demands will they drop? This has not been made public. Nor have Gettelfinger or other UAW officials made clear what they might settle for—only that Delphi needs to “narrow the scope of its demands” if it wants to avoid a strike.

Huge opposition to Ford, GM concessions

When GM itself claimed to be losing billions of dollars and threatened bankruptcy, citing the rising cost of employee and retiree health care, the UAW leadership agreed to a mid-contract deal that would increase health care costs for retirees and strip active workers of a dollar an hour in scheduled wage increases. Worried that even greater health costs might be forced onto retirees, workers voted to go along with the deal. However, despite GM’s alleged losses, nearly 40 percent of those voting gave it thumbs down.

GM’s thank-you gift to its workers was the announcement that it would eliminate 30,000 jobs, on top of plant closings already agreed to in the 2003 contract with the UAW.

Also claiming billions in losses, Ford followed suit by declaring that it would eliminate 25,000 hourly positions. UAW-represented workers voted on the same concession package ratified at GM. It narrowly passed with a mere 51 percent of the vote, and remains in question. Several large Ford union locals rejected the deal, with well over half their members voting no. At least two mid-level union leaders have asked for a recount.

The GM and Ford votes suggest there could be an actual rejection of the pattern-setting concessions at DaimlerChrysler, where the bosses are still raking in profits.

All these developments point to serious rumblings on the production floor. Sooner or later, anger will turn into action. Workers need to flat-out reject the notion that Delphi, GM, Ford or DaimlerChrysler has the right to make any concessionary demands.

In the words of SOS leader Gregg Shotwell, “We have been indoctrinated with the policy of helplessness. It’s a lie. We are not defenseless victims. We have power. We control production. We can bring General Motors to its knees.

“The [1930s] sit-downers won because they seized control of the shop floor. They won because they shut down GM. Our challenge is no less.”

Martha Grevatt is on the executive board of UAW Local 122 at DaimlerChrysler’s Ohio Stamping Plant.