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Today, concessions bargaining is the norm in the face
of employer aggressiveness. In the de-regulated private sector
(where, for example, the World Trade Organization (WTO) swept aside the
U.S.-Canada Auto Pact rules that tied market access to investment
levels), major industrial unions like the Canadian Auto Workers (CAW) now
lobby government to subsidize the auto giants in order to attract
investment. This perspective undermines workers’ independence from
management, and weakens arguments against speed-up and wage/benefit
concessions demanded in the interest of ‘global competitiveness’.
Likewise, in telecommunications, in steel, in food and
retail, similar pressures are bearing down on workers to agree to forced
overtime, reduced pensions and a two-tier wage structure. While
Steelworkers at Stelco in Hamilton resisted a company pension default,
the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) agreed to major concessions
to Canadian food retailer Loblaws (supposedly to help Loblaws be
competitive with WalMart). During Air Canada’s bankruptcy crisis,
instead of demanding re-nationalization of the flagship carrier and
re-regulation of the industry, the CAW and the Canadian Union of Public
Employees (CUPE) gave major wage and work rule concessions, though they
did manage to hang onto pensions.
One concession leads to another. In the April
2006 edition of Socialist Action newspaper, Bruce Allen reported on the
CAW’s “shelf agreement” with General Motors in Oshawa to reduce time off
the job via reduced work-break times, and to out-source 400 non-skilled
maintenance and construction jobs, thus ending the closed shop at GM
Oshawa. Those concessions spread far and wide.
The early May 2008 CAW agreement with Ford, followed
quickly with deals at GM and Chrysler, are consequent, even if
breath-taking by comparison. New workers will receive only 70 per
cent of full wages and move to 100 per cent after three years. (New
hires now start at 85 per cent of full wages and rise to 100 per cent
after two years.) Wages of current workers will be frozen for three
years and a cost of living allowance is suspended until the end of
2009. Workers lose one week of vacation pay annually and pay more
for medical drugs. Lump sum bonuses replace increases in the wage
structure. CAW President Buzz Hargrove may call these moves
“off-sets”, but they amount to concessions by any other name, and they
accelerate the shift to a two-tier structure. Hargrove’s former
executive assistant Sam Gindin calls the latest contract round “panic
bargaining”. The effect is devastating for all workers.
Equally breathtaking was Hargrove’s deal with
billionaire Frank Stronach at Magna in which the CAW abandoned the right
to strike and the right of workers who join the CAW at the auto parts
giant to elect their own stewards and negotiators. The so-called
Fairness Framework Agreement at Magna is permanent, not temporary.
Finally, just three weeks after extracting the
concessionary contract from the CAW, General Motors of Canada Ltd.
announced that it will close its Oshawa truck plant, leaving over 2000
auto workers jobless by the fall of 2009, not to mention thousands more
without work in Durham region due to the spin-off effect. GM will
also close truck plants in Ohio, Wisconsin and Mexico, killing some
10,000 jobs in all.
So much for the job-saving effects of ‘realistic’
concessions bargaining.
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