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In Part I of this series, in last month’s issue of
Socialist Action newspaper, the author outlined the
early rise of the United Auto Workers Union. In those years,
autoworkers made many gains in wages, benefits, and working conditions.
The UAW leadership, however, became ever more bureaucratized, and held
the union back from the drive for an independent Labor Party. An expanded version of these
articles can be found at the www.kclabor.org
website.
Few
unions concerned themselves with organizing during the prosperous
post-World War II years. The UAW did little except for raiding other
unions in the farm equipment and aerospace industries. The
bureaucratized CIO came to resemble more and more the AFL they had
bolted from, and the two federations reunited in 1955. It became common to speak of “Big
Labor” in the same breath as Big Business. The boss-controlled media
did a good job in presenting the bureaucratized unions as some kind of
alien third party muscling in for a piece of the action.
While
the Administration Caucus established by Walter Reuther in the UAW was
as controlling as any union bureaucracy, it nevertheless was based on
an appeal to the union’s proud heritage. They endorsed many progressive
social demands. This led to tensions within “Big Labor.”
While
the building-trades unions were being sued by the NAACP for maintaining
white, family job trusts, Reuther stood literally by Martin Luther
King’s side at the March on Washington and in Selma.
As
the civil rights and Black nationalist movements started penetrating
the sizeable African American UAW membership, sometimes leading to
struggles outside the union’s control (such as DRUM, the Dodge
Revolutionary Union Movement, founded in May 1968), Reuther quickly
responded by bringing Blacks, and women, on board as part of the
leadership “team.”
Reuther
also sharply disagreed with the jingoistic support to the Vietnam War
given by the federation leadership—which included organizing
on-the-clock hard-hat workers to beat up antiwar protesters. In 1968
the UAW left the AFL-CIO to pursue a more independent course, not
returning to the “house of labor” until 1981.
Many
have speculated how far Reuther might have diverged from the path of
the Meany wing of the bureaucracy had he not died in a 1970 plane
crash. Some, including his
brother Victor, suspected foul play. In any case, the bosses and
mainstream union bureaucrats shed only crocodile tears for his demise. The Administration Caucus that
Reuther founded in the UAW continues to tick over to this day—though
they are now a couple of more generations removed from their
class-struggle heritage.
From prosperity to “partnership”
By
the 1970s the great postwar advantages for American industry had
largely come to an end. The economies of Europe and Japan had been
rebuilt—with the latest technology, often better than capital-neglected
American industry—and were now in fact formidable competitors with the
U.S.
The
same period produced other problems for the American auto industry. Oil
prices skyrocketed and sometimes supplies were short, leading to
restrictions on gasoline purchases and long lines at pumps in the
mid-1970s. A 55-mph national speed limit was imposed. The gas-guzzlers that dominated
Detroit’s product line became less attractive, but early attempts to
build small cars, such as the Vega and Pinto, proved disastrous.
Japanese and German automakers, offering quality, more fuel-efficient
cars at a competitive price, began to take a big chunk of the domestic
car market.
The
Big Three bosses now came to the UAW with a “we’re all in this
together, partner” appeal to help make them competitive with the
foreign interlopers. We must begin, they argued, by incorporating
elements of the successful Japanese methods known as “lean
manufacturing.”
Actually,
this doctrine was not all that new. Lean manufacturing represented some
updated synthesizing and tweaking of principles expounded a century ago
by Frederick Winslow Taylor and Henry Ford, with a little BF Skinner
psychology thrown in as well.
They
began with some joint ventures with the competition. GM teamed up with
Toyota to convert their Fremont, Calif., plant to NUMMI. Soon the plant
was building as many cars—both Chevrolets and Toyotas—with 2500 workers
as GM had done with 5000. Ford entered a similar partnership with Mazda
in Flat Rock, Mich.
About
the same time GM announced the creation of a new car company,
independent of the rest of GM’s operations, and with a unique contract
with the UAW—Saturn, based in Spring Hill, Tenn. Saturn would be the
Big Three’s first solo attempt to apply the Team Concept approach
without Japanese helpers.
In
1987 the UAW Big Three contracts established the Team Concept phase of
lean manufacturing as the new norm for all plants, with a goal of
extending the kind of quality and productivity breakthroughs made at
NUMMI throughout the domestic industry. UAW President Owen Bieber
crowed that the GM settlement would “make stable employment a part of
the way this corporation does business.” At that time, GM employed
335,000 UAW members. After the latest round of layoffs, that number
stands today at a little over 70,000.
This
astounding refutation of Bieber’s prediction was not due just to loss
in market share or increased efficiency through Team Concept—though
both have certainly been factors. The single biggest component in the
decimation of Big Three jobs has been outsourcing. Much of this was
done through spinning off parts-making divisions as separate companies,
such as Delphi for GM, Visteon for Ford. Many other jobs not part of
final assembly have, in the spirit of lean manufacturing, been
contracted to vassal companies,
big
and small, scattered around the country and the globe.
As
early as 1978, GM started nurturing maquiladora suppliers along the
Mexican border. Within 10 years this grew to 32 plants producing such
components as instrument panels, air and heating controls, antennas,
front lights, molds, and ceramic magnets.
Then
labor’s “friend,” Bill Clinton, drove through NAFTA—taking effect in
1994—and the trickle of work to Mexico took on proportions of a
dam-bursting flood. Delphi is
today the second biggest private employer in Mexico, with as many
workers as GM’s entire UAW workforce in the U.S. In addition to parts
supplies, the Big Three have extensive assembly operations in Mexico as
well, largely geared to the U.S. market.
While
Big Three employment has plummeted, the “foreign competitors” can
rightly claim they are creating jobs in the USA. Toyota has 13 plants
in this country employing over 30,000. Honda has three assembly plants;
5200 work at Nissan’s Smyrna, Tenn.,
assembly plant and another 1000 at a nearby engine plant; 3000
toil at Hyundai’s new state-of-the-art assembly plant in Alabama.
Daimler and BMW also have small operations. The UAW has failed to
organize a single one of these “transplants.”
Part III will continue in next month’s issue of Socialist Action
newspaper.
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