For a Class-Struggle Leadership!

UAW Tops Push Repackaged Sellout

What part of “no more tiers” does United Auto Workers (UAW) head Dennis Williams not understand? Union members, by a two-to-one margin, rejected the first rotten deal that his team negotiated with Fiat Chrysler (FCA)—the first time UAW workers have voted down a national contract since 1982. Deliberations had been kept hidden from workers, who were rightly furious at the extension of the two-tier wage system even as Williams hailed the proposed contract for its supposed “tremendous gains.” Returning to the table for Round Two, the UAW bureaucracy this time set a deadline for a strike and very belatedly began preparations, only to announce an eleventh-hour agreement. In the end, more of the same was served up—the tiers that are so corrosive to the unity and integrity of the union are preserved over the life of the deal. This repackaged sellout deserves to share the fate of the first.

Of course, simply sending the same birds back for a third go-round is highly unlikely to yield anything better. To wrest real gains from FCA, as well as General Motors and Ford, the union will have to draw a line with strike action when the bosses don’t budge. Indeed, the mere threat of a strike convinced management to seemingly discover a little extra money it could afford to fork over. But for Williams & Co., who are devoted to maintaining the profitability of the automakers, that threat was intended as theater, not a serious declaration of class battle. Auto workers need a new union leadership, one that will confront the employers from the standpoint of class versus class, not passive acceptance of capitalist exploitation and oppression.

The existing union officialdom’s connivance with the employers was evident in how they addressed the genuine concerns of their members. Equal pay (and benefits) for equal work means all workers should receive the highest rate, immediately. Instead, the union bureaucrats have hatched an eight-year phase-in scheme to close the enormous wage gap. Conveniently for FCA, much of this wage hike is to take place, if at all, after the 2019 expiration of the proposed contract. In other words, it has as much reality as the promised but never delivered cap on the number of second-tier workers from contract talks four years ago. But in the unlikely event that the company adheres entirely to this prolonged wage progression, those hired since 2007 would remain second-class union members, saddled with an inferior health plan and a 401(k) in place of a defined-benefit pension. Tellingly, even if all UAW members tomorrow earned the current top-tier wage of $28 an hour, FCA’s costs per worker would be comparable to those at Toyota’s non-union U.S. operations.

The very purpose of the tier system imposed in the 2007 contract was to gouge UAW workers in order to make the domestic automakers more competitive against their foreign rivals that have set up non-union shops in this country, primarily in the South. For Fiat (now FCA) CEO Sergio Marchionne, who introduced himself to the UAW during the 2009 Chrysler bankruptcy proceedings by insisting the union accept a “culture of poverty,” the gutting of the union is on track. At every step, the pro-capitalist union misleaders have accommodated the bosses, including by helping slash wages. In 2007, then UAW president Ron Gettelfinger boasted that “the gap in labor costs” between the Detroit Three and the “foreign transplant operations will be largely or completely eliminated by the end of the contracts.” Today, Williams, who embraces the notorious union-buster Marchionne literally as well as figuratively, continues to facilitate the plan the FCA chief outlined to investors last year: “We need to freeze the tier ones and make them a dying class.”

The new deal, like the first, also falls far short in many other respects. Left intact is the Alternative Work Schedule, which rotates workers between day, afternoon and night shifts over short periods of time, jeopardizing health and safety. As one worker told WV, “I trade my body for a paycheck.” Enhanced profit sharing and productivity bonuses, intended to blur the class line and grease the skids for speedup, put conditions on money that should just get added to base wages. Retirees, all but told to shut up and die at the time of the bankruptcy, are tossed a lousy $1,000 car voucher for their many years of sweat and toil. And while the union bureaucrats have—for the moment—put on hold their push for a health care co-op (at least at FCA), they still insist on finding “smart solutions” to help the company avoid rising health care costs. One such “solution” is tucked away in the proposed contract: top-tier workers will be forced to pay deductibles for the first time if the “Cadillac tax” mandated by Obama’s Affordable Care Act kicks in.

Enough already! Williams tried to downplay the resounding opposition to his co-op project, claiming it was due to a botched communication effort. No, a stinker is a stinker. The matter is simple: the automakers should foot the bill for any and all expenses (including the Cadillac tax) associated with providing top-level health care to all workers (and their families), who risk life and limb to churn out cars for the bosses’ profit. The health care cost studies proposed by the UAW tops are more smoke and mirrors from a union leadership that goes out of its way to be company-friendly, that is to say, loyal lapdogs of the greedy employers who amass fortunes by exploiting labor.

Accepting the terms set by the capitalists is the road to ruin for the union and its membership. Take the false choice that the UAW bureaucrats present as “the give and take between job security, and good pay and benefits.” Over the years, this “give and take” has brought everything from the spinning off of parts workers and growth in temps to the institution of tiers—everything, that is, except job security and good pay and benefits. Despite modest membership gains since 2012, the UAW represents 42 percent fewer Detroit Three workers than it did in 2005. Meanwhile, the top-tier UAW wage for assembly workers has remained frozen since 2003 (with a marginal increase included in the FCA agreement).

Today, union officials claim to be “proactive” in response to job losses, boasting of measures in the deal like “sourcing conferences” and “strategic partnership initiatives” with the company purchasing department. Such efforts to encourage so-called insourcing are supposed to convince the automaker to bring contracted-out jobs back under the FCA umbrella by offering to have union members do them for subpar wages. Yet more tiers to save the bosses money! In the 1970s, Detroit Three new hires started at over 90 percent full pay and reached top rate after three months. Almost all production workers across a company made the same wage, with some loose change for different classifications and shift premiums.

Far from undertaking an industry-wide strike to restore wage parity, or a militant fight to organize the unorganized at the suppliers, much less auto plants in the South, the UAW tops instead act despicably like labor brokers, reinforcing divisions among the workers and fueling a race to the bottom. The same goes for all the finger-wagging at Mexico, where some FCA auto production is scheduled to move. The framework of U.S. auto worker versus Mexican auto worker is a recipe for driving down wages and working conditions on both sides of the border. Marchionne certainly is no stranger to divide-and-conquer; in recent years, he foisted major concessions on union auto workers in Italy by threatening to move production out of that country (with the U.S. as one possible destination). The way forward is to proceed from the unity of interests of auto workers in the U.S., Mexico and elsewhere against the common class enemy—the Detroit Three auto bosses who bleed workers dry regardless of locale—which would open the prospect of joint struggle.

UAW members have every reason to distrust Williams and his gang. The labor traitors are, for the second time in as many weeks, attempting to sell a bill of goods. Auto workers must not give in to resignation over the possibility of doing any better. Neither should they let their just anger at the union bureaucrats take the form of refusing to pay union dues—a danger opened up by recent “right to work” laws in Michigan and Indiana. Such a step would simply weaken the union in its coming battles. Instead, all members should insist that their hard-earned dues money go into the union strike fund or toward organizing drives—and above all not get wasted on the electoral campaigns of Democratic Party politicians, who no less than Republicans are the political representatives of the bosses. Michigan went “right to work” a couple of years ago after the UAW tops and the rest of labor officialdom channeled protest against the anti-union forces into the dead end of reliance on Democrats and the ballot box.

The Detroit auto giants are today solidly in the black thanks to the massive concessions shoved down the throats of the workers with the active assistance of the UAW bureaucracy. This time around, the automakers are willing to pay out a little to buy labor peace; but for workers to truly get theirs, it is going to take a fight. Given their abiding respect for the bosses’ rules and bottom line, the sellouts atop the union are utterly incapable of directing any serious battle. It is well past time that they be shown the door.

The forging of a class-struggle leadership would go a long way toward transforming the unions into battalions of organized labor, capable of fighting for quality health care that is free for everyone at the point of delivery and jobs for all through a shorter workweek with no loss in pay, among other causes of the entire working people. Armed with a program based on the understanding that the working class shares no interest with the bosses, a union with the power of the UAW could head up a broader fight against capitalism’s ravages, enlisting support from the rest of the proletariat as well as the unemployed and black and immigrant communities in the crosshairs of the capitalist rulers. This perspective demands the building of a multiracial revolutionary workers party dedicated to the overthrow of capitalist production for profit once and for all.