GM, UAW craft market-driven contract

For two days in September the eyes of the world were on 80 General Motors plants in the United States. On the morning of Sept. 24 workers began a mass exodus from inside the plants. In the first national strike of General Motors in 37 years, not one car rolled off the assembly lines; not even one small part was produced.

Two days later UAW President Ron Gettelfinger announced that a tentative agreement had been reached with GM. By the evening shift, workers were back on the job. Gettelfinger assured the rank and file that the contract guaranteed job security. “We’re proud of this tentative agreement and we look forward to getting into the field and discussing it with our membership,” Gettelfinger said. (www.uaw.org)

On the surface the UAW’s boasts appear credible. A moratorium on plant closings remains in effect for the life of the contract. Language calls for replacing any workers who retire, quit, die or are fired.

However, nine plants are scheduled for closing and a tenth will either be sold or closed. Others will see the number of workers drop. Furthermore, the agreement devotes pages to listing various skilled maintenance tasks that are to be “exited.” Carpenters and painters are among the skilled tradespeople who could see their jobs “exit.” Also exiting will be whole job classifications of janitors and others who fall under the umbrella of “housekeeping.”

This will have a racist impact on Black and other workers of color who, due to a century of discrimination, have a disproportionate presence in the lowest-paying departments.

The language binding GM to replace any worker who leaves comes with a major catch. A solidarity-wrecking multi-tier wage structure has new hires in “noncore” classifications starting at half the average hourly rate of current and “traditional” employees. “Non-core” work is so broadly defined it includes forklift operators and many parts plant jobs. In a stamping plant a line worker making outer body panels such as doors and roofs would make “traditional” wages, while a worker on the next line over who makes “noncore” stampings would get “entry level” wages.

New hires cannot enroll their dependents in the health insurance plans. The traditional defined-benefit pension is eliminated for all new hires, along with “30 and out”—retirement with full benefits after 30 years, regardless of age. New hires also lose their health benefits upon retirement.

Much has been made of the fact that 3,000 current temporary workers will be made permanent and receive top wages. However, the agreement makes room for untold numbers of new workers to be hired as “long-term temporary employees” to replace workers who retire with buyout packages.

Doesn’t it undermine union solidarity when workers laboring side by side, doing the exact same work, have two or three different pay scales? All the tremendous camaraderie and unity that developed on the picket line—what are tiered wages if not the antithesis of that solidarity?

Even for the highest-paid workers the contract offers little. There are no annual raises in the four-year agreement and most of the Cost of Living Allowance is being diverted to pay for increased health care costs. The union’s estimated 68-cent increase in hourly pay over four years will be more than eaten up by inflation. A Cleveland State University study just released found that Ohio autoworkers’ wages had already fallen 6 percent between 2000 and 2006. (Cleveland Plain Dealer, Oct. 1)

In the same time period, plant managers’ salaries increased 29 percent, even as the number of workers they supervised dropped significantly. Of course, they supervise more robots than ever before. Auto executive salaries are at an all-time high.

Along with allowing new hires to be paid substandard wages, the moratorium on plant closings itself is subject to revision if conditions such as a “market-related volume decline” demand it.

The other key feature of the contract is the shifting of all future retiree health care costs to a Voluntary Employee Beneficiary Association (VEBA). Gettelfinger has promised that with GM’s contributions totaling around $30 billion, investments will make the VEBA last 80 years. “Our retirees will be protected under this VEBA,” he said.

However, the stock market’s current volatility calls any guarantee of solvency into question. The VEBA shifts the burden of retirees’ health care from the shoulders of the company where they gave their lives to the roulette wheel of Wall Street finance capital. Even a mild recession could put the health of some half million UAW members in jeopardy. A stock market crash could leave veterans of the long strikes of years past without the benefits for which they fought so hard.

All these wage and benefit cuts will shift billions of dollars in wealth from the workers, who produce everything, to the bosses, who contribute nothing. That’s what capitalists love more than anything. The news of the settlement sent GM stock prices soaring.

While many workers seem to be welcoming the stated commitment to job and health care security—two issues that have generated much anxiety during months of negotiation—the promise is a false one if tied to the fortunes of capital. To make that gamble is to replace a traditional contract with a market-driven agreement that promises the world and guarantees nothing.

Rank and file militants who make up Soldiers of Solidarity are leafleting inside the plants, calling for a “No” vote on the contract.

Regardless of how the ratification vote goes, the power of the strike should not be underestimated. Whether or not it yielded gains at the bargaining table, its impact is palpable.

Once the strike began it was the rank and file who took ownership of their picket lines. Without prompting, many came out to picket when it wasn’t their scheduled shift. Workers stood in the gates and blocked vehicles, some linking arms, until finally the police ordered them to allow management vehicles to pass.

On the picket line union sisters and brothers from different shifts and departments met and talked for the first time. The picket line was the great equalizer, bringing together in common cause the highest-paid skilled trades workers and the lowest-paid janitors.

Workers saw their communities decidedly on their side. On the line they had to shout above continuous supportive honking by passing cars just to make conversation. Workers at Chrysler and Ford came to the picket lines and offered financial support. The Teamsters union immediately pledged to honor the picket lines and not make deliveries to struck plants or haul GM vehicles.

For two life-altering days 73,000 workers were in control of the productive process.

The militancy and solidarity the rank and file demonstrated in the strike will be the key to defending the jobs of the workers in the future, notwithstanding any contract language. The rank and file must continue to organize for the struggles that are sure to come.

Martha Grevatt has worked at a Chrysler plant in Ohio for 20 years.

E-mail: mgrevatt@workers.org