| La Lettre du GERPISA | no 125 (octobre 1998) |
The outcome of this year's GM strike has postponed, rather than resolved, the larger questions that have sparked so many of the local strikes at GM plants in recent years. By my count, the two walkouts in Flint in 1998 bring the total to 25 local strikes since 1990.
The issues are generally the same in most of these confrontations. The union protests the lack of new investment in the plant; the trend towards moving ever more production to outside suppliers, most of them nonunion and a growing number of them in Mexico; the company's failure to replace workers as they retire; the consequent intensification of work for those remaining; and the accompanying side effects of excessive overtime and hazardous working conditions. The company protests the lagging productivity in its older plants, defends the move to outside suppliers as consistent with modern lean production methods, and usually tries to link any renewed investment or hiring at the plant with union promises to change or abolish old work rules.
The UAW-GM collective bargaining agreement only allows the union to call a mid-contract strike over health and safety, production standards, and "contracting out." The latter refers to the use of outside contractors to do work inside the plant, such as maintenance and construction; it does not include decisions about outsourcing the production of parts or components to supplier plants. The union is therefore in the awkward position of calling local strikes over the consequences of disinvestment-- i.e., work standards and health and safety-- rather than directly confronting investment decisions and outsourcing. With respect to the latter, the company is only obligated to discuss sourcing decisions and give the union the opportunity to propose alternatives. Since it is not a strikeable issue, it can only be negotiated "unofficially" when a local strike is called.
The Flint strikes this summer followed some of this pattern. According to the union, there was a "letter of agreement" from GM that promised $200 million in new investment for the Metal Fabricating plant, which the company was refusing to honor. Technology in this factory is quite old, with a lot of welding done by hand-operated spot welders making engine cradles (mounts). It is slow, hot work with lots of equipment failure. The union said that this is the principal reason for low productivity in the plant, and why the new investment is needed. The company said it would not invest until the union abandons the "peg rate" work rules that allow workers (only 150 out of 2,500 according to the union, 600 according to the company) to stop working once they hit a production quota, and still get full pay. The union pointed out that these quotas had been set by the company and were already slated for gradual elimination.
Much was at stake in this particular plant since it was originally slated for production of key stampings and parts for GM's new-model truck, to be assembled in Ontario. Fearing that the UAW's threatened strike at the plant might jeopardize the launch of the truck, the company tried to remove critical dies for shipment to an alternative plant. When the union learned of this move, it called an immediate strike. [There are some who speculate that GM purposefully provoked the strike by removing the dies, seeking a showdown as an opportunity to demonstrate its resolve to Wall Street, and anticipating that a two-week shutdown of all plants was already scheduled. If so, the company may have miscalculated on how long the strike would last.]
One week after the start of the strike at Flint Metal Fab, the union called out a second plant, Flint East, that is a Delphi parts plant making dashboard instruments, among other things. This plant had its own local problems, including the fact that a lot of its work has been shifted to Mexico-- where GM now has 35 Delphi parts plants and 70,000 Delphi workers, more than Delphi employs in the United States. But in this case, Flint East was probably called out to increase the pressure on GM over Flint Metal Fab, since Flint East is the sole parts source for all but two of GM's 29 assembly plants in North America. Eventually, these two local strikes shut down virtually all of GM.
The company responded with an unusually tough strategy. First, it sought a court injunction against both strikes, arguing that they had been improperly called over issues that did not permit a mid-contract strike. Second, the company began internal arbitration proceedings on the same question, as required under the contract. Third, GM announced its intention of commencing production in Ontario using whatever alternative parts supply they could manage. Fourth, the company publicly ridiculed UAW local leaders and called on workers to return to work rather than lose pay. Fifth, the company contested the unemployment claims filed by the nearly 200,000 UAW-GM workers laid off in other plants, arguing that the UAW was actually conducting a defacto national strike. The first three of these initiatives were unprecedented; the fourth was highly unusual; and the fifth has been used in previous UAW-GM local strikes, notably, the 1996 strike at GM's Dayton brake plant.
The UAW responded with major rallies and augmented picket lines. The Canadian Auto Workers also announced that they would build no cars with scab parts. Opinion polls indicated the UAW had a roughly 45-35 percent plurality in public support. Many striking workers interviewed on the picket line were talking about the movement of production to Mexico, working 10-11 hour days 6 days a week, health and safety problems, loss of good paying jobs for our children, etc., and these issues resonated with the public. Wall Street backed GM's tough stance, though with some misgivings since there didn't seem to be enough for GM to gain that would justify the billions in lost sales.
After two months, agreement was reached on the local issues, with GM agreeing to make the $200 million investment in the plant and the UAW agreeing to cooperate on improving productivity. On balance, it was probably a UAW victory, though a defensive one that simply postpones the conflict until next year's national negotiations. GM gained little tangible advantage in terms of broader commitments from the union to accept outsourcing. On the other hand, GM did set a precedent in the court injunction and arbitration proceedings, since the union found itself hard pressed to defend the legality of its strike call over local issues when so much of the bargaining agenda (and the public comments of some union officials) focused on the larger national issues of investment and outsourcing. The company withdrew its arbitration case when the settlement was announced, but it was widely reported that the union was nervous about the course of the proceedings and the possible outcome.
One last feature of the strike that deserves mention is the role of Mexico. At the very end of the conflict, GM announced that it had secured an alternative source for the instruments previously supplied by Flint East, and with these it was able to reopen two of its assembly plants: the Corvette plant in Kentucky, and the truck plant in Silao, Mexico. The company would not say where its alternative source was located, but speculation focused on Mexico. Silao reopened first, and Delphi's massive parts operation in Mexico would be the obvious candidate. This strike, then, also gives a new dimension to international sourcing and, in the case of Canada, international solidarity. The CAW's emphatic refusal to work with scab parts was much appraciated by the UAW, and marks another step in restoring positive relations between auto unionists in the two countries.
The challenge for the UAW is to find a basis for extending that solidarity to Mexico, since it appears GM is developing its expanding operations in that country as a self-contained export platform that can also serve as an alternative to strike-bound plants north of the border.