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Lessons taught by GM, United Auto Workers
Some Senate Republicans and many pundits must have been at our dinner table. Anti-union slurs have become gospel truths. Take the infamous $70 an hour wage and benefit costs. The number comes from adding pension and health care costs for other retired workers.
General Motors must pay these costs, but they don't benefit current employees. GM's base pay is $28 per hour, and health and retirement costs push the figure to about $40. Even these $40 an hour workers are a dwindling bunch. The infamous UAW allows the auto companies to hire new workers at half the standard base wage.
From a broader perspective, that suburban, consumer society my father admired was hardly a "free market" miracle. In the 1930s, General Motors, Standard Oil and Firestone fashioned a monopoly consortium. They purchased urban trolley systems and converted them to less popular GM buses, thereby creating immediate opportunities and longer-term auto markets.
Even the destruction of transit and the growing use of credit and manipulative mass advertising would not have saved GM. After World War II, many feared that conversion to peace would lead to renewed depression. Cold war armaments filled some of the void, but so too did unions. UAW sit-down strikes at GM in the '30s had gained union recognition and forced labor law reform, In the early '50s, the UAW won regular productivity bonuses, cost of living adjustments and unemployment protection.
UAW's bargaining success was crucial to the U.S. economy. UAW contracts encouraged gains not only by other unionized workers, but also from employers seeking to avoid unions. These wage gains enabled mass consumption. So too did the tax-and-spend interstate highway system, matched in many states by expansion of state roads. Thus a corporate monopoly, a public private highway lobby and relatively strong unions gave us modern the consumer society.
That society, however, had a darker side. Productivity gains in auto plants often depended on speedup and other inhumane techniques. Quality and even long-term productivity lagged. The Big Three, often aided by the union, used their political muscle to wall off international competition and fight environmental standards and thus reduced need for domestic innovation.
The UAW's role today is problematic, but not in the way most pundits assume. Never a communist, Reuther's retreat - once autoworkers had their health coverage - from his social democratic vision of health care and guaranteed annual income for all seriously weakened these causes. U.S. workers have become ever less secure.
Many companies, such as GM, are crippled by health costs. Multiple UAW wage and benefit concessions for new hires over the last decade have not made GM more competitive. They have weakened labor solidarity and ratcheted down all working-class wages.
What's good for GM could be good for America. Our nation might build a new arsenal of democracy, one that is green and truly democratic. It would emphasize not only alternative fuels but also expanded public transit.
My holiday fantasy is that if Congress fails to enact broad, green public works or continues its undemocratic obstruction of worker rights legislation, '30s lessons might be relearned. Just as at Republic Windows and Doors, workers could sit in.
This time, however, they might demand fundamental changes. Auto giants should be re-chartered. Workers as well as public interest groups must be represented on corporate boards and have an effective voice in product design and financial planning. In such a context, even in desperate times, local governments and businesses could trade goods and services for new transit and alternative vehicle production.
Right now, this is a fantasy. But during holidays I need my fantasies. Even amidst a sinking economy and moribund, undemocratic politics, our people retain surprising potentials.
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15 Comments so far
Show AllIt is vision, not fantasy, to propose an industrial policy and a green arsenal of democracy. The difference between the two is that fulfilling that vision is a necessity, while it is a fantasy to think the current produce nothing-borrow to buy everything-waste the world economy is sustainable. This autoworker made much the same point in "Blame Auto Woes on Lack of Vision, not Workers" at www.phillipbannowsky.com
See also www.autoplant.info
"It is vision, not fantasy..." and this season of the year, call it a holiday or frame it in astronomical/astrological terms, is an especially ripe time to consecrate our "visions" - I agree there's no need to be whimsical, it's time to recognize and call on our strengths of consciousness.
Walter Reuther, meet Ron Gettlefinger.
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Eric Patton
Cincinnati, OH
ebpatton@yahoo.com
http://www.new.facebook.com/people/Eric_Patton/663783881
John Buell, like almost every American save a handful of fully dedicated socialists, enables the capitalist godzilla far more than he will ever know. This is due to triangulation, a misguided and often deliberate attempt to practice "moderation" on one's politics. Triangulation allows the capitalist godzilla to feed on one's body parts just as long as it doesn't kill us. So we feed the monster our fingers for afternoon snacks until all our fingers are gone and so forth. You will disagree with me because none of the pundits yet agree with me and call for socialism. But when they do, after the entire house of cards collapses on the capitalist godzilla, then you will change your view to match mine. You are probably disgusted at my "arrogance" because that is how the capitalists condition us to feel but deep in your heart you understand that I am correct, and that the capitalist godzilla has to be banished after which we will reach an economic nirvana, with universal economic, political and social equity and justice. You ready to change your view yet? Still waiting on the pundits! Yes of course!
Ok, then at least we can further plan the socialist nirvana while you wait for the pundits. We're limiting the enterprise size and asset ownership to something like ten-man powers. And we're ensuring the public enlightenment and civic responsibility. That's it! Out of that comes a mass march to nirvana. With enlightenment and responsibility, the people see clearly the value of the power limits and the enlightenment/responsibility. So the people will protect them from the wannabe elites. The economy will naturally serve the people, not vice versa. Social and ecological considerations will rule the society. This prescription has been known and understood for over ten thousand years, since the dawn of civilization.
"The Big Three, often aided by the union, used their political muscle to wall off international competition and fight environmental standards and thus reduced need for domestic innovation."
John is claiming that international competition is important as a deterrent to laziness and corruption in Detroit, i.e. to maintain a standard of quality in the auto market, i.e. a standard of market value to benefit the consumer. But this is an obsolete claim. John hasn't done his homework. People were talking about this before people were aware of the severe problems created by unbridaled global Friedmanite capitalism. We simply don't want or need global capitalism to save American consumers from corrupt American capitalists. Enlightenment brings localism and localism minimizes frieght shipping and protects our economic rights. An enlightened and responsible public will ensure market value through their demand power. The people will for example articulate their market demands like this: "Hey, I'm not driving that piece of crap. Try building something better or I'll build my own car or take the trolley". And they will actually be able to build their own car because the society is organized as such. Yes, when the people are enlightened the people understand that information has to be open so that everyone can build his own everything if he so chooses. Get it? Try power limits, and universal enlightenment/responsibility, if you want universal equity/justice. Look to the contemporary social democracies as working prototypes of the socialist nirvana.
I prefer the terms "crapitalist" and "crapitalism".
In terms of culturing enlightenment, I don't see how the author's stated "fantasy"/vision is different from your own. My guess is you're not so alone in the realm of magnificence of mind and heart.
"From a broader perspective, that suburban, consumer society my father admired was hardly a 'free market' miracle." This is putting it mildly.
Along with the GM/Firestone/Standard oil consortium against public transport in violation of the antitrust laws, and the massive public works project known as the US interstate highway system launched in the Eisenhower era that the author mentions, don't leave out federal tax incentives.
For several decades after WWII, the interest payments on consumer auto loans were deductible like mortgage interest payments. At the same time that Mr. Buell's father raved about the socialistic tendencies of Walter Reuther at the supper table, my father used to fulminate similarly, but but he would always trade in and upgrade his GM or Chrysler family sedan annually or at least every two years - to keep up with the latest marketing innovations seen advertised on television, and to simultaneously maximize those IRS deduction benefits.
Federal policies subsidized private automobile ownership (and suburban lifestyle sprawl) in a variety of related ways - some subtle and others not so subtle - that invariably benefited the Big Three, big time. Federal labor law simultaneously strengthened big organized labor in a sort of semi-balanced trade off, at least up until the Reagan administration came to power.
While I would like to share the vision that the automakers' recent bailout scrutiny may lead to a healthy, greener restructuring of our internal combustion engine industrial model, I'm still highly suspicious that at least where General Motors is concerned, the whole point of the exercise is to pave the way for an eventual bankruptcy filing. In bankruptcy, GM can squeeze the UAW big time - shedding fairly quickly decades worth of collective bargaining benefits like pension and retiree health care coverage.
Collectively, American consumers and taxpayers could consider such a development the final corporate pay back for the great Flint sitdown strike, and for Walter Reuther's progressive labor activism. Believe me, that is precisely the way both labor and management view the historical stakes here in Michigan.
Bill from Saginaw
Bill from Saginaw: Excellent post! I do agree.
A critical element that this article and posters fail to address is that during the 1930s the Roosevelt Administration proposed single payer medical insurance and the big three auto makers beat it down to assure that they controlled the insurance program and kept it out of government control.
By taking control of medical insurance, not only did the big three saddle themselves with the "legacy costs" that they now claim are giving the Japanese automakers an unfair advantage, they saddled the rest of us with employer-based medical insurance that assures that me and millions more workers will never retire, thereby delaying our passing of family wage jobs down to young people.
it is very important to not allow oneself to believe things developed to where they are as a natural course...as the above posters indicate, we are surrounded by, and wallowing in, the emotional, physical, economical and ecological devastation wrought by very intentional manipulation of resources, governments, labor pools, finances, etc...to think that 'natural courses' will rescue us would be equally naive...the manipulations must be exposed and undone as part of the healing process...the standard of living to which we are accustomed must be adapted to allow for the cessation of industry...
my personal opinion, of course, is that the automobile as a physical device must cease to exist, along with many other current products, if the planet is to remain habitable to my species, or to those species that share the planet with mine...
Then you must shut up, turn off your computer, give up your place of residence, and go live in the woods, and never come back.
where do you think we're headed?
"allow for the cessation of industry..."
...especially the industrialization of health care. As the bleedingest of bleeding heart liberals I can't go with any of the proposed national health care plans. Even if "distribution" is done by government, the current collective momentum will continue to fail to improve health and head towards it's own form of bankruptcy by the likes of standardizing caesarian sections, pumping money into genetic research over the culturing of nurturing human relations, and the absurd cost of medicines that mostly compromise the liver and brain while providing a minimal placebo effect. And when learning to drink and implant wheatgrass, while learning to clearly express feelings can lead to so much better health...ah, but that would entail a level of human freedom that none of us (ok, maybe 1% of us) can handle right now, certainly not as a collective (but maybe we can bump that 1% up to 2 or 3 and create some kind of critical mass for a tipping point into clear consciousness).
I have trouble envisioning a replacement for the car in rural areas - the car was an improvement over horse-drawn transportation in these areas.
BUT...
As for where most of us live, there is nothing natural about the our evolution the car/suburban development model which forces reliance on cars for even the most basic or errands. It was a deliberate coordinated effort by auto manufacturers and real-estate developers to create absolutely the most inefficient infrastructure possible. Forget that propaganda about capitalism promoting "efficiency", it does exactly the opposite, to feed the ever increasing resource exploitation required for it's survival.
The idea that a majority of USAns must rely on 1500 kg machines that consume enormous resources and emit many tons of pollutants in their manufacture and operation, just to carry their 70 kg bodies to a distant store to buy a 1/2 kg loaf of bread, is not only is not "natural" it is breathtakingly absurd madness!
I am fortunate to live in a rare US city where a few of the older neighborhoods still provide a taste of such a car free lifestyle. But the capitalists have been so diabolically, brilliantly, successful at promoting cars and suburban sprawl as a natural form of "progress" most USAns cannot even imagine any other way of living.
---USAn---
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