Jane Slaughter: Unions need to heed their history
On June 20, Ford Motor Co. and the United Auto Workers will celebrate the bittersweet 65th anniversary of their first national contract. They achieved this feat after years of sometimes-violent company repression.
Henry Ford had sworn never to recognize the union, but he finally gave in after a series of strikes. His company was the last of the Big Three automakers to do so.
Ironically, on July 1, contract givebacks that Ford executives demanded will take effect. Management had asked the union to reopen the contract in midterm and union leaders agreed.
These two events mark the beginning and the end of an era.
Union power once compelled corporations to pay their blue-collar employees fairly and to provide security after retirement. No more.
Active workers at Ford will give up $1 an hour in planned raises and see their wages frozen. A retired couple will pay $752 a year for health insurance, after being promised that Ford would fully pay their coverage for life.
Historically, as the UAW goes, so has gone the American labor movement.
In the 1940s through the 1960s, the union led in establishing benefits for its members: health insurance, supplemental unemployment insurance, pensions and tuition reimbursement.
Then, when employers demanded concessions during the downturn of the early 1980s, the UAW acquiesced to the Big Three. What followed was an avalanche of wage reductions throughout blue- and white-collar America.
This time around, employers in other industries have already forced cuts on both retirees and active workers. Airline workers and steelworkers have seen their contracts ravaged. Retirees have been hit hard, with companies sometimes defaulting on their pensions.
And both Ford and General Motors made clear three years ago that young autoworkers could no longer expect to do as well as their parents. The companies spun off their parts-making divisions, and the UAW agreed that new hires there would make $10 an hour less.
The path to the newest concessions at Ford was not smooth. Union officials said the rank and file approved the cuts by 51 percent, but leaked vote totals show a margin of less than 100 votes out of tens of thousands, and widespread ballot irregularities.
In a letter to fellow workers, Ron Lare and Judy Wraight, skilled trades workers at Ford’s flagship Rouge plant outside Detroit, warned against concessions. “After we retire, the next generation may ask, ‘Why should we defend your pensions? You didn’t defend our pay when we were young!’ Not only is our neighbor’s house on fire, but they’re moving our children into it.”
Ford and Wall Street analysts like to say that global competition forces them to demand lower wages from their employees.
But if that were the case, European and Japanese automakers wouldn’t be rapidly building new factories here and paying union scale (while avoiding unionization). They are clearly making money in the United States.
Unions need to organize the European and Japanese companies, whose U.S. facilities are thriving, as well as the auto parts industry that the UAW left for dead more than 20 years ago.
The union needs to practice the solidarity and tenacity that caused Henry Ford to back down 65 years ago.