GM workers strike a blow for all workers

by Tim Wheeler

This article was reprinted from the March 30, 1996 issue of the People's Weekly World. For subscription information see below. All rights reserved - may be used with PWW credits.

A strike by 3,000 General Motors workers in Dayton, Ohio that idled more than 177,000 GM workers for 17 days sent a message to GM, Ford and Chrysler that auto workers are in a fighting mood on the eve of the United Auto Workers' (UAW) bargaining convention in Detroit next week.

"GM told us we wouldn't strike and shut down all of the company's North American operations - but we did it," said Tom Lewis who served as strike coordinator for UAW Local 696 in Dayton. The plant produces over 90 percent of GM's brake assemblies in a system called "just-in-time" production, forcing the total GM shutdown when the strike terminated the flow of brakes. Lewis hailed the outpouring of solidarity from workers idled by the strike, contributing money and traveling to join the strikers on their picketlines.

The strike ended last Saturday when Local 696 members voted to ratify an agreement. GM agreed to pay $1,700 to each striker in compensation for "outsourcing," buying parts from outside companies in violation of the UAW's national contract. Yet GM announced that it will go ahead and purchase brakes made at a non-union plant in Charleston, South Carolina owned by Robert Bosch GmbH, a German firm. The workers receive about one third the wages and benefits earned by the Dayton workers.

Reggie McGhee, a UAW spokesman, told the World, "Outsourcing continues to be a major problem and it will be addressed at our bargaining convention next week. When he was elected UAW president, Stephen Yokich said that organizing these non- union suppliers will be a major concern of the UAW." In the 1970s, two thirds of parts were manufactured in-house by UAW members. Today, only one-fourth of the workers producing auto parts are unionized.

The strike also threw into sharp relief compulsory overtime. Local 696 demanded that more workers be hired to spell workers exhausted by 60 hour workweeks. That goes hand in hand with the fight to rebuild Dayton, staggered by the loss of 52,000 manufacturing jobs in the past 20 years. GM "downsizing" alone eliminated 10,000 jobs in Dayton.

GM agreed to continue producing brakes at the Dayton plant through the year 2004 and to create 417 new jobs over three years. GM will pay $5.6 million to settle grievances and will invest $6.5 million to correct health and safety violations.

GM, predictably, claims they won a victory even though their refusal to settle the Dayton strike cost them an estimated $500 million. "Anyone who would believe anything that GM said about this strike doesn't have his head screwed on right," Lewis said.

"They claim they are turning to outside sources to stay 'competitive.' But we are competitive and GM knows it." GM's real agenda, he said, is to end the sole-source system of parts production which, in their view, gives the workers too much leverage in their fight with the company.

Ollie Dixon, president of UAW Local 663 in Anderson, Ind., knows first hand about the outsourcing scourge. In 1994, his 3,100 member local, which produces 95 percent of the lights for all GM vehicles, went out on strike. GM was attempting to shift one-third of the work to a non-union contractor. Before it was over, 13 GM plants were shut down, idling 43,000 GM workers. "We strongly support our brothers and sisters over at Dayton," Dixon told this reporter. "They are fighting for the same thing we are fighting for. We built General Motors with our hard work and we don't want to have our jobs kicked from underneath us with cheap labor or scab labor.

"With the corporations attempting to send our jobs south in search of cheap labor, I see it as a big problem. We strongly believe in organizing the unorganized."

During the GM shutdown, Chrysler quietly agreed to the UAW's demand to hire 200 to 300 more workers at its Jefferson North Assembly plant in Detroit where the Jeep Cherokee is built. The new-hires will paint, mow lawns, remove snow and perform other maintenance duties now done by non-union contractors.

Philip Lee, president of the Charleston, S.C. Central Labor Council, said he is well aware of the Robert Bosch brake plant. "It's one of many non-union plants that corporations have built in South Carolina," he said.

"It's an old story - unionized plants closing in the North and coming here where labor is cheap. We have the State Development Board and our governor traveling all over the United States and around the world trying to lure industries to South Carolina. One of their selling points is that South Carolina has among the lowest rates of union membership, about three percent," he said.

"To me, it is all tied together - our low wages, high infant mortality, low funding for education," said Lewis who is an ironworker. But as corporations move into the south, he said, many union workers are migrating south with them. "We won 50 percent of our organizing drives in South Carolina," he said. "Mack Truck moved here expecting to operate non-union. But the UAW organized it."