UAW auto workers walk out at chrysler

By Fred Gaboury

AUBURN HILLS, Mich. - Rank-and-file members of five locals of the United Auto Workers walked off their jobs at midnight Sept. 14. The walkouts at five Chrysler plants in Indiana and Missouri came as negotiators for Daimler Chrysler (DCB) and the union continued marathon negotiations for a new contract.

Most observers see the walkouts as evidence of rank and file determination to wrest a decent contract from DCB, the giant German industrial empire that raked in more than $140 billion in 1998 and employs some 100,000 UAW members in its U.S. assembly plants.

Two issues top the UAW list of demands: Protection of UAW members in any spin off and card check recognition in organizing drives at any supplier doing business with GM, Ford or DCB. The latter is a particular demand in DCM negotiations because the conglomerate owns the Freightliner truck plant in South Carolina as well as a plant making sport utility vehicles in Alabama, both of which are UAW organizing targets. Should the union wrest this demand from the company, the door will be opened to the possibility of further victories in the South where millions of workers are denied union representation.

Traditionally the UAW has selected a target from among the auto makers to establish a pattern that is presented to the other two companies where further negotiations take place with the pattern tailored to each company. While this approach has made it possible for the union to zero in on the most vulnerable company, has contributed to a situation where there are many deviations in contract terms. Because of this practice, the auto industry is no longer covered by what could be called an industry contract.

The UAW has been conducting parallel negotiations with GM, while negotiations with Ford are at a stand still. Ford has threatened to spin off or sell Visteon, its parts division, a move rank and file workers see as a threat to bust the unionplants that employ nearly a quarter of Ford production workers.

The UAW is insisting that if Visteon is sold, workers will maintain their present wages and benefits. Ford has been selected as the target company by the Canadian Auto Workers (CAW) whose contract expires at 11:59 p.m. Sept. 21. Since engines for many Ford vehicles are produced in Canada, a strike by CAW members will affect production in many U.S. plants.

In recent years UAW members employed at Big Three assembly plants have received wage increases averaging 3 percent annually plus signing bonuses. This increase, originally negotiated by the Walter Reuther leadership in the 1950s and called an annual improvement factor (AIF), coupled with cost of living increases was supposed to keep the wages above the inflation and productivity increases. That this has not happened is shown by UAW calculations showing that wages of union members in the nation's auto assembly plants outpaced inflation by a bare 1.3 percent between 1978 and 1997. This means that the AIF understated the increase in productivity, thus leaving auto workers with an ever-declining share of what they produce.