LABOR

By MIKE PHILLIPS

TORONTO — ‘‘At this time the im-
pass may be broken that was holding
negotiations from going on’’, United
Auto Workers Canadian leader Bob
White said Oct. 24 emerging from a four
and a half hour meeting of the union’s
master bargaining committee.

White’s announcement sent a ripple of
cautious optimism through UAW picket
lines outside General Motors plants in
Ontario and Quebec, that the trans-

- national was finally waking up to the real-
4 ity that it has to settle with the Union on
4 much better terms than it won in the U.S.

, With his 36,800 GM members on the

By CHARLES DANIELS

An analysis of the recent contract set-
tlement between General Motors and the
United Auto Workers in the U.S. leaves
no doubt why a full 43 per cent of the
union’s membership vote was opposed.

Last year, prior to bargaining, GM out-
lined five key objectives that it wanted to
win in 1984. These were contained in a
secret document prepared by Alfred
Warner, GM’s vice-president for indus-
trial relations. The document was leak-
ed, verified and widely publicized.

The startling fact is that for each objec-
tive identified, GM either won or made
gains.

Objective number one was to contain
labor costs per hour, with priority on
expansion of profit sharing in lieu of
returning the annual improvement factor
of 3 per cent and additional wage-COLA
increases.

As is generally known, GM scored
heavily on this one. A scaled wage in-
crease in the base rate in the first year of
the three-year contract ranging from a
low of nine cents an hour to a high of 50
cents, for an average 2.25 per cent hike,
with $2.99 also rolled into the base rate
from COLA, was accompanied by an
up-front special payment of $180. But in
the second and third years, there is no
increase at all in the base rate. Instead,
there are lump sum payments of 2.25 per
cent of the previous year’s straight time
earnings. In addition, the profit-sharing ,
scheme negotiated in the previous con-
tract is continued. COLA is also con-
tinued as before and, assuming five per
cent inflation, will add $1.55 an hour by
contract end, although 11 cents from
COLA due last Sept. was given up and
further 13 cents in future COLA was
diverted.

Snags Are Substantial

If it can be argued, as some might, that
the lump-sum, profit-sharing approach
will produce, over the three years,
roughly the same money as the tradi-
tional 3 per cent annual improvement
factor, what’s the difference? Why all the
fuss? Fact is, the snags in lump sums and
profit sharing are substantial.

The most basic of these is that the
second- and third-year lumps add noth-
ing to the base rate. Thus there is no
guarantee of any permanent additional
income. Subsequent lump sums and/or
profit sharing — if any — can be lowered
or taken away, whereas an increase in
the base rate is much more likely to be
there to say and carries forward into
future years. A base-rate increase lost
now is lost forever.

Again, payment of benefits is related
to base rates. Here again it is clearly in
the interests of the company to freeze
rates, but not in the interests of the work-
ers.

GM the winner in U.S.

8 e PACIFIC TRIBUNE, OCTOBER 31, 1984

Cautious optimism in auto talks

picket lines, White was careful to stress
that ‘‘we do not have a settlement, we
are not close to one, but we have found
the formula that unlocks an important
key in negotiations that starts the process
of collective bargaining.”’

He absolutely refused to hint at what
such a formula might be, but it is known
that auto workers are determined to
achieve a settlement that begins by pro-
viding a real increase in wages over the

? three years of the agreement.

By process of elimination, workers are
guessing that it might be a compromise
by GM on its refusal to fold the two lump
payments in the second and third years

As the Toronto Globe and Mail put it
(Oct. 22), the lump-sum and profit-
sharing formula ‘“‘gives the company
flexibility to control costs, but it deprives
the employee of the assurance that what
was gained today will be retained tomor-
row.”’ The Globe adds: ‘“ . . . what is in-
volved in the wage issue is nothing less
than a fundamental change in the basis
for negotiating income improvement.”

Exactly. And it is a change, as we’ve
seen, to benefit GM, but not GM work-
ers. But What is also involved is the role
of the UAW leadership in the U.S.,

General Motors went into negotiations with five objec-
tives in mind. The U.S. package realized every one of

them.

which has gone along with that funda-
mental change, and which has thus lined
itself up, not on the side of U.S. auto
workers, but on the side of the boss.

Most Dangerous

Objective number two was to reduce
hours per car, with emphasis on increas-
ing productivity. Joint UAW-GM Job
Security Committees “will function as a
joint study group to review the compe-
titive environment and to develop plans
to improve local operations.’’ As well,
GM’s training program ‘‘will enable
General Motors’ employees to form an
effective partnership with tomorrow’s
technology.”

The Warner secret document also con-
tained a chart indicating that through
‘‘ageressive productivity,’» GM planned
to be able to lay off by 1986 some 80,000
of its 350,000 workers in the U.S. GM’s
employment level had already dropped
from some 510,000 in 1978. It was the
threat of this massive work-force reduc-
tion, coupled with earlier mammoth lay-
offs, that led to U.S. auto workers plac-
ing job security at the top of their list.

But, perhaps the most dangerous as-
pect of the pact, is the provision which
allows the joint management-UAW Na-
tional Job Security Committee, ‘‘on the
request of local committees’, and with
the approval of the director of the
UAW’s GM department and GM’s
vice-president, Industrial Relations, “‘to
waive, modify or change provisions of
the National Agreement so as to pre-
serve or increase job opportunities.”
This paves the way for getting protec-
tions in the Master Agreement at the
local level.

Are You Ready?

Objective number three dealt with
GM’s ability to source competitively. A
bulletin put out by Pete Kelly, president

GM recognizes it’s a different ball game

of the pact into the base rate. Only the
first year’s 2.25 per cent intrease will be
folded in, under the rejected proposal.

Or, negotiations might be centring on
the cost of living adjustment and finding a
way to translate that into an increase in
the base rate.

The guessing continued, as White told
reporters the union expected the pace of
talks to pick up, and added that “‘the
mood has been translated from a process
of pessimism to cautious optimism.”’

Whatever the formula for possibly
breaking the logjam was, it came earlier
in the afternoon following meetings be-

package

of UAW Local 160 in Michigan, and a
member of the GM national negotiating
committee (he voted against the con-
tract), notes that GM has announced
plans to import 400,000 assembled cars
from Japan and Korea, to increase im-
ports of engines and transmissions, and
to build 200,000 joint-venture Toyota-
Chevys with Japanese components.

Against this background, and in a
discussion of the job security issue,
Kelly refers to GM’s highly-touted (by its
supporters) billion-dollar, so-called job
security program. This is supposed to

provide a job bank, with regular pay
rates, for workers laid off because of new
technology or outsourcing, either off-
shore or to non-GM plants in the U.S. or
Canada. Kelly notes three key draw-
backs to the program:

First, the billion dollars must cover six
years, which means there is only funding
enough to cover about 4,000 jobs a year.
Second, workers laid off for general eco-
nomic reasons, or displaced by GM’s
own imports and joint ventures, will not
be covered. Third — are you ready? —
GM workers will themselves pay for the
program with the 24 cents taken in total
(as mentioned earlier) from COLA.

Greater Collaboration

Objective number four was to continue
to shift the union management relation-
ship toward a joint problem-solving pro-
cess. The agreement, as summarized in a
report issued from the UAW’s head
office in Detroit, is full of joint com-
pany-union ventures, including the job
security program and Quality of Work-
life, and it contains such phrases as
“fostering a spirit of cooperation and
mutual dedication.”’

Objective number five is aimed at en-
hancing individual accountability and
commitment. The contract provides for a
bonus of up to $500 for a year of perfect
attendance. But, as Kelly reports, it also
continues 99 per cent unchanged the
‘‘vicious program’’ of attendance con-
trol. And the profit-sharing scheme adds
to the snare. To be eligible for a full
share, a worker must earn 1,700 or more
compensated hours in a plan year.

GM’s Warner further called for
‘‘sreater impact from use of the training
fund.’ There is now a 50-cent-per-hour
penalty for all overtime hours, paid by
GM to the Joint Skill Development and
Training Fund. Since this is in line with
what GM wants, it is hardly a ‘‘penalty.”’

tween White and GM’s chief negotiator
Rod Andrew. Bs:

As the Tribune went to press, the local _
and master bargaining committees and
the sub committees were at work on local _
issues and non-monetary questions. No _
monetary offer had yet been made by _
GM. :

Among the membership many of tho
non-monetary items loom importantly as
issues to be addressed in any settlement
they’ll endorse. Job security and shorter
work time are among them, the latter
having become a central bargaining issue
projected by the labor movement as a
whole at recent provincial federation and _
Canadian Labor Congress conventions. _

In addition, the issue of shorter work
time is front and centre, not only in :
auto talks, where UAW members want
to see the restoration or some kind of —
equivalent of the nine personal paid holi-
days GM took away in the last agree-
ment, but in negotiations in progress in-
volving the Canadian Union of Pos
Workers, and the Communications
Workers of Canada. 4

Pensions, the other major issue, par-
ticularly in the giant Oshawa complex,
White had said when the strike was ©
launched Oct. 17, were the subject o
productive discussions, though no majo
achievements had been made when
talks ended.

The stumbling block to even gettin
talks. going again is the corporation’s re
fusal to move off its U.S. settlemer
which is slated to set the pattern in th
industry south of the border.

The American UAW leadership ac-
cepted GM’s concessions-ridden pro
posal but the Canadian membership in
sisted on a contract that would rec
progress in wages and working condi
tions by the end of the agreement, p
ticularly in view of the massive prof
GM and the other auto monopolies hav
raked in during the past two years. —

GM in Canada salted away son
$675-million.

Autoworkers enter second week of
with cautious optimism.