Short week: the cure for
‘tragedy’ of automation

By MIKE LONGMOORE
Chrysler Windsor

WINDSOR — ‘Automation hasn’t
done too f-----g much for me”, said a
Chrysler worker recently summing up
the effects of the scientific and technolog-
ical revolution over the last eight months
on himself and the department he works
in.

For there in the metal shop sub-
assembly department in its Windsor car
plant, Chrysler has begun its scheduled
$50-million modernization program.
There, giant multi-welders have been
springing up, one after the other like
Godzilla’s children, to destroy a depart-
ment, which through the efforts of the
men in it, has been among the best in the
plant.

These eight months of scientific and
technological revolution have directly
resulted in the tragedies of speed up, time
and motion studies, management
harassment of the workers, harsh discip-
line, firings, nervous breakdowns, heart
attack, violence against supervision and
against fellow workers. :

It is no small wonder that many work-
ers consider automation in the same way
as AFL-CIO president George Meany

who once called it “‘the greatest curse for
the workers’’.

The old dinosaur Meany, was as usual
only half right. He was as right as the
workers at the dawn of the industrial
revolution who destroyed the first primi-
tive machines, attempting to stop indus-
trial -progress..

Can’t Stop Automation

Progressive trade unionists and the left
in general, know that automation can’t or
shouldn’t be stopped. But as former Un-
ited Auto Workers (UAW) leader Walter
Reuther said in 1961, ‘‘what can we do at
the bargaining table and in the legislature
to begin to get America back to work so
we can hamess the abundance of the
harvest of automation to the needs of the
human family?”

An answer to Reuther’s question was

‘ put forward in the UAW skilled trades

magazine, New Technology. It was
stated here that procedures should be
written into the collective agreement re-
quiring full advance disclosures to the
union when management intends to in-
troduce new technological methods.
Such procedures, the UAW magazine
said, must require advance discussion

and joint company-union determination
of any new or altered skills.

In 1976, the late Charlie Brooks, then
president of Local 444 UAW stated, “the
_union’s program for shorter work time is
designed to put many more people to
work, paying their own way, and to
create job security. Let the robots do the
dirty work, but make sure the benefits go

to all, and not just the shareholders.’
Solution Wasn't Activitated

The tragedy of the sub-assembly de-
partment occurred despite the fact that
Walter Reuther and Charlie Brooks saw
the danger of automation looming before
the workers. It occurred because the sol-

ution to the problem, negotiation of the
terms of technological change, the shor-
‘ter work week and political action to pro-
ject these demands weren't sufficiently
developed and activated to prevent it.
The Communist Party of Canada has
been fighting to bring these questions be-
fore workers for many years. The four-
point program outlined in the editorial in
this supplement, offers some answers for
both the long and short range questions
concerning auto workers and deserves
close study.
Let’s prevent.the recurrence of any
more tragedies, such as occurred in
Chrysler sub-assembly.

Socialist auto city booming

TOGLIATTI, USSR — Every 12
seconds a car rolls off an assembly line
in the Soviet Union, and every year
660,000 of those cars come from this
auto city.

By next year, (1980) Soviet economic
forecasters expect to be producing
some 2.3 million motor vehicles a year
of which 800-825,000 will be trucks.

The same kind of rational. planning
that goes into designing rugged and re-
liable cars like the Lada, has gone into
planning and developing Togliatti,
where the newest economy car to hit
the Canadian market is produced.

Togliatti, appropriately named after
a great leader‘of the Italian working-
class movement and former leader of
the largest Communist Party in western
Europe, Palmiro Togliatti, is located on
the Volga river, some 800 kilometres
(480 miles) south west of Moscow.
(The giant auto plant was built jointly
with Fiat of Italy.)

The city consists of three large dis-
tricts separated by tracts of forests. It
stretches almost 40 kilometres (about
24 miles) along the Volga. Two districts
were founded almost 25 years ago when
the Kuibyshev hydro-electric power
station was built.

The district where Ladas and other
cars are made has been in existence for

_ only 10 years. Where there was nothing

but open field in 1968, there now stands
housing to accommodate 250,000

people.

automobiles awaiting shipment at Tog atl. x

Careful attention has been given to the
planning of the city and particularly this
district. Togliatti was designed as alinear
city. -

; Linear City ¢

This means the city is laid out in wide
strips moving back from, and parallel to,
the river. Along the Volga you have a

‘belt of river embankments, barred to

auto traffic, with parks and various
sports and recreational facilities. The
next belt is a residential zone. Then,
there is a protective zone where no con-
struction is allowed. Finally, there is a
strip of communal property and in-
dustrial enterprises, including the car
plant.

The whole idea is to make the river
front usable and enjoyable for the
people, ‘while taking care not to destroy
the beauty of the natural environment.
The city’s development plan aims at
simultaneous development of recrea-
tional, residential and: industrial areas.

An indication of the concern for main-

taining the ecology is the fact that out ofa
population of 518,000, more than 130,000
citizens belong to Togliatti’s Environ-
mental Protection Society. The Soviet
Union has strict environmental protec-
tion laws. As a rule, new industrial
enterprises in the city won’t be commis-
sioned unless they. have purifying
facilities for the air and water. Some

. 400,000 cubic metres of industrial wastes

and sewage, all of the city’s waste capac-
ity, is fully purified biologically.

<e

> \

Some 55 million roubles will have been
spent by the end of the current five year
plan, (ending next year), to essentially
stop al) environmental pollution in. the
city.

Cars, People, Separated

The pine forests surrounding the city
have been a source of pleasure for the
residents of Togliatti fora long time. The
huge Zhiguli Preserve, (named after the

, car which in Canada is called a Lada) was
created outside the city to study and pro-
tect the various plants, flowers and
species of tree found in the forest. A lot
of effort is put into preserving the pine
forests outside the city.

‘The district housing the auto plant has ~

been designed so as to completely sepa-
rate pedestrian and motor vehicle traffic.
It’s possible to get from the farthest out-
reaches of the district to the waterfront
using underground walkways under
highways, and boulevards without cros-
sing a street or roadway once.

The city’s residential area is planned
on a modular basis, consisting of one-
kilometre long blocks. Each block
houses roughly 20,000 people, but each
has its unique architectural désign.
Stores, domestic services, schools and
kindergartens are located in these resi-
dential blocks.

Traffic is not allowed in these blocks,
because they are surrounded by wide
speedways with entrances to under-
ground garages undef the residential
areas. The tops of these garages are
being finished off with grass to make
lawns and children’s playgrounds.

Youthful City
A wide esplanade from the auto plant
to the river front, and another one run-
ning parallel to the Volga, houses public
buildings, with more being planned.
Where these two pathways intersect, the
city is:creating a town. centre where a
huge shopping complex is going up.
Over: the past five years more than
50,000 , families have received new
housing, which is essential for a com-
munity-as youthful as Togliatti. The av-
erage age in the city is from 26-27 years.
Some 65,200 kids are enrolled in genéral
education schools, 8,000 in vocational

schools, and §,000 in higher educational.

institutions. In the past few years some
20 schools, and more than 50 kinder-
gartens have been built in the city.

- Of course like any industrial city, Tog-
liatti has its share of problems. Tele-
phone communication, for example,
needs to be improved. There are now
37,500 units, as compared to only 8,600
in 1973.

But the problems are. growth prob-
lems, and not the effects of a social and
economic system that is on the skids. A
brief comparison with another famous
auto city, Detroit, Michigan, USA,
points this out.

Detroit has often been used as one of
the worst examples of the disturbing
trend in the U.S. and to a lesser extent in
-Canada of the decay of major cities.
North American cities are even begin-
ning to go bankrupt or are on the verge of
doing so. Cities like Detroit with high
crime rates and growing poverty levels,
die on the vine because the local
governments don’t have their hands on
the proper taxation instruments to
finance the needs and development of a
living city.

Cities in the capitalist system can’t
adequately plan for the present, let alone
the future because the industrial base
that should provide the wealth to make
planning and development possible, is
privately owned by competing groups
out to maximize their profit and squeeze
the others out of business. They plan
strictly according to their own profit
needs, and will come and go wherever
they can get the cheapest labor, or the
best package of give-aways from senior
overnments from the taxpayer.

But, Togliatti doesn’t have this prob-
lem: It exists in a social system where the
wealth belongs to the people, and the
people’s institutions manage and direct
that.wealth toward solving social prob-
lems.

Just as the city planners made sure
they built wide speedways when they
laid out the city, foreseeing the probabil-
ity of new types of transportation, ‘to-
day’s planners can look as far ahead and
plan for the next 10 years. The rational,
nature of the socialist system guarantees

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PACIFIC TRIBUNE— FEBRUARY 16, 1979—Page 5

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