By MIKE PHILLIPS
OAKVILLE — The solution isn’t
wage cuts.

That’s the message the leadership of
United Auto Workers Local 707 at Ford,
here, are bringing to their members in a
special bulletin analyzing the 31-month
give-away contract signed between the
U.S. branch of the auto workers union
and Ford.

The policy of ‘‘No Concessions’’ and
‘“‘No’”’ to re-opening of the Ford
Canada-UAW agreement has been for-
mally adopted by the Canadian UAW
council, the union’s governing body in
Canada, the Canadian Ford Bargaining
Council, Local 707. Locals throughout
the union are adding their opposition to
give-aways. and concessions to the
multi-national auto companies every
day.

Local 707’s analysis of the Ford pact
came from a group in the U.S. represent-
ing three UAW locals opposed to
concessions. It was prepared by Al
Gardner, president of the Tool and Die
Unit of Ford Local 600, Pete Kelly,
chairman of the GM Design Unit, Local
160 and Bob Weissman, president of the
Chrysler Local 122.

These local UAW leaders estimate
that the give-aways in an 18-month
COLA deferral, sacrifice of two, annual
3% wage hikes, the surrender of all per-
sonal paid holidays, (PPHs), and a bonus
‘holiday will amount to a 10% wages and
benefits cut by the end of two years.

tract like the Wall Street Journal, esti-
mate the value of the give-aways to the
corporation as $2 an hour, per worker for

Big business analysts of the Ford con- .

; LABOR
e@ @
Wage concessions no solution, says UAW |

a total ‘‘savings”’ to Ford of one billion
dollars. The workers estimate that this
will mean a loss of almost $9,000 per
Ford worker over the next two years.

An addition, the workers will no
longer get their COLA, built up from the
previous contract, rolled into the base
wage rate for the new contract. While life
insurance will be increased by the
amount that rolling the COLA into the
base rates in September 1982 would have
brought it to, there is no similar provision
for sickness and accident benefits.

The U.S. negotiators also gave up
what amounts to a two-year pension
freeze, while starting rates for new
workers have been lowered to 85% of
current base rates for non-skilled new
employees, 90% after six months and
95% after one year’s service. The full

base rate isn’t received until a worker has |

put in 18 months service.

Perhaps one of the most dangerous
concessions by the union is in a letter of
agreement which authorizes local bar-
gaining for give-aways of wages and
working conditions. Using the threat of
outsourcing or the promise of insourcing,
(bringing in parts or production from out-
side the plant and manufacturing parts
inside a particular plant), the company
can force the locals to take lower wages
and erode established working condi-
tions and on-the-job rights, or risk losing
their jobs.

In this way Ford can play one local off
against another, and ignore the master
agreement by making local deals. As the
U.S. critique points out, “‘besides going
after local working conditions, the com-
pany now has a license to attempt to

negotiate substandard wage agreements
with locals.”’

Of the much-trumpetted gains that
supposedly made the give-aways
worthwhile, the U.S. auto workers’
critique says, ‘‘the gains that have been
represented to our members as great
beginnings of new programs are all so
seriously flawed that they are close to
useless.”

‘The give-aways are more far reaching
than workers imagined, jobs aren’t really
protected as the the big-business media
would try to pretend, and job security
isn’t increased in any way.

Ford’s promise to advance $70-million
into the supplementary unemployment
benefits fund (SUB) is ‘an illusion’’, the
critique revealed. The company only has
to keep the fund at the basic minimum
level, (nowhere near $70-million) at
which benefits are paid so that workers
with low seniority — the group hardest
hit by the layoffs — won't be able to draw
very much from the fund. SUB is de-
signed to complement unemployment
insurance to provide workers with 95%
of their take-home pay.

The promise of half pay for life for any
Ford worker with more than 15 years
seniority is full of enough loopholes that
few will benefit. It won’t apply to anyone
currently on permanent layoff. To re-
main eligible a worker has to accept any
job offered at any Ford plant in the U.S.
If Ford or the unemployment office can
arrange to get you a job anywhere within
50 miles of home or the local Ford plant,
you have to accept and 80% of your pay
on the new job will be deducted from
your *‘guaranteed”’ pay from Ford.

The ‘‘guaranteed”’ pay isn’t tied to in-

year deferral by the company of its

flation, and Ford is only committed to
paying $45-million into the scheme,
which would only carry 3,000 members
for one year.

Other supposed gains include: a provi-
sion that amounts to a permanent one-

contribution to the pension fund, which
more than offsets the advance to the
SUB and the ‘guaranteed’ income
stream; restriction on plant closings that
only ban closings due to outsourcing
while there is no ban on outsourcing or
on closings during the last six months of
the contract; and, a ‘‘life-time employ-
ment experiment” at two plants that will
only only cover 80% of those still work-
ing in the selected plants. When con-
nected to contract language providing for
local concessions from the master
agreement this will open the danger of a
bidding war between locals to see who
can work the cheapest to get jobs.

Also, the much-vaunted ‘‘profit shar-
ing’’ program doesn’t show any sign that
it will ever pay off. Profits will have to
pass 2.3% of sales before the plan kicks
in, and Ford hasn't done this well since
1978. Even if it did kick in, UAW resear-
chers in the U.S., calculated that if the
program had been in effect in 1978, and
the two previous years, it would have
paid out $117 in 1976, $486 in 1977 and
$233 in 1978. This isn’t much compen-
sation for losing almost $9,000 after two
years of such a concessions-ridden pact.

This is why Canadian workers have
taken a dim view of the propaganda

pushed on them by the auto cor-
porations, governments and the big busi-

ness media.

oN

The Canadian Federation of Labor lived up to its

| CFL opens door to attack on

Nonetheless

labor

because of the general class

advanced billing. It produced nothing for Canadian
workers other than worn-out and discredited Gomper-
ism.

It disgraced Canadian labor by inviting a discredited
Prime Minister to use its forum as a rostrum through
which to make yet another appeal to Canadian workers
to become partners with the government in cutting their
own throat.

It followed up that act by allowing Liberal Senator and
Teamster leader Ed Lawson to point out the virtues of
cut-backs and concessions, and hold up U.S. sell-out
trade union leaders as a fine example for Canadians to
emulate.

Lastly it completely choked off any rank and file par-
ticipation in the convention. Not satisfied with blocking

the democratic election of delegates and intercepting all

resolutions at the International offices of unions, the
convention itself was gerrymandered by caucuses with
out whose approval nothing could reach the floor. One
wit in attendance dubbed the new organization the ‘‘Cas-
trated Federation of Labor’’. Not too far from the truth.
All the pretense thrown up by the building trades
jeadership for leaving the Canadian Labor Congress
were stripped here by the CFL convention and the basic
lines of difference which led to the split were exposed for
all to see. :

First of all the CFL leaders are totally opposed to the

New Democratic Party and propose that labor should _

try to play off one old line party against the other, as CS.
trade union leaders try to do with the Republicans and
the Democrats. Behind this seemingly tactical difference

is their support for the Liberals or Tories, mostly the’

Liberals.

There is growing concern in Liberal ranks about their
inability to establish a base west of Ontario. The pre-
sence of two NDP governments in Manitoba and Sas-
katchewan and the possibility of a third in B.C. in the
_ forthcoming elections, is an unsettling matter for the
Liberals, as it is for the Tories and monopoly in general.

It will be difficult, if not impossible for the Liberals, or
the Tories either, to overcome this weakness unless they
can reestablish a strong base in the labor movement.

Labor in action
William Stewart

Clearly the CFL is seen as a means of splitting workers
away from the NDP and giving the old line parties some
clout amongst organized labor.

Secondly the government, the Tories and monopoly
are concerned about the militant fight back mood of the
trade unions and their refusal to accept responsibility for
deepening crisis of the system. The line of the CFL is the
line of the AFL/CIO in the United States, ‘*responsible
trade-unionism’’. The kind of responsibility being
shown by those union leaders who are agreeing to cut-
backs and concessions for their members in order to save
the system of monopoly capitalism in the USA. In a
word, unabashed class collaboration trade unionism.

It is also a matter of deep concern for monopoly and
the political parties of monopoly that the Canadian
trade-union movement has so far refused to adopt the
same “‘responsible’’ mantle as many of their U.S.
counterparts. This too they hope to rectify through the
CFL and Senator Lawson’s remarks to the convention,
and the fact he was allowed to make them there, con-
cerning the logic of cutbacks and concessions, show
clearly the posture of this new centre to the economic
and social needs of Canadian workers.

The third ugly feature of the CFL was its totally un-
democratic character. It is precisely this kind of un-
abashed bureaucratic autocratic and undemocratic trade
unionism which has many Canadian workers up in arms
about international unions in Canada. This is not to
suggest for a moment that all or even most U.S. inter-
national unions in Canada can be thus characterized.
Many have willingly accorded substantial autonomy to
Canadian sections, some complete autonomy and in-
dependence, while others, such as Steel are moving in
that direction under great pressure from the Canadian
membership.

collaborationist character of the U.S. trade union leader-
ship, there is an accompanying bureaucracy and restric-
tion of rank and file control which naturally equally
effects Canadian membership of those unions. In the
case of the CFL we are dealing with the most right-wing
open collaborationist leadership in the U.S. trade union
movement; open supporters of U.S. imperialism on the
international fronts and open collaboraters with U.S.
monopoly on the home front.

Obviously in the CFL we have a coming together of
those forces from the U.S. labor movement, with their
counterparts in Canada and behind it the maneuvres of
the Liberals and Tories in the trade union movement.

Given this kind of alliance, these kinds of objectives, it
is little wonder they demand a structure which denies the
democratic input and participation of the membership.
Canadian workers, given the opportunity, would reject
such policies, programs and leaders.

In spite of all this however the labor movement is now
faced with the existence of a new centre which intends to
act in a bi-partisan manner with governments at all
levels. A centre which would open the door to wage
controls and all forms-of social contracts with govern-
ments and in the end join forces with the state to keep the
lid on the workers in a period where sharp struggles are
called for.

This creates considerable dangers for the trade
unions. It needs to be seen in conjunction with strong
influence of right-wing social democratic forces inside
the CLC which would also like to make deals with the
government and head off the strong class struggle im-
petus now developing amongst organized labor.

This puts a great responsibility on the workers in the
building trades to build up the sentiments for struggle, for
unity, against sell-out deals with the government, for
complete autonomy and for democracy in their unions.

Taken together with strengthened actions by workers
in the CLC the CNTU, the CEQ and legitimate in-
dependent unions, the plans of the right wingers in the
labor movement and the old line partys, as well as
monopoly can be defeated.

PACIFIC TRIBUNE—APRIL 23, 1982— Page 5