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LABOR

No catch up for _ U.S. autoworkers

By WILLIAM ALLEN

DETROIT — General Motors, rich- est auto corporation in the world, handed a corporate answer to the United Auto Workers’ (UAW) demand for a sizable wage increase, job security, and return of a number of takeaways given in 1982 by the union to help the corpora- tion weather the economic crisis.

GM’s corporate answer was to return practically none of the takeaways includ- ing 27 paid holidays, full cost of living adjustments (COLA), annual improve- ment factor (AIF), a three per cent wage increase annually if production went over three per cent.

Instead GM proposed a tentative pact that offered: a seven per cent wage increase over three years; in the first year, production workers who make up the majority of auto workers get a one per cent raise, a small group two per cent, and the skilled trades workers three per cent.

The second and third year raises are 2.25 per cent each year to be paid as a lump sum in Sept. 1985 and Sept. 1986, based on previous years’ earnings. This does not go in the base rate of pay and means lower benefits in the long run.

The COLA that hasn’t been paid since 1982 is returned with some revisions but with the main provision that one cent per hour will be taken out of each of the 11 quarters of the 12 quarters in the next

three years and returned to General Motors.

Of the 27 paid holidays gained in the 1979 pact, 18 of them were given up in negotiations in 1982. None were won back in 1984 contract proposals. Only one extra holiday, July 5, was granted together with existing holidays, Christ- mas, New Year’s, Labor Day, July 4th and Memorial Day. This means that thousands of workers who could have been hired as replacements for the holi- day periods will get no jobs.

Bans on overtime, much sought espe- cially by the 200,000 workers out of work for the last five years were not won. The strong demand, even with workers going on strike to stop it, to halt out-sourcing was not curbed. GM is allowed to con- tinue to import parts from abroad, made in plants from slave-labor areas where workers get paid, for example in Mexico, $4 a day. In other countries they get paid $2 to $5 an hour to make parts for U.S. GM automobiles.

Said Owen Bieber, UAW president and head of the negotiating team: “Dur- ing the negotiations I constantly blamed out-sourcing for the loss of 100,000 jobs in the last five years. A much ballyhooed band-aid has been offered now of a Wage Continuation Fund of $1 billion. If a worker is laid off because of out- sourcing, automation or improved tech- nology, GM agrees to pay him/her a weekly pay and benfits till the company

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finds another job for him or her, or trains the worker for a new job. ..but no gua- rantee is made that they will get full union scale as they possibly go into a new job.”

Pete Kelly, member of UA W National Negotiating Committee, the only one who voted not to recommend the pact to the 350 UAW/GM locals, meeting Sept. 26 in St. Louis, said:

“As a dissenting member of the GM National Negotiating Committee I am recommending against ratification of this tentative agreement. It fails to accomplish any of the goals we set for the 1984 negotiations. Not one job is pro- tected from plant_closing, out-sourcing, or new technology. Instead we get offered a job placement scheme which we pay for ourselves through the giving of one penny per hour in cost of living concessions...We have absolutely less protection that we had in 1982. Pension increases do not cover what we lost through inflation. Our annual improve- ment factor, three per cent wage, is given up for a discriminatory one per cent wage and a small bonus payment. And 24 per cent cost-of-living we are giving

away. There are no restrictions on over- time anywhere in this contract. There is a $28,000 difference between the one per cent wage the production workers get in the first year and the three per cent the skilled workers get. This job security plan of GM proposes to provide no more than 4,000 jobs. ..”

Kelly criticized the $180 bonus to be given each GM worker for ratifying the . He classified this as blackmail. This $180 will be later taken out of the profit- sharing aspect of the pact. As the three companies chop up $6 billion in profits from 1983/84, GM workers in the profit- sharing deal got only $600 and Ford workers got a little over $400. Chrysler workers had rejected the profit-sharing scheme and went for direct wage increases.

The Canadian wing of the UAW, it is reported in Detroit today, said through Robert White, Canadian director, that the tentative agreement would not be acceptable in Canada. The Canadian strike deadline will be set following the U.S. national meeting in St. Louis, Missouri.

One of the major decisions of the recent convention of the Canadian Labor Congress, was to make shorter hours of work with no reduction of take-home pay a major issue on its agenda.

The timeliness of that decision was emphasized last week when the president of the Conference Board of Canada joined hands with the Canadian Mental Health Association to propose that Canadians must ‘‘share their jobs to help solve the unemployment problem” ... ‘Canada’s position has changed,”’ he said, ‘‘we have to think differently. Jobs have been a key issue for a long time. Now we have to take a new approach’’.

“The basic question,’ Nininger said, ‘‘is how much the employed are willing to give up in order to help those without jobs.” ;

predicted that the issue of so-called job sharing will become a matter for more and more speculation by presidents of conference boards and all kinds of people who are looking to solve the crisis at the expense of working people. People who are either afraid to face up to proposals to solve the problem at the expense of its architects — big business — or who are supporters of these big corporations. Poverty Sharing

Robbed of all its goody-goody pretentions, job Sharing is plain and simple poverty sharing, a way to trim the income of workers to pay for the cost of unemployment. What is being said is we cannot any longer keep our work force at work at present wages so we will share the existing jobs and present pay between the employed and the unemployed, thus equaling out the sacrifice.

Proposals for income supplements by the federal government to make up the slack, such as working four days and getting one day’s unemployment insurance for the fifth, represent simply another way of hiding the problem. Where is the fifth day’s unemployment insur- ance to come from? Naturally, from taxes on the work force. Any illusions that it will come from taxes on the corporations should be dispelled by examining the steady shift of taxes from corporations to workers over the past decade and a half.

There is absolutely no wealth in Canada other than that created by the hands of working people. The way to increase employment is either to create additional

_ Shorter work day,

As the crisis of the capitalist system deepens it can be.

Labor in action

William Stewart

wealth, distribute the existing wealth in such a way as to favor consumption rather than profits, or to share the poverty on the basis of egalitarianism. It is the last pro- Posal which is being favored by the share-the-jobs advo- cates,

Start Shorter Work Week

The answer of workers is a clear one. Sure we are prepared to make provision for jobs for our unemployed brothers and sisters. We propose a shorter work week, 35 hours to start and as quickly as possible the 32-hour week at the same take home pay. This would put most Caandian unemployed back to work, pump additional billions of dollars into the Canadian economy, eliminate costly unemployment insurance and welfare payments, greatly increase government tax revenue to provide for additional public services rather than cutbacks.

The shorter work week with maintenance of take home pay should be supported by anyone and everyone in Canada who is seriously concerned about mass unem- ployment in our country. This does not, of course, in- clude the big corporations, their governments or the coupon clippers, banks and financial institutions. It Should, however, include small business, farmers, municipal governments, hospitals, schools and univer- sities, social workers, womens’ organizations, youth organizations, churches and community groups.

We are somewhat surprised therefore to see such organizations as the Canadian Mental Health Associa- tion trying to solve the admittedly grievous problems of those whose mental health has been assaulted by unem- ployment, making proposals to injure the mental health of all Canadians by making us all half unemployed as a means of “‘solving’’ the problem.

We don’t for one minute question the dedication of the Mental Health Association to its community, we do suggest however that it, and other similarly affected bodies, will have to get off their less than laudable at-

not poverty sharing

tempt to solve their problem at the expense of creating an even worse one for everyone else.

Until people face up to the plain and simple fact that the barrier to solving many of our problems lies in the way big corporations are raping the wealth and resources of Canada, neither will they grapple with any meaningful solution.

It is most interesting that the very same day that the Conference Board of Canada and the Mental Health Association got front page coverage in the Toronto Star, there was another story alongside captioned, Is Canada headed for a new feudalism? This article showed that economic control of Canada is resting in fewer and fewer hands. According to the story Canada has the highest level of concentrated wealth in the advanced capitalist world. Twenty to thirty families, together with the banks, over which they wield great influence, control the main economic levers of Canadian capital in Canada. The bulk of the rest is controlled from the United States.

Restructuring Economy

‘Unless we turn around we are headed for disaster,” says Bishop Remi De Roo from B.C. ‘This means such changes as nationalizing some sectors of the econ- omy ... strong legislation to protect Canadian industry against competition from other countries, and new forms of community control of industry’’. Bishop De Roo was commenting on the Pope’s statement in Newfoundland:

““Tjoin with the Canadian bishops in appealing to those in positions of responsibility to work together to find appropriate solutions to the problems at hand, including a restructuring of the economy, so human needs be put before more financial gain.”

Labor has a program for such restructuring which will benefit not just workers but all Canadians other than those big monopolies who are at the root of the crisis.

The time has surely come to unite the forces of the people behind such a program, not continue to put the boots to the working people.

Not a recount but a correction: In last week’s column we reported the results of the first vote for secretary treasurer of the Ontario Federation of Labor as, Wilson 12, Majesky 9 and O’Flynn 4. The correct figures are, 11, 8 and 4 in the same order. Sorry for the slip. (After O’Flynn’s withdrawal, Majesky came out the winner.)

PACIFIC TRIBUNE, OCTOBER 3, 1984 « 7

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