Global Labor Strategies

The GM Strike: Can the UAW Turn a Defeat into a Strategic Retreat?

The idea of a strategic retreat is an essential element of good conflict planning. Faced with an opponent that cannot be defeated or a situation in which victory would be pyrrhic, a strategic retreat allows you to withdraw from the field of conflict rather than risk losing everything.  A strategic retreat differs from a defeat because it is a planned, orderly, withdrawal from direct conflict that plants the seeds of future action even as it gives ground to the opponent. The UAW could have exercised a strategic retreat in its conflict with GM and the other auto companies. Instead its strike and contact agreement were just another skirmish in a decade long rout.

September’s strike was hardly an epic battle. One writer likened it to two invalids flailing away at each other with crutches.  Another, echoing a widely held sentiment in the press, wrote that the strike was “a fake”, called by the union to show a skeptical membership that it did everything in its power to get a decent contract.  In fact, after Wednesday’s 6 hour Chrysler strike, the New York Times wrote from Detroit, “ A new expression is making the rounds here in the nation’s automotive capital: “Hollywood strike,” as in, “just for show.”

The UAW is clearly in a fix. It is up against the epochal forces which are reshaping the auto industry and the global economy, forces which are gradually gutting union power and eroding work standards everywhere. Now, after decades of defeats, it seems the UAW has chosen to circle the wagons to protect its graying—and rapidly shrinking—membership as they hold on for dear life trying to make it to retirement. And the end is in sight for many: the average age of GM’s existing workforce is 50 years old, and 63.4% are eligible to retire in 5 years. In the process, the UAW has abandoned a significant portion of its existing membership—those employed in “non-core” jobs—and any newcomers to the industry, should there be any. 

It is a cautionary tale which should give pause to those who think that building union membership and increasing union density will lead to a revival of the labor movement.  Union density in the auto industry is over 50%--unimaginable in any other sector of the economy. Even in the lagging parts industry density is far higher than in the most of the private sector economy. In a world of globalized production national union membership and density does not necessarily translate into union power.

Is the situation hopeless? Not at all. The UAW and other similarly situated unions need to exercise a strategic retreat to regroup. We offer some suggestions about what that might look below. But first a look at the current settlement and some historical background.

Globalization and its Discontents

A Financial Times/Harris poll released last week registers broad popular discontent with globalization and the direction of the economies in the rich countries of the world. Among the findings of the survey taken in six countries—the US, France, Germany, Spain, Italy, and the UK are:

• Less than 20% of people in the UK, France, Spain, and the US think globalization is having a positive effect; in Italy and Germany less than 40% think it’s a positive force.
• More than 75% of people in every country, except Spain, think inequality between the rich and the poor is growing.
• In no country, except Italy, do people admire the heads of the largest corporations. Admiration is lowest in the UK and US.
• Large majorities in every country support higher taxes for the rich.
• Majorities in all European countries support pay caps for top corporate officials, but support for caps in the US is around 30%.

According to the FT:

A popular backlash against globalization and the leaders of the world’s largest companies is sweeping all the rich countries….

Large majorities of people in the US and Europe want higher taxation for the rich and even pay caps for corporate executives to counter what they believe are unjustified rewards and the negative effects of globalization.

Viewing globalization as an overwhelmingly negative force, citizens of the rich countries are looking for governments to cushion the blows they perceive have come from liberalization of their economies to trade with emerging countries….`

As if to confirm the public’s increasingly negative feelings about globalization, KPMG, the accounting firm, released a survey of 92 countries that shows a global drop in corporate tax rates last year, continuing a decade long trend. KPMG cites “competition for investment” as the reason for the decline. As a result, value-added taxes and other indirect levies paid by ordinary tax payers have risen to make up for revenue shortfalls. The cuts in corporate taxes are one measure of the way that globalization puts public services into competition.

An opening for labor?

To state the obvious: the depth and breadth of popular opposition to corporate globalization should be a call for labor to step forward as a voice for popular discontent and to find common cause with labor movements in other countries in that effort. Speaking up and linking up could help revitalize moribund labor movements by making them more relevant for today’s economy.

Starting Over

George Bush’s immigration bill is returning Dracula-like to the floor of the Senate. In the unlikely event that it passes it faces an uncertain future in the House where there is intense opposition to key provisions of the bill from different constituencies.  Bush likely does not have the political capital to overcome opposition from the anti-immigrant Republican Right that wants no truck with legalization and Democratic progressives who think the bill is too draconian.

Bush’s efforts on behalf of the bill—from high profile raids to show he’s tough on enforcement to attacks on Republican opponents of the bill—spotlights the long-time split in the Republican party between a corporate wing that wants access to more skilled and unskilled guest workers and a nativist base that wants to send undocumented workers home and lock down the borders. Bush—who does not face re-election—is squarely in the corporate camp.

The original Kennedy-McCain bill introduced in the last Congress set the basic framework for the current debate. It proposed a “grand bargain”: amnesty for millions of undocumented immigrants in exchange for a business friendly guest worker program.  And to deflect some of the attacks of anti-immigrant critics, the bill also included punitive enforcement and border security provisions. It was a Faustian deal from the start. When the reform debate resumed in the current Congress the amnesty provisions were weakened (indeed the very word amnesty has been banished from the debate) and the guest worker and punitive provisions were strengthened. But the terms of the bargain had been set: limited legalization for increased repression.

 

New Approaches to Promoting Labor Rights in China

 

A 10-day trip in May by a high profile delegation from Change to Win (CtW), and a recent letter on China’s proposed draft labor law from the General Secretary of the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) to China’s President spotlight new approaches by the world’s trade unions as they grapple with how to deal with China’s emergence as a global economic powerhouse—and how to promote labor rights for Chinese workers.

The Change to Win delegation which included Teamster President James Hoffa, SEIU President Andy Stern, United FarmWorkers President Aruto Rodriguez, CtW Chair Anna Burger, and CtW Executive Director Greg Tarpinian  met with Chinese government officials, executives from US based companies doing business in China, and significantly, with officials from the All China Federation of Trade Unions (ACFTU), the government controlled union federation to which all Chinese unions must belong.

 

GLOBALIZING WORKER RIGHTS

This post is based on a contribution by Jeremy Brecher, Tim Costello, and Brendan Smith to the symposium "'Neither Slavery Nor Involuntary Servitude': The Thirteenth Amendment and the Contemporary Struggle for Labor's rights" that appeared in the March, 2007  New Labor Forum.

For generations, workers in the United States and other countries around the world have fought for the right to organize, bargain collectively, and strike. These rights have been increasingly contested in the era of neoliberalism. In response, some in the labor movement have been seeking new ways to ground these rights. One proposal has been to ground labor rights in the U.S. Constitution's Thirteenth Amendment barring involuntary servitude. In the era of globalization, a closely related possibility may be to also ground them in fundamental rights defined in international law.

A new global warming policy for labor

This is the seventh piece in GLS's series on Labor and Global Warming.

By campaigning against the Kyoto agreement, and until recently remaining silent on the corporate strategy to bamboozle the American people into allowing carbon pollution to burgeon unabated, the U.S. labor movement will be widely seen as complicit in the growth of catastrophic climate change – unless it speaks out now.

Global Labor Panels at "Left Forum"

There will be a panel on "Beyond Solidarity: Creating Global Labor Unions" Sunday, March 11, at 12:00 pm as part of the annual "Left Forum" March 9-11, at Cooper Union in New York City.  Panelists include:

Radhika Lal, Brecht Forum (Chair)
Héctor Figueroa, Secretary-Treasurer, 32B-J, SEIU
Andy Banks, Campaigns Director, Strategic Research and Campaigns Department, International Brotherhood of Teamsters
Nicola Nicolosi, Director, European Secretariat, Confederazione Generale Italiana del Lavoro
Andrea Montagni, Vice-President, National Steering Committee, Confederazione Generale Italiana del Lavoro

Rebirth of Unions in Russia

Boris Kagarlitsky

Boris Kagarlitsky has been an activist, journalist, and scholar of Russian
labor and social movements since the days of the Soviet Union.  He is no
stranger to international solidarity; during the attempted coup of October
3, 1993 he was thrown into a Moscow police lockup, but was released after
phone calls from around the world -- particularly the San Francisco Bay area
in the U.S. -- demanded his release.  In this article he connects the
stirrings of labor in Russia to the development of globalization by
employers -- and by labor.

The Rebirth of the Unions
By Boris Kagarlitsky

Few people in the Soviet era understood the need for trade unions. Sure, the
unions collected membership fees and distributed free trips to sanatoriums
among the workers, but apart from that no one could clearly explain what
function they played. The early 1980s brought sensational news from Poland,
when workers formed Solidarity labor union, not controlled by the Communist
Party, and threw down a challenge to the ruling communist bureaucracy. Yet
this was less a trade-union dispute in the Western sense than a political
one.

US Labor and Chinese Unions

The All-China Federation of Trade Unions (ACFTU) has made headlines recently by organizing Wal-Mart and the firms that produce Apple’s iPods. How are unions in the US approaching relations with unions in China?

The AFL-CIO has consistently taken the position that Chinese unions should be “shunned” because they are controlled by the State and the Party. In a recent and lengthy complaint filed with the US Trade Representatives Office, the AFL-CIO offered this about the ACFTU: 

In sum, factory workers in China are wholly denied the fundamental rights of association and collective bargaining, by law and practice. Either the monopolistic ACFTU is present in the enterprise, or there is no union at all. Where the ACFTU is present, its role is to discipline the workforce on behalf of Party policies, local development strategies, and investor goals, not to assert worker interests and rights. While there may be dissidents within the ACFTU who are worthy of support, that are overwhelmed by the Party’s stringent control……

Andy Stern, the head of SEIU and one of the leaders of Change to Win which last year withdrew from the AFL-CIO, takes a less negative view of Chinese unions.

Wal-Mart and Chinese Unions

Wal-Mart, already America's largest corporation, has been going global.  It has extended its operations to 15 countries.  But recently it has hit some heavy weather in its international operations.  For the first time in ten years it has announced a quarterly decline in earnings.  The main cause: Wal-Mart’s decision to divest its German subsidiary and write-down $863 million.  German consumers and German unions apparently never warmed to Wal-Mart’s red state businesses ethos.

The German debacle followed trouble with the British union GMB at Wal-Mart’s big Asda chain in the UK. A strike was averted when the company agreed to giving the union broader collective bargaining rights and better access to workers.

In May Wal-Mart announced plans to close its Korean operations—the company’s original overseas outpost. The Koreans apparently also didn’t care much for big box stores.

Wal-Mart is famous for resisting unionization all over the world.  So it made worldwide headlines this summer when, after resisting for two years, Wal-Mart finally agreed to recognize unions in its Chinese stores.  To evaluate the significance of this, it is necessary to look at how Chinese unions usually operate -- and how Wal-Mart's case was different.