Workers represented by UAW picket outside of John Deere Harvester Works facility on October 14, 2021 in East Moline, Illinois. Photo: Scott Olson/Getty Images.
By Jerry Goldberg – Jul 19, 2022
The International Constitutional Convention of the United Auto Workers union taking place in downtown Detroit July 25–28 will be a historic gathering for the UAW in two important ways. The convention will be the first in the union’s history where delegates do not choose the International Executive Board members and the president. Instead, it will be written into the union’s constitution that the membership will vote on these positions, per the outcome of a union-wide referendum on this issue in autumn 2021. And the UAW will face tremendous challenges to save jobs in the coming period with the shift to electric vehicle production in the US.
In a document prepared by the union’s Research Department entitled “Taking the High Road, Strategies for a Fair EV Future,” the current UAW International, while recognizing the challenges facing the union with EV production, presents no program for the workers beyond relying on Democratic Party politicians to help them out legislatively to protect jobs. But this method has been a proven failure, with both Republican and Democratic governors presiding over massive layoffs and plant closings in Michigan and around the US over the last four decades.
Probably the most fundamental challenge facing the union is that the turn to EV production threatens the jobs of the remaining 150,000 UAW workers at GM, Ford and Stellantis (formerly Chrysler) that still exist after decades of restructuring. GM alone went from approximately 400,000 hourly workers in 1970 to 49,000 today.
These remaining auto jobs are directly impacted by the shift to electric vehicles. The assembly of an EV requires an estimated 30% fewer labor hours per unit than the assembly of vehicles with internal combustion engines. EVs also require far fewer component parts than are currently needed in ICE-powered vehicles. The automakers are now contracting to produce the batteries and components that go into EVs through joint ventures with non-union corporations.
The question looms: What is the union to do? At a time when growing numbers of Amazon and Starbucks workers are demanding their rights, organizing unions and fighting for jobs, what should delegates to the UAW International convention propose to save jobs and preserve the union?
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A fighting program, based on a worker’s right to their job, needs to be advanced that will address the fundamental issues facing auto workers. Below is a six-point program that could serve as an outline for facing the challenges ahead.
1. Workers have a fundamental property right to their jobs
For the UAW to preserve the jobs of its members and the union’s very existence as an industrial union, it must assert the concept that workers have a property right to their jobs, a critical idea which led to the sit-down strikes of the 1930s and the formation of the union.
The workers’ labor has produced the vast wealth the auto companies are using to fund the shift to EV production. The wealth workers created was stolen in the form of profits and multiplied by the years of contract concessions and second- and third-tier wages and benefits. The workers have paid for their jobs with their sweat equity. The jobs belong to the workers. The workers have a right to take whatever action is needed to defend their property.
2. It’s time for 30 hours’ work for 40 hours’ pay
The demand for “30 for 40” was raised and debated in the UAW as early as the 1940s. Walter Reuther, running for UAW president at the time, stated: “Workers don’t believe our future and the future of America lies in going back. … With the advanced technology we have … we are planning a 30-hour work week, with higher pay and higher living standards than we ever had, and we can do it.”
The union must demand that workers receive the benefit of the reduced labor time needed to assemble EVs by the implementation of a shorter work week, 30 hours’ work for 40 hours’ pay. Developments in technology, instead of liberating workers, have led to longer workdays and less time off. This must be put to an end. The UAW should be in the forefront of the demand for 30 for 40.
3. Lifetime jobs for auto workers must be guaranteed
The UAW must once again demand guaranteed lifetime jobs for all auto workers so no one is threatened with losing their jobs during the transition to EV production. This is a demand the UAW raised and first won in the 1984 contract and expanded in the 1987 contract, though it was abandoned in the concession contracts imposed with the Chrysler and GM bankruptcies of 2008–2009.
The demand for guaranteed lifetime jobs or income, if implemented today, could be a brake on the auto companies’ attempt to take advantage of the shift to EV production to eliminate tens of thousands of UAW jobs in the period to come.
4. The union must be recognized at all EV ‘joint ventures’
Ford announced in October 2021 that along with the South Korean battery maker SK Innovation, they are planning to spend $11.4 billion on new manufacturing plants in Tennessee and Kentucky to boost the automaker’s EV production. While Ford labels this project a “joint venture,” $7 billion of the $11.4 billion is supplied by Ford.
Similarly, GM announced it was building two battery plants, one in Springhill, Tennessee, and one in Lordstown, Ohio (where a GM assembly plant, shut down in 2019, formerly stood). The plants are joint ventures with LG Chem, a company whose financial ability for a project of this magnitude has been called into question by Wall Street.
The motivation for these “joint ventures” appears to be to circumvent UAW representation for parts workers formerly covered by the UAW auto contracts.
The union must demand in the next contract negotiations that these new battery producing facilities immediately grant UAW representation to the workers, and that the workers be incorporated under the UAW contracts with Ford, GM and Stellantis with full wages and benefits.
5. EV conversion must be environmentally safe
While there seems to be agreement that electric vehicles produce fewer emissions and toxins than do ICE-powered ones, there exists a genuine and serious debate whether the materials needed to build electric batteries, like cobalt and lithium, can be mined in a manner that doesn’t negate the positive impact on the environment that EVs are meant to serve.
US corporations always derive their competitive advantage by the super-exploitation and robbery of the resources of developing nations. As long as the conversion to EVs is managed by large corporations and the capitalist government that serves them, the effects on workers and marginalized people, as well as the environment and the entire planet, are all secondary to the drive for profit.
The union must raise the demand for workers’ control of the EV conversion, to ensure that it be carried out in a manner beneficial to the people and the environment in the US and internationally.
The UAW is in a unique position to carry out its own analysis of this process without having to rely on “experts” serving the corporate elite. The union membership today includes tens of thousands of workers in colleges and universities, including researchers with expertise in environmental and other sciences. This study can be carried out in a cooperative manner internationally. Chinese scientists should be included in this endeavor as China is in the forefront of EV technology.
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Based on this evaluation of the overall environmental factors of EV production, the union along with representatives of workers and oppressed people worldwide can make a proper determination of the efficacy of the conversion to electric vehicles, and whether better alternatives exist.
Most importantly, the jobs and incomes of the workers must be guaranteed during this process.
6. The UAW must organize Tesla, Nissan, Toyota and all non-US companies
The union must begin an aggressive organizing campaign at US facilities including Tesla, Honda, Toyota, Nissan, Volkswagen, and other non-union automakers. According to the Center for Automotive Research, the UAW-organized Detroit Three automakers, GM, Ford and Stellantis, are surrounded by “foreign transplants” that now make up 48% of US vehicle production That’s up from just 17% in 2000. Non-union employment rose from 15% of the industry in 2000 to 39% in 2013, according to an Automotive News analysis. And with the turn to EV production these percentages are rapidly increasing.
The failure of the UAW International to organize these U.S.-based foreign auto producers is not hard to understand. As long as the union leadership was committed to a policy of severe concessions in a misguided attempt to preserve jobs, allowing two- and three-tiered wage levels with severe reductions in wages, eliminating pensions and offering reduced health care packages for newer workers, the union was not attractive to the workers in the transplants, many of which are located in largely anti-union, right-to-work states.
A new wind is blowing
An overall mood in favor of struggle and unionism has been seen among younger workers across the US. If the UAW presented a militant program to defend jobs as outlined above, along with abandoning the tiered wage structure and reinstating the cost-of-living protections once enjoyed by all UAW auto workers, the union would become a pole of attraction to successfully organize the workers in these non-union plants.
This development would activate the most militant workers in the union to fight for jobs with a winning program and would lead to solidarity from other workers around the country. It would mean committing on-the-ground organizers to the endeavor and learning from young organizers at Amazon and Starbucks how to use modern organizing tools and social media to accomplish these tasks.
(Medium)
