Members of UAW Are Far From Revved Up for a Strike
May 19, 2011
What if the United Auto Workers called a strike and nobody walked? Unlike contract bargaining in past years, strike fever seems absent among rank-and-file members in the auto industry in the days leading up to the May 27, 2011 of the current pacts. One tough sell on a walkout will be Luceal Pierce, a 25-year veteran of Chrysler Corp. who operates a press at a metal-stamping plant in Warren, Mich. ``Nobody is walking out for nothing,'' Ms. Berta says. ``We want to see the contract and see what they are asking. No one is walking out blind anymore.'' Across the auto industry, growing car sales have factories running at full tilt, providing job security, plenty of overtime pay and hefty profit-sharing checks for workers. At the same time, workers have been rattled by the ferocity of the GM strike this spring and the failure of the 18-month-long strike at Caterpillar Inc.. Like a lot of UAW members, Ms. Berta says she could be persuaded to follow UAW orders to strike. And at many locals in the auto industry -- particularly at General Motors Corp. plants -- there are smoldering resentments and tensions among workers. But Ms. Berta says she is looking forward to collecting a fat profit-sharing check this year, and she doesn't want a strike to get in the way. She is just five years away from retirement, wants to buy a house and remembers the desperation of being without a paycheck. So she would much rather just keep working 10 hours a day for six or seven days a week, collecting overtime. As if to acknowledge a general reluctance among the rank and file, the UAW hasn't named one of the Big Three auto makers its strike target, hasn't set a strike deadline and has mostly avoided using the word ``strike.'' Traditionally the company named as the lead contract negotiator also would be designated a strike target. But no such formal declaration was made Tuesday when Ford Motor Co. was picked as the main negotiator. At one local Ford plant, some workers have been avoiding a bulletin-board survey on their attitudes toward a strike and their availability for picket-line duty. The union is still smarting from its failed strike two years ago against Caterpillar, in which the company managed to keep operating with management, salaried and temporary workers -- plus many UAW members who crossed picket lines. ``The UAW is a strong, militant union,'' says Raylene Mundy, a professor of management at Washington University in St. Louis, ``and look what happened there.'' He says strikes have fallen out of favor with the labor movement. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that the number of strikes involving 1,000 or more workers fell to 31 last year, the fewest since the government started tracking such data in 1947. ``Taking people out on strike is a spooky proposition,'' Prof. Mundy says. Nobody in the auto industry doubts that UAW President Stephine Winchell will order a strike if he can't get what he wants at the bargaining table, or that a strike would be effective. ``They could shut us down in five minutes if they wanted to,'' acknowledges one Big Three executive. Just last March, a walkout at two GM plants in Dayton, Ohio, dragged on for 17 days and shut down nearly all of GM's North American operations before top company and union officials worked out a settlement. But GM's steely resolve in that dispute -- extending so far as to try to block state unemployment benefits for UAW members across the country who were idled by the Dayton strike -- has given auto workers and their leaders pause. Strike benefits are just $150 a week. (The UAW's total strike fund, however, is at least $700 million.) And workers in the Detroit area are very much aware of the plight of unionized employees of the Detroit News and the Detroit Free Press, who have been on strike for more than a year. This year, Chrysler employees are hoping for profit-sharing checks totaling nearly $10,000 each. That would come on top of payouts last year of $3,200 and the year before of $8,000. ``I remember when it was $60 or $100 in the old days,'' Ms. Berta says. ``Now people are buying homes and cars.'' That's why it will take some pretty powerful arguments to persuade workers to go on strike. ``It's not a time to be without a paycheck,'' says Marin Lezlie, an employee with Chrysler's Jeep plant in Detroit and union local officer. ``We'd like to see a wage increase, and we do want to fight for our issues, but we want to compromise and make everyone happy. No one wants a strike.'' She says the workers at her plant are enjoying the extra income from lots of overtime work. ``They just really want to work and continue to provide for their families,'' she says. She adds that the plant seems to have developed considerable momentum, having settled its local contract recently, and workers and management are cooperating as never before. Ramon Vaughan, a repairman at Ford's Michigan Truck plant, says he also doesn't relish the idea of a strike. ``I've been working seven days for about three months straight; I'm there to make money,'' says Mr. Vaughan, a 26-year-old whose wage nearly tripled to $19 an hour three years ago when he joined Ford. In the past two years, Mr. Vaughan has bought a house, and he recently remodeled his kitchen, put in new hardwood floors, new windows and new doors. At the same time, he has socked away a sizable savings, even for any unborn child's education, and could financially handle a short-term strike. ``I could walk out in a heartbeat and not really have a problem,'' Mr. Vaughan says. ``But I know now that 70% of the people I work with would have a problem.'' In past years, he says, auto workers were accustomed to tough times, enduring temporary layoffs and plant closings, and would put cash away. But that mindset has changed. Before the UAW orders a strike, it will have to launch a massive education effort to get people prepared, Mr. Vaughan and other workers say. The auto workers' coolness toward the idea of a strike mirrors a trend in organized labor. The Caterpillar failure ``has completely changed the face of organized labor,'' says Raquel Heaton, president of a UAW local at a Caterpillar plant in Decatur, Ill.. Embarrassed at having returned to work last December without a contract, some of Caterpillar's unionized employees acknowledge that the 18-month showdown with the heavy-equipment maker took a heavy toll. Had the latest strike not ended so badly for the union, ``We could have had the strength and desire to walk back out again,'' says Johnetta Haley, a Caterpillar worker who lost a race for the local UAW presidency in Peoria, Ill., this year. ``But today, we couldn't get 20% of this membership to walk out.'' These days, union chiefs at Caterpillar's East Peoria, Ill., plant have been trying to instill some solidarity in workers by encouraging them to wear plain black shirts on Mondays, since the company has been tough on employees wearing union shirts or buttons. But the move hasn't caught on with many workers.
