I posted another critique of the Magna CAW agreement by Sam Gindin earlier. This article shows some of the possible reasons that Frank Stronach was anxious to get a deal with the CAW and how this deal may impact on the unionisation of any assembly plant Stronach builds. The deal is a sad day in Canadian labor history. It shows how weak the movement is and that the leadership is desperate for any type of unionisation even though it involves what is in effect a type of company union.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~(((( T h e B u l l e t ))))~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
A Socialist Project e-bulletin .... No. 71 .... November 3, 2007
__________________________________________________
The CAW and Magna: What if
Magna Builds an Assembly Plant?
Sam Gindin
In the discussions of the proposed Magna-CAW (Canadian Auto Workers) ‘Framework of Fairness’ deal, the focus has been on Magna as a components company. But what if Magna opened an assembly plant? Under the language of the ‘Framework of Fairness’, it too would be part of the deal. This might fit the union goal of adding CAW members and dues, but it might not be as welcome from the perspective of standards in the CAW Detroit Big Three plants (GM, Ford, and Chrysler).
This issue has not received much, if any, discussion but it needs to be addressed. In raising this, we do not want to suggest that the CAW negotiators might have been trying to sneak something by the members in the CAW’s assembly plants. The deal was clearly intended to be about Magna component plants, even if the language does not say so. We are, however, less sure about Magna’s intentions. This raises two questions. Is Magna likely to expand its operations into assembly? If so, how would the CAW-Magna ‘Framework of Fairness’ deal affect the Big Three?
Magna: From Parts to Assembly
Frank Stronach, the head of Magna, has long proclaimed an ambition to expand his auto components empire into car assembly for the North American market. Magna has for some time now been developing the capacity for such a breakthrough, and has been building the engineering experience for doing so through its Steyr plant in Austria, where it assembles specialty, low-volume cars on contract primarily for Daimler, but also other companies like the Saab unit of General Motors.
On August 29, 2006, a Globe and Mail story reported that the CAW was ‘offering a radical new agreement’ to Ford and that it ‘could involve Magna International Inc’. CAW President Buzz Hargrove confirmed the story and the proposed six-year agreement included a longer phase-in period for new hires (starting at 75% of the normal wage rate and getting to the full wage in six years), postponement of some time off through the life of the agreement and reductions in the number of job classifications to just two for each of production and skilled trades. This announcement came on the heels of Stronach’s earlier announcement that Magna was working on the Framework of Fairness agreement with the CAW which recently came to fruition (a similar deal is in the works with the American United Auto Workers, UAW).
Speculation about Magna’s future role as a major auto assembler took a giant leap forward in the spring of 2007, when Daimler announced its desire to sell its North American operations and Magna was, for a while, the most likely buyer. The CAW came out in strong support of Magna, arguing – in spite of Magna’s anti-union record – that ‘the union would not feel as threatened’ by a Magna takeover (Financial Post, March 31, 2007).
Daimler-Chrysler was eventually taken over by the US buy-out firm Cerberus, but the saga of Magna’s possible entry into assembly did not end. On July 17, 2007 – at the very height of the negotiations over the Framework of Fairness agreement – the Financial Post reported that the CAW thought Magna was on the verge of building an assembly plant in North America and concerned that every effort be made to ensure it be built in Canada. According to CAW economist Jim Stanford, the CAW was open to ‘unique contractual provisions’ and ‘prepared to offer...a competitive and "high-performance" labour agreement to secure an investment.’ Magna did not confirm discussions with the CAW, but Mark Hogan, Magna’s International President did admit that such a factory was ‘in the offing.’ While CAW President Hargrove declared that he was ‘quite willing’ to negotiate ‘non-traditional’ labour deals when factories are built from scratch, he denied that anything was on the table at the time.
Magna Assembly and the CAW
If Magna follows through on this goal of moving into assembly, the degree of competition and uncertainty in the industry rules out Magna trying this on its own. Magna would only do so in some partnership with a major automaker; one of the global assembly companies would subcontract a particular model to Magna for final assembly.
Any such partnership would not be with the Japanese auto companies, who are doing fine as is. Nor, given their non-union workforce, do they need to subcontract assembly to escape union standards. The alliance might be with a European-based producer looking for an entry into the North American market. But in any such first entry, that producer would likely be very wary about turning its management over to someone else, especially someone themselves still in the early stages of becoming an assembler operations. Magna’s partner would, therefore, most likely be one of the Big Three. Outsourcing a new low-volume model to Magna for assembly might be a way to save on internal resources, use some of their current excess capacity for a new ‘experiment’, and involve Magna in the process of getting a lower-cost ‘non-traditional’ agreement from the union (i.e. a union that agrees to not quite act like one in compromising its workplace structures and range of potential actions).
It matters very much that the partnership is most likely with one of the Big Three rather than one of the Japanese companies. This affects the likelihood of unionization. The CAW would be expected to use its existing power and influence within either of the Big Three to insist on union recognition at the new operation and a ramp-up to Big Three standards for the workers. This was a key factor in the unionization of CAMI, which was a joint venture between Suzuki and GM. The CAMI workers maintained the right to strike and the steward system and ultimately lagged behind the Big Three by only 2-3 years. (It further raises the question of why not use the union’s pressure at the Big Three to insist that any of their suppliers – like Stronach – not be allowed to deny workers their right to a free vote to choose their representatives).
This is where the Magna-CAW new Framework of Fairness deal comes in. That deal would trump any unionization drive or alternative agreement. The agreement in the new assembly plant, if workers voted for the CAW, would come under the new Magna-CAW deal and it would be based on Magna’s company-union structure, not the CAW pattern (See Framework of Fairness agreement, p. 5, Part B, #1 and p.23, #2). The wages might be higher than in the rest of the Magna chain, but the core elements of that deal – the permanent strike ban, the absence of a steward body, and the explicit commitment to the priorities of Magna’s philosophy – would remain. (Note too that about 20% of Magna’s workforce is currently ‘temporary’ with lower wages and much lower benefits; this two-tier structure has not been mentioned in the CAW literature on the new deal, and it would presumably remain in place.)
The CAW’s ‘foot-in-the-door’ at Magna, one of the union’s main arguments in its defense of this deal, might then be the Magna Model’s ‘foot-in-the-door’ confronting Big Three workers already facing immense pressures. The implications of such a precedent, especially if it has been legitimated by the union itself, are – to put it mildly – frightening. In this light, CAW President Hargrove’s statement at a press conference that he would ‘make a similar arrangement available to General Motors or other auto makers that wanted to build a new greenfield plant in Canada’ might have been more than a verbal slip (Globe and Mail, October 15, 2007; note that Hargrove later retracted his statement according to reporters who followed it up).
If there is any validity to the above, it would also help explain one of the mysteries surrounding this deal. Why did Frank Stronach, who spent his life structuring his company to keep unions completely out, suddenly have a change of heart? Was he thinking ‘assembly’ and how to integrate the union beforehand?
A final question remains. Although Stronach – as the ‘Canadian nationalist’ – has made it clear that his preferred legacy would be to build any assembly plant for North American production in Canada, Stronach-the-businessman might in fact build it elsewhere. He may very well decide that the anti-union southern United States or third-world Mexico might be a more conducive environment for controlling workers and keeping costs down. The present value of the Canadian dollar certainly reinforces the likelihood of Stronach taking his Canadian dream elsewhere.
This exposes a further dimension of the inequality built into the new partnership with the CAW, as well as its limits. Canadian workers give up their right to refuse their labour, but Stronach maintains his right to allocate the profits he earned here as he sees fit. This applies, of course, not only to the location of a new assembly plant: it also pertains to Stronach’s continuing right to relocate any of the work under the Magna-CAW-deal.
Conclusion: Magna’s Corporatism or Union Independence?
The timing of the Magna-CAW deal and other comments surrounding it warrant some questions about the relationship between this deal, Magna’s future intentions in auto assembly, and the implications of this for Canadian jobs and standards at the Big Three. These are, of course, part of the larger set of questions that come with the current ‘experiment’ the CAW has undertaken in one of Canada’s most important industries and with the largest employer in that industry. What are the implications for the CAW as a whole, and the broader Canadian labour movement, of endorsing and then selling an agreement which includes a no-strike pledge, the abandonment of independent in-plant structures, and the embrace of Magna’s corporatist ideology?
The union movement was built by workers finding ways to organize when ‘economic logic’ suggested it was impossible. Indeed it was in the midst of the Great Depression that autoworkers first fought their way to unionization in the 1930s. Times do, of course, change. But it is in the creativity and commitment of the workers who first formed the UAW and then the CAW, and not in any return to the company unionism of the 1920s, that workers will find the inspiration to build the independent organizations they so desperately need.
Sam Gindin teaches political economy at York University
Showing posts with label Sam Gindin. CAW. Right to strike. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Sam Gindin. CAW. Right to strike. Show all posts
Sunday, November 4, 2007
Friday, October 19, 2007
The CAW and Magna: Disorganizing the Working CLass
I am really surprised there is not more reaction to Hargrove's sellout of one of the basic principles of unions, the right to strike. This article by Sam Gindin gives a good analysis of the situation. Hargrove has not only been narrowly focused on the interests of particular members of the working class--and not very effectively protecting them but he obviously will give up almost everything to expand his union base. Recently he has complained about environmental policies as destroying the auto industry, rather than pressing the Big THree to change their ways. The NDP is probably glad that he seems to be supporting Liberals now.
Gindin used to be Hargrove's economic advisor.]
The B u l l e t
Socialist Project • E-Bulletin No. 65
October 19, 2007
The CAW and Magna:
Disorganizing the Working Class
Sam Gindin
In the neoconservative Canada of the late 1990s, the labour movement
needs to become more militant, less accommodating to the demands of
corporations and governments. If this sounds like a return to the
days of the 1930s or 1950s, so be it. It's either that or watch
decades of hard-won gains disappear. This resistance will mean
arrests, charges, maybe even jail terms for some of our leaders and
members. But if we are to check this massive wave of unfairness, we
simply have no alternative. — Buzz Hargrove, Labour of Love (1998),
pp. 88-9.
Through the 1980s and 1990s, as the attacks on past working class
gains intensified, the Canadian Auto Workers Union (CAW) was widely
recognized – not just in North America but abroad – as standing at
the forefront of working class resistance. With the Magna-CAW
Agreement signed on October 15, 2007, the CAW now seems at the
forefront of working class desperation and defeat.
This startling agreement raises three sets of questions.
What is in it for Magna?
What did the CAW get out of this (other than dues)?
What are the implications for the labour movement as a whole?
Before getting to these questions, it is useful to return to the
foundations of independent unionism (still taught in CAW
educationals) and consider how they relate to the 'Magna Model' the
CAW has turned to.
What are unions as independent organizations?
The contradiction that has always faced working people is that they
are dependent on their employers for work, yet need to create a
degree of independence so they can address their own, distinct needs.
The foundation for that independence was a democratic organization of
workers – a 'union.' It resonated with workers because it was truly
'theirs'; it was a space within which the employer had no say. In
practice the innovation of shop stewards, workers elected from
various sections of the workplace, was crucial. The stewards
represented workers in their daily struggles with management and also
acted as mentors and leaders in the development of a culture of
solidarity. Against the god of profits and the devil of
competitiveness, workers and their unions developed their own
understanding of the world and formulated distinct working class
values.
But all this would come to naught if workers didn't also have an
independent basis of power to offset, if not match the power of the
employer. That power rested on the right to withdraw their labour – a
basic democratic right that was only reluctantly recognized, and even
then limited, by governments and employers. Pierre Trudeau summarized
this well in his early years, before he entered formal politics:
'In the present state of society, in fact, it is the possibility of
the strike which enables workers to negotiate with their employers on
terms of approximate equality..... [Without it] the trade union
movement becomes nothing more than one institution among many in the
service of capitalism: a convenient organization for disciplining the
workers, occupying their leisure time, and ensuring their
profitability for business'. – The Asbestos Strike (1956).
What's in it for Magna?
Magna has been able to limit the CAW to only three of its 45 units
and faces no major organizing drives today. Why then has it suddenly
opened the door to the CAW (even if it's on Magna's own terms)?
Bringing the union in, even on the company's terms, does mean new
administrative headaches (at a minimum, more meetings and
consultations take time) and possible hazards for Magna (things are
stable now; why risk something blowing up in your face). Other
companies, even if they could get the CAW deal, would likely reject
it unless the point was to co-opt an actual organizing drive. In
fact, its no secret that even most of Magna's top management is not
all that enamoured with this new step.
The new relationship to the CAW starts and ends with Frank Stronach.
Frank Stronach, Magna's founder and current top officer, has always
had a paternalistic vision of workplace relations. Fairness is good
as long as he gets to define it. Unions are okay if they are certain
kinds of unions. The CAW, which left the American international union
in the mid-1980s over how close its leadership had gotten to the
companies and how far they had gotten from the membership, was
certainly not a potential partner for Stronach. Nor was the Buzz
Hargrove of the years following that separation, Stronach's ideal
labour leader. But over the past few years Stronach had clearly
decided that the new CAW – made desperate by a loss of jobs and with
a president vain enough to declare victory no matter the scale of the
concessions – does get his stamp of approval. And so Stronach moved
ahead to, as he says, 'transform North American labour relations.'
In the Magna model, these foundations for independent unionism are,
to all intents and purposes erased. It is true and important that the
company has agreed to open the door to the union contacting its
workers. But that comes at the cost of the kind of union the workers
can then have.
The right to strike is fully erased; it is gone forever. As the CAW
press kit puts it: 'There will be no strikes or lockouts under this
system' (emphasis added). When the agreement ends, if the members
reject the new offer, it goes to arbitration. Period. (The kit goes
on to suggest that the strike weapon is, in any case, not really that
important.)
Shop stewards do not exist. The CAW has accepted this. Stewards are
replaced by a 'fairness committee' staffed by equal numbers of labour
and management reps (who are part of the 'concern resolution
process'). The key union rep under this structure is the 'Employee
Advocate', a carryover from Magna's traditional practice who seems to
be the formal equivalent of a plant chairperson. According to the
Toronto Star (October 16, 2007), the Employee Advocate is not elected
from the membership at large but screened by a committee which
included both labour representatives and management(!). To date it is
not public information how the final selection is made. This system
is reminiscent in some ways to the 'controlled democracy' in
communist Europe a while back, where managers – in that case as union
members – prepared lists from which the leaders could be chosen.
The Magna units will be part of one Canada-wide – effectively
Ontario-
wide – amalgamated local. (This in itself may tend to isolate each
unit form interaction with other units in the community). The above
Employee Advocates will make up the executive of that local and
constitute, along with representatives from the national union, the
bargaining committee. The local officers – for example, the President
and Secretary-Treasurer – will be chosen by this executive rather
than, as in current CAW practice, via a vote of the membership.
As for ideology, the CAW president has proudly declared his
enthusiasm for a 'non-adversarial' relationship, repeating (without
embarrassment) all the mushy clichés about 'teamwork' and 'being in
this together' that he not so long ago scorned for their rank
hypocrisy. This, it is important to emphasize, is not just about
rhetoric. The attitude to labour-management relations is one of the
criteria that will be used in evaluating acceptability for being the
Employee Advocate. Trouble-makers – those who challenge the system,
'stir up trouble' and have always been the backbone of independent
unionism – need not apply.
Magna workers, it is clear, need a union. There are, for example,
questions of internal wage parity, equity across jobs, and contract
workers. And Magna has often undercut other Canadian producers in
overall wages, benefits and working conditions. Magna argues that it
sets its wages at the average manufacturing wage for the particular
work, that its raises follow that average, and that it has no
intention of changing this practice. Given that Magna the largest
employer in the industry – larger even then General Motors – and in
the face of its' profitability and provision of outrageous
compensation to its executives (Stronach's earnings over the past
three years have totalled over $100 million), it would seem that the
union is positioned to demand that Magna should actually lead in
setting higher standards.
But given the constraints on the union of the Magna model, above all
with the possibility of a strike not on the table, it's questionable
how much collective bargaining will accomplish. As well, the union
has already agreed to set aside its own practice of establishing
defined benefit pension plans at major employers and accept Magna's
alternative of a savings and profit-sharing plan. As for workplace
itself, Magna is steadfast on its absolute control in running the
plant; with the union agreeing to ensure the company's
competitiveness, it is not simply credible to suggest that the union
will introduce any significant challenge to the company on working
conditions.
Why did the CAW do this?
The union might be defended on two grounds. The first is that the
union is engaging in a scam: once it has a foothold it will revert to
traditional unionism. But suggestions that this is the hidden agenda
do not stand up. In the 1980s, when the CAW was at its peak in terms
of confidence, it might have been argued that such an experiment
would draw Magna workers into the CAW orbit. Today, when the CAW has
itself been drifting more and more towards corporatist partnerships
with the Detroit Big Three, other CA acceptance of responsibility for
managing their domestic capitalist orders in a manner that
contributed to the America-led management of the international
capitalist order W may be drawn into the orbit of the type of trade
unionism this deal with Frank Stronach represents.
In any case, it is difficult enough to build a union presence in the
best of circumstances; it is virtually impossible when, as in the
Magna model, the ideological framework and internal structures all
work against you. As well, the path to the full unionization agreed
to here is spread over a 9-10 year period in which the CAW gets
access to about five plants yearly. This implies a self-disciplining
incentive: if the union wants all the plants, it will have to behave
– and get the members to behave in the initial plants where the union
is recognized – in a way that doesn't disrupt the agreement before
all the units are in the CAW. And by the time all the plants are in
the union, a decade or so from now at best, a culture will have been
established that will not be easily changed.
In fact, the more likely scenario for the development of a 'real'
union might come from the outside. Frustrated with a union that draws
dues but acts like the industrial relations arm of the company,
workers might rebel and look to another union to come in, this time
to join workers ready to challenge the status quo. It should however
be noted that this leads to murky legal territory. Since the units
will be under one collective agreement, the Labour Board might rule
that they must all stay or go together and can't be picked off one at
a time – making a change in unions difficult if not impossible (as
was seen in the failed attempt at organizing the banks in the 1980s).
A more traditional defence of this new CAW policy would be that the
unionization of Magna is critical to the rest of the parts industry
and the auto industry more generally, but the only way to accomplish
this is by way of a tactical retreat from principle. The problem
addressed in this argument is serious. There is no question that
unionization in today's climate of overwhelming restructuring is
extremely difficult and this is all the truer at Magna where keeping
unions out has been one of its major investments.
The main point of course is that raised earlier: it doesn't make much
sense to kill the patient to cure the disease; the union is better
off without Magna than with getting Magna but giving up what the
union stands for. But that's not all. A number of other hard
questions are relevant here.
Before the Harris revolution and even under Conservative
administrations, Ontario had labour laws and regulations which,
though the union movement never thought they went far enough, allowed
for a meaningful right to organize. With the victory of McGuinty,
there was an opportunity to reverse what Harris imposed. Why did the
CAW not join the labour movement to mount and sustain through the
election the kind of campaign that might have given us a better
alternative than 'collective begging'? Why, instead, did the
President of the CAW endorse the Liberals without any commitment on
such changes (and do so, incidentally, without a mandate from his
members)?
The CAW has in the past insisted that part of its relationship to the
Big Three include a corporate rule of conduct that calls on parts
suppliers to show 'neutrality' in workers' decisions on whether or
not to join a union. (This was, in fact, an element in the CAW's
victory at Magna's Integram unit in Windsor.) Why is this now not
getting the same or more emphasis?
Any serious campaign to bring Magna into the fold would indeed cost a
small fortune. The CAW is financially strong and the issue is a
matter of priorities. The CAW has, for example, found the resources
to provide $5 million in financial support for what some consider a
shady break-away local of the Labourer's International when this
could have gone into an organizing drive. More important, can the CAW
continue to realistically rely on its full-time staff to organize
modestly-paid workers? Would it not be more sensible (and less of a
strain on resources) to combine experienced full-time staff with
dozens of young, energetic workers – paid at their existing wage rate
and drawn from CAW workplaces across the country – to organize within
their communities?
It has to be recognized that unionization is not just about what the
organizing department does; it's also about the drive and vision
within the union as a whole. How far can unions go in attracting new
members if they demand dues but sound like management? If there is no
larger vision of building the working class through unionization,
what reason is there to expect members and staff to make the material
commitments and sacrifices to do what is necessary?
In the face of the increased corporate aggressiveness, competition
between unions over whose institution will expand is can be
especially destructive. Where the goal is a major organizing
breakthrough, how can some degree of cooperation among unions be
established? Can this happen without unions coming to identify the
main goal as being to build the working class as a whole?
What are the larger implications for the CAW as a whole
and for other unions?
The importance of the unionization of Magna was always seen in the
CAW as of value in itself but also as being about the protection of
standards in the rest of the auto parts sector. But now it is almost
inevitable that in any new bargaining, companies will demand the same
structures as Magna. If not a permanent no-strike ban, then at least
six-year Agreements during which strikes are banned. If getting rid
of stewards is not on, maybe having fewer stewards will be accepted.
This may have implications outside the parts sector. In response to a
question at the press conference announcing the deal, Hargrove
bizarrely commented (Globe and Mail, October 15, 2007) that he would
'make a similar arrangement available to General Motors or other auto
makers that wanted to build a new greenfield plant in
Canada' (meaning an entirely new plant, not an addition). GM workers,
fully aware that a more modern plant with radically lower standards
will over time erode their existing standards if not their jobs,
might be surprised to hear this.
The CAW's abandonment of the right to strike at Magna has enormous
implications in terms of the labour movement's struggles (including
in the CAW) to win this democratic right. And it mindlessly
undermines those workers who never had this right or have seen it
eroded as governments expanded the scope of 'essential services', or
introduced back to work legislation. If it is the case that, as the
CAW press kit claims, 30,000 CAW members don't have the right to
strike, is this not of concern to the union? (Ironically, the first
section on the CAW web page has a runner giving the latest 'News
Flash'; included here is the formation of a cross union alliance,
including the CAW, to resist the Nova Scotia government's threat to
bring in legislation curtailing the right to strike for health care
workers).
Hargrove has already declared that if other companies offer something
similar to the Magna model, the union will jump at the chance
('Invite us in', Hargrove says, Toronto Star, October 16, 2007). But
other union leaders, some who were not as outspoken as Hargrove in
the confrontation with the Rae government's imposition of conditions
on workers, have reacted negatively. Wayne Samuelson, president of
the Ontario Federation of Labour, warned of the precedent being set.
And Wayne Fraser, Ontario-Atlantic director of the United
Steelworkers rightfully asked: 'What's to stop other employers,
especially Magna competitors, from rightfully asking the CAW for the
same no-strike right?' (Toronto Star, October 16, 2007).
Where in all this are the militants of the CAW – the activists, staff
and local and national leaders who not long ago so clearly understood
that they couldn't 'watch decades of hard-won gains disappear'? Where
is their outrage? •
Sam Gindin teaches political economy at York University
Gindin used to be Hargrove's economic advisor.]
The B u l l e t
Socialist Project • E-Bulletin No. 65
October 19, 2007
The CAW and Magna:
Disorganizing the Working Class
Sam Gindin
In the neoconservative Canada of the late 1990s, the labour movement
needs to become more militant, less accommodating to the demands of
corporations and governments. If this sounds like a return to the
days of the 1930s or 1950s, so be it. It's either that or watch
decades of hard-won gains disappear. This resistance will mean
arrests, charges, maybe even jail terms for some of our leaders and
members. But if we are to check this massive wave of unfairness, we
simply have no alternative. — Buzz Hargrove, Labour of Love (1998),
pp. 88-9.
Through the 1980s and 1990s, as the attacks on past working class
gains intensified, the Canadian Auto Workers Union (CAW) was widely
recognized – not just in North America but abroad – as standing at
the forefront of working class resistance. With the Magna-CAW
Agreement signed on October 15, 2007, the CAW now seems at the
forefront of working class desperation and defeat.
This startling agreement raises three sets of questions.
What is in it for Magna?
What did the CAW get out of this (other than dues)?
What are the implications for the labour movement as a whole?
Before getting to these questions, it is useful to return to the
foundations of independent unionism (still taught in CAW
educationals) and consider how they relate to the 'Magna Model' the
CAW has turned to.
What are unions as independent organizations?
The contradiction that has always faced working people is that they
are dependent on their employers for work, yet need to create a
degree of independence so they can address their own, distinct needs.
The foundation for that independence was a democratic organization of
workers – a 'union.' It resonated with workers because it was truly
'theirs'; it was a space within which the employer had no say. In
practice the innovation of shop stewards, workers elected from
various sections of the workplace, was crucial. The stewards
represented workers in their daily struggles with management and also
acted as mentors and leaders in the development of a culture of
solidarity. Against the god of profits and the devil of
competitiveness, workers and their unions developed their own
understanding of the world and formulated distinct working class
values.
But all this would come to naught if workers didn't also have an
independent basis of power to offset, if not match the power of the
employer. That power rested on the right to withdraw their labour – a
basic democratic right that was only reluctantly recognized, and even
then limited, by governments and employers. Pierre Trudeau summarized
this well in his early years, before he entered formal politics:
'In the present state of society, in fact, it is the possibility of
the strike which enables workers to negotiate with their employers on
terms of approximate equality..... [Without it] the trade union
movement becomes nothing more than one institution among many in the
service of capitalism: a convenient organization for disciplining the
workers, occupying their leisure time, and ensuring their
profitability for business'. – The Asbestos Strike (1956).
What's in it for Magna?
Magna has been able to limit the CAW to only three of its 45 units
and faces no major organizing drives today. Why then has it suddenly
opened the door to the CAW (even if it's on Magna's own terms)?
Bringing the union in, even on the company's terms, does mean new
administrative headaches (at a minimum, more meetings and
consultations take time) and possible hazards for Magna (things are
stable now; why risk something blowing up in your face). Other
companies, even if they could get the CAW deal, would likely reject
it unless the point was to co-opt an actual organizing drive. In
fact, its no secret that even most of Magna's top management is not
all that enamoured with this new step.
The new relationship to the CAW starts and ends with Frank Stronach.
Frank Stronach, Magna's founder and current top officer, has always
had a paternalistic vision of workplace relations. Fairness is good
as long as he gets to define it. Unions are okay if they are certain
kinds of unions. The CAW, which left the American international union
in the mid-1980s over how close its leadership had gotten to the
companies and how far they had gotten from the membership, was
certainly not a potential partner for Stronach. Nor was the Buzz
Hargrove of the years following that separation, Stronach's ideal
labour leader. But over the past few years Stronach had clearly
decided that the new CAW – made desperate by a loss of jobs and with
a president vain enough to declare victory no matter the scale of the
concessions – does get his stamp of approval. And so Stronach moved
ahead to, as he says, 'transform North American labour relations.'
In the Magna model, these foundations for independent unionism are,
to all intents and purposes erased. It is true and important that the
company has agreed to open the door to the union contacting its
workers. But that comes at the cost of the kind of union the workers
can then have.
The right to strike is fully erased; it is gone forever. As the CAW
press kit puts it: 'There will be no strikes or lockouts under this
system' (emphasis added). When the agreement ends, if the members
reject the new offer, it goes to arbitration. Period. (The kit goes
on to suggest that the strike weapon is, in any case, not really that
important.)
Shop stewards do not exist. The CAW has accepted this. Stewards are
replaced by a 'fairness committee' staffed by equal numbers of labour
and management reps (who are part of the 'concern resolution
process'). The key union rep under this structure is the 'Employee
Advocate', a carryover from Magna's traditional practice who seems to
be the formal equivalent of a plant chairperson. According to the
Toronto Star (October 16, 2007), the Employee Advocate is not elected
from the membership at large but screened by a committee which
included both labour representatives and management(!). To date it is
not public information how the final selection is made. This system
is reminiscent in some ways to the 'controlled democracy' in
communist Europe a while back, where managers – in that case as union
members – prepared lists from which the leaders could be chosen.
The Magna units will be part of one Canada-wide – effectively
Ontario-
wide – amalgamated local. (This in itself may tend to isolate each
unit form interaction with other units in the community). The above
Employee Advocates will make up the executive of that local and
constitute, along with representatives from the national union, the
bargaining committee. The local officers – for example, the President
and Secretary-Treasurer – will be chosen by this executive rather
than, as in current CAW practice, via a vote of the membership.
As for ideology, the CAW president has proudly declared his
enthusiasm for a 'non-adversarial' relationship, repeating (without
embarrassment) all the mushy clichés about 'teamwork' and 'being in
this together' that he not so long ago scorned for their rank
hypocrisy. This, it is important to emphasize, is not just about
rhetoric. The attitude to labour-management relations is one of the
criteria that will be used in evaluating acceptability for being the
Employee Advocate. Trouble-makers – those who challenge the system,
'stir up trouble' and have always been the backbone of independent
unionism – need not apply.
Magna workers, it is clear, need a union. There are, for example,
questions of internal wage parity, equity across jobs, and contract
workers. And Magna has often undercut other Canadian producers in
overall wages, benefits and working conditions. Magna argues that it
sets its wages at the average manufacturing wage for the particular
work, that its raises follow that average, and that it has no
intention of changing this practice. Given that Magna the largest
employer in the industry – larger even then General Motors – and in
the face of its' profitability and provision of outrageous
compensation to its executives (Stronach's earnings over the past
three years have totalled over $100 million), it would seem that the
union is positioned to demand that Magna should actually lead in
setting higher standards.
But given the constraints on the union of the Magna model, above all
with the possibility of a strike not on the table, it's questionable
how much collective bargaining will accomplish. As well, the union
has already agreed to set aside its own practice of establishing
defined benefit pension plans at major employers and accept Magna's
alternative of a savings and profit-sharing plan. As for workplace
itself, Magna is steadfast on its absolute control in running the
plant; with the union agreeing to ensure the company's
competitiveness, it is not simply credible to suggest that the union
will introduce any significant challenge to the company on working
conditions.
Why did the CAW do this?
The union might be defended on two grounds. The first is that the
union is engaging in a scam: once it has a foothold it will revert to
traditional unionism. But suggestions that this is the hidden agenda
do not stand up. In the 1980s, when the CAW was at its peak in terms
of confidence, it might have been argued that such an experiment
would draw Magna workers into the CAW orbit. Today, when the CAW has
itself been drifting more and more towards corporatist partnerships
with the Detroit Big Three, other CA acceptance of responsibility for
managing their domestic capitalist orders in a manner that
contributed to the America-led management of the international
capitalist order W may be drawn into the orbit of the type of trade
unionism this deal with Frank Stronach represents.
In any case, it is difficult enough to build a union presence in the
best of circumstances; it is virtually impossible when, as in the
Magna model, the ideological framework and internal structures all
work against you. As well, the path to the full unionization agreed
to here is spread over a 9-10 year period in which the CAW gets
access to about five plants yearly. This implies a self-disciplining
incentive: if the union wants all the plants, it will have to behave
– and get the members to behave in the initial plants where the union
is recognized – in a way that doesn't disrupt the agreement before
all the units are in the CAW. And by the time all the plants are in
the union, a decade or so from now at best, a culture will have been
established that will not be easily changed.
In fact, the more likely scenario for the development of a 'real'
union might come from the outside. Frustrated with a union that draws
dues but acts like the industrial relations arm of the company,
workers might rebel and look to another union to come in, this time
to join workers ready to challenge the status quo. It should however
be noted that this leads to murky legal territory. Since the units
will be under one collective agreement, the Labour Board might rule
that they must all stay or go together and can't be picked off one at
a time – making a change in unions difficult if not impossible (as
was seen in the failed attempt at organizing the banks in the 1980s).
A more traditional defence of this new CAW policy would be that the
unionization of Magna is critical to the rest of the parts industry
and the auto industry more generally, but the only way to accomplish
this is by way of a tactical retreat from principle. The problem
addressed in this argument is serious. There is no question that
unionization in today's climate of overwhelming restructuring is
extremely difficult and this is all the truer at Magna where keeping
unions out has been one of its major investments.
The main point of course is that raised earlier: it doesn't make much
sense to kill the patient to cure the disease; the union is better
off without Magna than with getting Magna but giving up what the
union stands for. But that's not all. A number of other hard
questions are relevant here.
Before the Harris revolution and even under Conservative
administrations, Ontario had labour laws and regulations which,
though the union movement never thought they went far enough, allowed
for a meaningful right to organize. With the victory of McGuinty,
there was an opportunity to reverse what Harris imposed. Why did the
CAW not join the labour movement to mount and sustain through the
election the kind of campaign that might have given us a better
alternative than 'collective begging'? Why, instead, did the
President of the CAW endorse the Liberals without any commitment on
such changes (and do so, incidentally, without a mandate from his
members)?
The CAW has in the past insisted that part of its relationship to the
Big Three include a corporate rule of conduct that calls on parts
suppliers to show 'neutrality' in workers' decisions on whether or
not to join a union. (This was, in fact, an element in the CAW's
victory at Magna's Integram unit in Windsor.) Why is this now not
getting the same or more emphasis?
Any serious campaign to bring Magna into the fold would indeed cost a
small fortune. The CAW is financially strong and the issue is a
matter of priorities. The CAW has, for example, found the resources
to provide $5 million in financial support for what some consider a
shady break-away local of the Labourer's International when this
could have gone into an organizing drive. More important, can the CAW
continue to realistically rely on its full-time staff to organize
modestly-paid workers? Would it not be more sensible (and less of a
strain on resources) to combine experienced full-time staff with
dozens of young, energetic workers – paid at their existing wage rate
and drawn from CAW workplaces across the country – to organize within
their communities?
It has to be recognized that unionization is not just about what the
organizing department does; it's also about the drive and vision
within the union as a whole. How far can unions go in attracting new
members if they demand dues but sound like management? If there is no
larger vision of building the working class through unionization,
what reason is there to expect members and staff to make the material
commitments and sacrifices to do what is necessary?
In the face of the increased corporate aggressiveness, competition
between unions over whose institution will expand is can be
especially destructive. Where the goal is a major organizing
breakthrough, how can some degree of cooperation among unions be
established? Can this happen without unions coming to identify the
main goal as being to build the working class as a whole?
What are the larger implications for the CAW as a whole
and for other unions?
The importance of the unionization of Magna was always seen in the
CAW as of value in itself but also as being about the protection of
standards in the rest of the auto parts sector. But now it is almost
inevitable that in any new bargaining, companies will demand the same
structures as Magna. If not a permanent no-strike ban, then at least
six-year Agreements during which strikes are banned. If getting rid
of stewards is not on, maybe having fewer stewards will be accepted.
This may have implications outside the parts sector. In response to a
question at the press conference announcing the deal, Hargrove
bizarrely commented (Globe and Mail, October 15, 2007) that he would
'make a similar arrangement available to General Motors or other auto
makers that wanted to build a new greenfield plant in
Canada' (meaning an entirely new plant, not an addition). GM workers,
fully aware that a more modern plant with radically lower standards
will over time erode their existing standards if not their jobs,
might be surprised to hear this.
The CAW's abandonment of the right to strike at Magna has enormous
implications in terms of the labour movement's struggles (including
in the CAW) to win this democratic right. And it mindlessly
undermines those workers who never had this right or have seen it
eroded as governments expanded the scope of 'essential services', or
introduced back to work legislation. If it is the case that, as the
CAW press kit claims, 30,000 CAW members don't have the right to
strike, is this not of concern to the union? (Ironically, the first
section on the CAW web page has a runner giving the latest 'News
Flash'; included here is the formation of a cross union alliance,
including the CAW, to resist the Nova Scotia government's threat to
bring in legislation curtailing the right to strike for health care
workers).
Hargrove has already declared that if other companies offer something
similar to the Magna model, the union will jump at the chance
('Invite us in', Hargrove says, Toronto Star, October 16, 2007). But
other union leaders, some who were not as outspoken as Hargrove in
the confrontation with the Rae government's imposition of conditions
on workers, have reacted negatively. Wayne Samuelson, president of
the Ontario Federation of Labour, warned of the precedent being set.
And Wayne Fraser, Ontario-Atlantic director of the United
Steelworkers rightfully asked: 'What's to stop other employers,
especially Magna competitors, from rightfully asking the CAW for the
same no-strike right?' (Toronto Star, October 16, 2007).
Where in all this are the militants of the CAW – the activists, staff
and local and national leaders who not long ago so clearly understood
that they couldn't 'watch decades of hard-won gains disappear'? Where
is their outrage? •
Sam Gindin teaches political economy at York University
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