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From Labor Action, Vol. 14 No. 23, 5 June 1950, p. 1.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
DETROIT, Mich, May 27 – A turning point in UAW-CIO hisory was marked by the extraordinary contract signed last week by General Motors and the union, which directly affects 275,000 workers. The contract, an unexpected, and welcome victory, may best be understood if analyzed from the standpoint of (1) the circumstances in which the contract was negotiated; (2) its immediate effects; (3) and the long range implications and ramifications.
The peace pact came at a time when GM workers were in a conservative mood, due partly to the dread of another long strike. The Chrysler 100-day strike served to remind them of the 1946 walk-out of 113 days. No one relished the idea of a long strike and major sacrifices for the thin results of the Chrysler settlement.The GM workers lacked confidence in the Reuther leadership to get much more. In many locals, especially in the Flint-Saginaw area, antiReuther groups had won union elections.
For the Reuther leadership, the GM settlement came at a moment when its prestige was ebbing rapidly, it wasn’t too sure of what events might occur in the next period, and it faced an unfavorable public press hitherto unknown in its 4 years of rule of the UAW-CIO. Critics as far apart as the New York Times and the Daily Worker ridiculed Reuther’s claim of a “tremendous victory” at Chrysler. Within the union, the bitterness and confusion over the Chrysler strike was evident to all. As for the Toledo story, the invitation of Ford Local 600 to both Richard Gosser, UAW vice president, and his critics, to appear before the largest local union in the world to tell their side, indicates how deeply suspicion has permeated the union ranks. The committee headed by Emil Mazey, secretary-treasurer, simply hasn’t the prestige to sell its verdict to the ranks.
General Motors likewise faced a dilemma. It was making fabulous profits with record-breaking production. The auto industry may well exceed the ^000,000 total of vehicles produced in 1949! It could take on the UAW-CIO in a head-on fight like Chrysler and seek further to tame the union, even if it ended up with a settlement similar to, or perhaps a little better than the Chrysler pact.
The Communist Party of Czechoslovakia is moving ahead to complete Russification. No Czech or Slovakian Stalinist is to be spared who at any time has shown the slightest tendency to criticize the Russian masters.
Vladimir Clementis, until recently foreign minister, will find no mercy, regardless of his recent confession of “error.” This was made plain by his successor in office, Viliam Siroky, in a speech delivered to the closing session of the congress of the Slovak branch of the party.
Only complete, lifelong, unthinking subservience to Stalin can qualify any Czech or Slovak for high political office. Listen to Siroky speaking, with reference to Clementis:
But to fail in 1939 when the non-aggression pact between the Soviet Union and Germany was concluded was to lose faith in the Soviet Union. It means that Comrade Clementis lost his faith in Stalin. But a Communist must have unconditional faith in the Soviet Union and in the Great Stalin in every situation and under all circumstances.”
But in this same speech Siroky himself made a further statement which may, one day, be used against him. In an attack on Smidke, leader of the Slovak branch, Siroky stated that Smidke had not been charged with bourgeois nationalism “only because he is of working-class origin, because he was graduated from the Lenin school in Moscow and because the party made a great investment in him.”
That is pretty serious talk for a Stalinist inquisitor. Of course everyone understands that if poor Smidke were, in fact, to be charged with bourgeois nationalism, all the above-mentioned investment would have to be buried either in the salt mines or under six feet of Czechoslovak soil. There’s no getting around that in Stalinland.
But at the same time Siroky can be charged with lack of faith in the methods of the Russian GPU and its Great Inspirer, Stalin, who has thus buried hundreds of graduates of the Lenin school and who has cashed in the checks on so many similar investments of the Russian party that he is sometimes also known as the Great Liquidator.
GM knew the conservative mood of the workers. It spoke about it during negotiations. But it also knew that the UAW-CIO. as the Chrysler strike showed, could and would shut down all plants, and that the economic cost of a struggle with the UAW would be terrific, as Chrysler Corporation found out. GM sought and found another way out!
The initiative was clearly in GM’s hands in this situation, and it decided to offer the UAW two propositions. The first GM proposal consisted of essentially the Chrysler package, including the $100 a month pension for employees with 25 years of seniority at the age of 65. With minor changes, the contract would be renewed for three years.
The second offer included a package equivalent to 19 cents per hour gains for this year, the escalator clause, the four-cent per year improvement wage boost, at the price of a renewal of the current contract, with a modified union shop and minor changes, for five years.
This second package was based on GM’s belief that economic conditions would remain relatively stable in the whole next period, and that the peace it hoped to win with the UAW-CIO would easily compensate for the cost of such a proposal.
The UAW leaders accepted the second package with alacrity. For them it was a heaven-sent way out of the crisis in which the union was involved. Suppose inflation continues, and the cost of living skyrockets? The escalator clause protects the GM workers. Emil Mazey, UAW secretarytreasurer, explained it thus to a large East Side caucus meeting of the Reuther forces. He added, Suppose a depression hits? Our union is safe from a head-on attack for five years. The workers get a 4-cent raise yearly. We are insured either way.
Nearly 200 delegates attended the national General Motors conference to ratify the agreement. What was their reaction? At first, suspicion at the manner in which the contract was signed and announced publicly before they had a chance to study it, and much concern over a five-year contract. But, after a two-day session, in which the high point was the usual militant speech of Walter Reuther the delegates voted overwhelmingly to accept the package. Less than 200 voted against it.
In the shops, a big sigh of relief went up. Especially when the GM workers figured out their economic gains compared to Chrysler and Ford workers. And the gains are unmistakable and represent a real victory for the UAW.
In the Chrysler plants, the reaction was quite different. It was like salt on an old wound. Since most workers view settlements in bread and butter terms, the common feeling was, “Look what they got. We sure got hooked!” At Ford plants, many similar comments were heard.
In estimating the overall effect of the GM settlement these reactions at Ford and Chrysler are important factors. Before the 1951 convention in May, the UAW has a re-opening date for economic demands at Ford and Chrysler. The workers in these campaigns will be stimulated by the GM victory to make more aggressive demands than before. And they can win them too.
The GM pact, with all the dangers of a 5-year term, offers new possibilities to the UAW, perhaps with turbulent days ahead until after the 1951 convention, and the Ford and Chrysler negotiations next year, but also with prospects of cracking them both.
It is very unlikely that Chrysler will again decide to lose $50,000,000 minimum of profit, its competitive place in the auto industry, and 450,000 car production for a fight with the UAW, in which it does have to retreat from its die-hard attitude. The Ford Motor Company knows that lesson already, and if it doesn’t, it can be taught.
What is most likely is that these companies will give wage boosts to bring up their rate to a GM level, but in return may well ask for longer extensions of contracts.
A few weeks ago Walter Reuther criticized a delegate at the Chrysler conference who said he was disturbed by the trend reflected in a three-year contract. And at the General Motors conference Reuther did not refer to the five-year pact as an “exception,” the line he used at the Chrysler conference. It would have been difficult to do so.
Rather, to anticipate his critics, Reuther came up with an explanation which touches on the core of the problem raised by such a long-term contract. How does the UAW involve its ranks in the union now that its primary method, the national wage conferences, the posing of a major struggle every two years, etc., is gone? How can the UAW keep from taking on the character of an AFL business union, in which all union business rests in the hands of a relatively small but all powerful bureaucracy?
The answer, said Reuther, could be found in drawing the ranks into effective political action. He outlined the many wage negotiations and crises in which he and others found themselves, and said that now for the first time he could devote himself to political problems.
As usual, Reuther was aware of the problem, and evasive in his solution. Certainly, the broadening of the struggle of the UAW from primarily the economic front to the political front could involve the ranks more. Certainly, building independent political machines would provide a new arena in which militants could function. Leaving aside the question of what kind of political action, the danger in the Reuther approach is that his proposal, or rather long range idea, is a substitute for rank and file involvement in the union’s daily economic problems, rather than a required supplement.
Furthermore, involvement in politics will probably be building a machine within the Democratic Party (as is still being done in Michigan right now) or just supporting the Democratic Party (as the CIO policy is nationally.)
The conclusion is inescapable, however, that the UAW will devote more and more time in politics on a local, state and national scale, and that the Reuther leadership will have more time for working out some of the long range plans of the ambitious “Redhead.”
Concern over the democratic structure of the UAW becomes greater when one reviews the proposals of the Reuther leadership for the internal structure and functioning of the union. At the last convention the Reuther leadership proposed two-year conventions, two-year local union elections, higher dues, and regular assessments instead of the special strike assessment which was finally adopted. The chief argument of the leadership was that the recurring crises with the corporations made imperative fewer conventions and elections so that the leadership could concentrate mainly on fighting the companies.
What possible excuse could be found now for such a program, what with a five-year contract at GM, a three-year contract at Chrysler, and a two-year contract at Ford? As a matter of fact, there is now a greater need to maintain the yearly elections, the 18-month national conventions, and other traditional democratic features of the UAW. To tamper with them now is to clearly and coldly bureaucratize the UAW, and to accelerate the trend towards AFL business unionism.
Turning to another aspect of the GM contract, the five year clause signifies a freezing of the present working conditions, especially since no improvement was made in the functioning of the poor shop steward system and the red-tape in the bargaining procedure. The tendency again is dangerous. But it is a deliberate lie to state, as does the Daily Worker, that under the new contract, no fight against speed-up is possible. The Stalinists know, as well as the next man, that under paragraph 117 of the contract, the union has the right, as it did previously, to call a strike on the speed-up issue. The UAW does have a loophole if the GM Corporation takes too much for granted in the five-year pact. Some of the blind critics of the Reuther regime found themselves caught short when they screamed this is a five-year no-strike pledge, for Reuther quickly pointed out that paragraph 117 remains in the contract. (Not the least of Reuther’s assets are still most of his critics.)
The GM settlement emphasizes another major shift in the Reuther strategy on pensions. Although the UAW is signing up many small companies in “area” agreements, and expects to settle quickly at Briggs, the fact is that the fight for industry financed pension plans is over. The main pre-oecupation of the UAW will be to increase Social Security benefits, with the hope eventually of making them a substitute for the present make-shift arrangements. Very few UAW workers are satisfied with the present plans.
For every worker eligible to retire there is another of the same age not able to retire because he never had 25 years seniority in one plant. And, if prelimnary spot checks mean anything, there are two workers with 25 years seniority under 60 years of age (and thus not entitled to major benefits) for each one over 60 years of age. The pension problem, therefore, will remain a source of irritation and aggravation within the shops!
As for Reuther’s claim that the union won a billion dollar package for five years at General Motors, the only modifying factors – and they are hardly inconsequentional – are the doubts that auto production and employment will remain at their present high level for five years. A more accurate appraisal would begin with the statement: If our workers continue to keep their jobs, if model changeovers don’t cause too much unemployment, if business keeps up, then our package will total perhaps a billion dollars in five years.
[Labor Action will deal further with the GM contract in coming issues. – Ed.]
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