GM strike

[Dennis R Redmond]

On Wed, 1 Jul 1998, Justin Schwartz wrote:

>  The unions need democratization, rank and file militancy, and a less cozy
> relationship with the bosses. But there's no point in condemning them for
> not being the unions socialists would like. The IWW, which has all the
> right perspectives, is largely a nostalgic gesture, of no social weight.
> We have to start where we are, and global condemnations don't help. Nor
> will they appeal to militant workers, like those in New Directions and the
> TDU. Those workers know more about featherbedding and bureaucracy than any
> of us, but they want to save and not damn their unions. 

The model for auto unions isn't the IWW, it's IG Metall. The German 
unionists, incidentally, would laugh at the notion that criticizing the
UAW is somehow bad for union biz; they criticize their unions (and
institutions)  all the time, which is a good thing. Schremp, the head
honcho at Daimler, was interviewed in Der Spiegel awhile back, and the
editors just climbed all over his shit -- were persistently critical. He
responded with vigor, of course, but when's the last time you've ever seen
an interview with a senior US auto exec which wasn't a pro-industry
love-in? The measure of a democracy is the extent to which it allows its
citizens to be genuinely critical of things, not the slickness of its
marketing campaigns.

And intellectuals have a *key* part to play here. GM wants to shut its
North American plants down completely; but if wages are so darn high here,
why are Honda, Mitsubishi, Toyota, Daimler etc. setting up plants here?
Stupidity? That fabled Japanese/German quest for world hegemony? Hardly.
They're here because GM produces crap and expects consumers to buy it,
which they don't; so other, more efficient and better-organized
competitors have moved in. Typically these transplants don't just use
kaizen and just-in-time techniques in production, they also invest a lot
in their suppliers; Honda in particular started out by importing lots of
parts, and gradually built up their American supplier networks, working
with local management and instituting total quality systems, etc. Most of
all, the transplants emphasize the human element -- their workers -- and
think long-term about their investment strategy, the exact opposite of
GM's imperious, let-the-suppliers-eat-margin-death, layoff-oriented 
attitude. Interestingly, the latest evidence shows that much of the
superiority of the transplants comes not from the assembly plant itself,
but from the care and feeding of supplier networks; Honda, for one, has a
policy of 50-50 sharing when it comes to process innovations from
suppliers. The quality of the Honda Accord is beyond question, proving
that even limited forms of cooperation and workplace democratization
(Honda's system is much more decentralized and information-friendly
than most GM plants) are vastly superior to neoliberal competition, even
in that arch-capitalist enterprise, the auto industry.

Why is this important to the UAW? Because if the UAW knew this, they'd
figure out that GM's strategy of outsourcing their supplier lines is not
simply sleazy, it's also self-destructive. Quality will go to hell,
because suppliers figure, what the heck, they don't give a damn about me,
so why bother with quality. The next step would be to look carefully at
how IG Metall quashed Volkswagen's attempt to GM-ize its inhouse suppliers
in the early Nineties -- VW imported Lopez from GM, who slashed and burned
numerous accounts before being himself terminated, and also tried to shift
production to cheap Polish and Czech factories (which would've also been
the death-knell for Eastern European industry). IG Metall saved Eastern
Europe's ass, by blocking this, and insisting that VW follow a
high-quality, long-term investment strategy in Prague and elsewere.
Result: Skoda is beginning to move up the value ladder and is powering the
Czech economy in a positive way.

IG Metall has also scoured the map in Eastern Europe, linking up 
with trade unions, espousing industrial policies, and working
towards coordinated actions with their non-German comrades. But what is
the UAW's Mexican strategy? To complain about free trade while subsidizing
Dem reelection campaigns? 

-- Dennis