The constant stream of headlines about the crisis in the auto industry has made it seem as though all the news is getting out. But it isn’t. The concessions being demanded and won impact significantly the standard of living and working conditions of current and future autoworkers.

Recently, many Ford plants in southeast Michigan have passed Competitive Operating Agreements (COAs), which allow management to move or outsource workers’ jobs. The Ford Rouge Complex is one of the latest plants to get COAs. Recently, Ford Woodhaven Stamping, Chrysler Trenton Engine, and Chrysler GEMA (Global Engine Manufacturing Alliance) Plant in Dundee, Michigan, have all seen outsourcing and job loss because of COAs.

In order to coerce workers into accepting COAs, Ford, Delphi, and Chrysler management have threatened to close many of their plants. In Ford’s case, the company wanted workers to leave plants that weren’t under contracts that allowed for lower pay. In order to intimidate the voting union members, Ford threatened to close plants down and move operations to plants with weaker contracts.

Following is an interview with Gary Walkowicz, former chairperson of the Dearborn Truck Plant unit at the Ford Rouge Complex, UAW Local 600 and a long-time worker activist. Gary received the largest number of votes in a recent election to represent his plant at the UAW Constitutional Convention held this summer and at the Bargaining Convention to be held next spring in preparation for the 2007 contract.

Fred David: What is a Competitive Operating Agreement?

Gary Walkowicz: Most Competitive Operating Agreements (COAs) change work rules. They eliminate the boundaries or the lines of demarcation between the various worker classifications. For example, the requirements of the current contract say an assembler cannot do an electrician’s work and an electrician cannot do an assembler’s work. Changing work rules enable the company to eliminate jobs and make people work harder. COAs also outsource work.

They’ve been passing these COAs rather quietly; it is not well known. But they have been going, local by local, threatening workers, plant by plant, that, to keep their plant open, they must pass these COAs.

At my plant, the Dearborn Truck Plant at the Rouge Complex, the jobs being outsourced are the better jobs, the jobs you get with higher seniority, after working on the line, like material handling or cleanup.

Assembly jobs will also be outsourced -- the engine assembly line, about 40 jobs per shift. These people put the remaining parts on the engine before it is installed. I don’t know all the details about it, but the company has the right to outsource this work. This means that they will either have some vendors build the engines up and either ship them into our plant built up or possibly build them inside our plant, paying people a much lower wage.

When they outsource the engine assembly line, we could lose about 150 jobs out of about 2,000 jobs in both shifts.

Basically, brick by brick, they are bringing down the wages of the autoworkers. This has been done in a number of other places.

What did they say in the meetings to explain this agreement to the workers?

They said that if the workers approved the agreement that the truck plant would get a 3rd shift. They had already planned to close Norfolk and consolidate the remaining production in two plants, Dearborn and Kansas City. Those plans were already in place. It was logical that they would have to increase production at the truck plant. But they still use that to scare people to make concessions.

They also tried to scare people at two other plants, the Dearborn Engine and Dearborn Frame Plants, telling them that if this agreement did not pass that those two plants might be closed. These plants, at least it was reported, voted overwhelmingly “yes” and that is what got the agreement passed localwide. Seven plants are part of the local contract. Four of them passed it; three of them voted it down.

Truck plant workers were told that if the contract didn’t pass that people with high seniority from the Engine and Frame Plants would be laid off and bump into the truck plant and bump out the low seniority workers. Younger workers, who didn’t have a lot of time to read and discuss it and think about it voted “yes.”

Scare people, rush the vote through. You gotta vote “yes” on this to save your job. Give you an hour or a day, think about it, and then vote.

But the majority voted “no.” It shows that a lot of people are not falling for these scare tactics.

You worked on getting people to vote “no.” Both the company and the union leadership, national and local, supported the agreement. How did you counteract their support?

The main thing is we put out a leaflet signed by about 19 people from the truck plant and other units in the Rouge. We passed it out at the plant and a few of the explanation meetings.
The fact that we had an organized fight against the terms of the reopened national contract last December had something to do with our majority “no” vote on the COA.

So what happened with the reopening in December, 2005?

At GM they reopened the national contract in the fall, 2005. They agreed to concessions which, among other things, made retirees pay for their healthcare. After it was passed at GM, they came to Ford next, in December. The last week before the holiday shutdown, as people were getting ready for the holiday, they announced an agreement. They set up meetings which were not convenient to come to and then they had a vote a few days later.

In my plant, we were able to organize against it, mainly because some of us had been meeting and discussing this issue prior to them bringing it to us. We had seen what had happened at GM and Delphi and it was obvious they were going to come to Ford next. We put out a leaflet in our plant, had about 15 or so people sign it, explaining why we were voting no, explaining what was in the contract.

What do you say to people when they are threatened with losing their job if they don’t sign a contract?

One of the main arguments that we made is that policy of giving concessions will not now and never has saved jobs. In fact it’s the opposite. If you look at what has gone on in the auto industry, [you see that] the union has given a number of concessions, back to the late 70s and early 80s. The employment numbers have gone down and down and down.

The second thing is that the companies are not telling the truth, that they are not as bad off as they say they are.

The main idea is that we cannot improve our situation by just giving in; every time you give in on concessions, the companies come back for more. It is not a matter of the companies hurting and you have to give them something now because they are hurting, and, when times get better, they’ll give it back. It doesn’t work that way. It never has.

Concessions do not save jobs. In fact, all they do is open the door to more concessions. That was the main thing we said to people.

And enough people certainly agreed on that national contract votes, our plant voted 92% “no” and a lot of other plants around the Ford system voted “no.”

The International reported that the renegotiated contract passed 51% to 49%, but we have no confidence in those vote totals.

Wasn’t there a fight around the validity of the vote?

An appeal was filed against that vote; the appeal is still pending. The appeal was filed and was turned down by the International Executive Board of the UAW, which we expected, and then appealed to the Public Review Board where it sits with them right now.

Of course, they’ve delayed it and stalled on the vote until the courts already approved the contract, but our appeal is still pending. I’m not holding out hope that the appeal will win; it is a good appeal, but it is more than legalities that win these things.

There was a lot of opposition to the contract, but, at the same time, we weren’t organized enough and in enough places to turn it down nationally or to even make sure the votes counted correctly.
We said that we did what we could in our plant, now we have to make sure that we are more organized, in contact with people in other plants for the next fight. And that fight came with these local COAs. Up next is the national contract in 2007 and we anticipate there will be another big push for concessions by the corporations. [See “Made in DeUnionized America”].

Because these contracts are local, there hasn’t been very much coverage in the major newspapers or media.

It’s deliberate. They don’t want there to be any organized resistance. I knew of other plants at Ford and Chrysler that had these COAs. But it is more based on word of mouth, knowing people in other plants. People send each other email. I have my name out there and some people contact me as an oppositionist. But it is a strategy to keep the workers divided, to go local by local.

Buyouts are yet another concession; part of the overall strategy. The strategy of corporations is to get people to leave, scare people to leave, threaten people to get them to leave, to take buyouts. The strategy of the auto corporations is pretty obvious; they want to eventually have an entire workforce, from the parts suppliers up through final assembly, of workers working for a lot less money than they have been working for. If they succeed, which I certainly don’t think we can allow them to, the next generation of autoworkers, our children and our grandchildren, will work for a lot less money and lot less benefits than we have. And that’s what we have to organize to stop.

People use the word “outsourcing” and they think it means moving the work across the country or to Mexico. But outsourcing here means the work is still going to be done in the same place or near by, by a different group of workers for a lot less money.

What do you think workers should do to fight against concessions?

Workers who don’t want to see this happen need to talk to other workers around you and explain what is happening; link up with each other so that we can be organized to fight back. There certainly is a lot of sentiment that people don’t like what is going on. We saw that in the “no” vote.

We also need to understand that the top leadership�"I don’t mean everybody of the UAW is of the same mind, there still must be some people at lower levels who are not real happy�"but the top leadership of the UAW has shown a willingness to not just go along with the companies but try to do everything they can to shove these concessions down the workers’ throats. I don’t think that we can have any confidence that they will do anything different.

For more information contact Gary at 313-737-3166.

Fred David is an editor of Critical Moment.