Recession Pressure on Labor Rights

[Omaha Steve]

http://correspondents.theatlantic.com/christina_davidson/2009/11/recession_pressure_on_labor_rights.php

Christina Davidson

Recession Road Trip

Nov 19 2009, 11:52AM

Day 156: Wayne, MI



The US 12 Bar and Grill in Wayne, Michigan has an unusually-timed happy hour. Drink specials start at 9 pm, scheduled to attract local auto workers getting off second shift. For $3, the bartender pours me a full rocks glass of Grand Marnier. I appear to be the only female patron in the bar, which perhaps explains why the guys tolerate my incessant questions about how the recession has affected their industry and labor contracts.

Last week, I met Beau Jencks, a labor organizer for the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers. A friendly chat in the elevator evolved into a long conversation about how the economic downturn has affected workers' rights and contract negotiations.

In Jencks's experience, companies are using the current economic environment to justify excessive concessions from organized labor, effectively squeezing the working man to further enrich the executive class. And because a pervasive fear of layoffs looms over any contract negotiation, unions are agreeing to deeper concessions than they otherwise would. As a result, Jencks said, the recession is essentially handicapping the labor movement and erasing decades of hard-fought progress.

The half-drunk auto workers I hung out with at US 12 would agree with part of what Jencks said, but they take a dimmer view of their own labor representatives at the United Auto Workers. "I think the union is in bed with the company," Frank says bluntly. The brawny smooth-scalped Ford worker, incongruously sipping from a bottle of Bud Light, has enough sense to ask I don't use his real name. The UAW would "blackball" him for speaking out about what he and his co-workers think about their union.

A few weeks ago, Ford workers voted down a contract modification that the UAW had negotiated and urged them to support. Though their contract was not due for re-negotiation until 2011, Ford and the UAW said the concessions--involving vacation time, over-time, health benefits and entry level wages, among other things--were necessary to maintain competitiveness with Chrysler and GM, whose workers voted to accept similar changes earlier this year as their employers were verging on bankruptcy.

The contract modification was roundly defeated across the nation, in a few locations those opposing it reached 90%. Outside analysts have suggested the measure failed because Ford workers believe their company's avoidance of bankruptcy makes the concessions excessive and unnecessary--essentially penalizing the auto maker for its success. However, according to Frank, those voting against the contract modifications at his plant in Rawsonville generally turned on one single issue unrelated to wages or benefits: the right to strike.

FULL story at link.