Usa, sindacato, servizi Nyt 06-06-16
Il nuovo volto della solidarietà
STEVEN GREENHOUSE
[+ art. WSWS, 15.6.2006, Il sindacato americano dell’auto
segnala la sua capitolazione su salari, prestazioni previdenziali e
occupazione, Barry Grey]
Tesi NYT:
Il mutamento del mercato del lavoro americano, con – 3mn di
addetti del manifatturiero (1/6 del totale), e l’espansione dei servizi,
caratterizzato da bassi salari e lavori per gran parte uguali al manifatturiero,
ha modificato anche il panorama sindacale; alcuni sindacati cercano di
rafforzarsi nel settore servizi, oggettivamente bisognoso di organizzazione.
Tesi WSWS: Il sindacato dell’auto cede su storiche
conquiste, dimostrando la propria inettitudine, ideologie protezionistiche e disponibilità
a collaborare con i gruppi del settore; rinuncia all’arma dello sciopero.
Negli USA, oggi solo 2 mn. di lavoratori del manifatturiero
sono iscritti al sindacato contro i 3,5 di un decennio fa; sono sindacalizzati
3mn. di lavoratori dei servizi e del commercio al dettaglio, e oltre 7mn. del
settore pubblico. I sindacati rappresentano solo il 7,8% della forza lavoro del
settore privato, contro il 35% del decennio 1950.
Dal 2000 gli USA hanno perso 3mn. di posti di lavoro nel
manifatturiero, 1/6 del totale, ma … molti lavoratori dei servizi svolgono
lavori in tutto e per tutto uguali a quelli degli operai delle fabbriche…, non
sono lavori classificati come appartenenti al manifatturiero, ma di fatto lo
sono (Daniel J. B. Mitchell, docente di politica pubblica, University of
California).
I sindacati
che si sono distaccati da AFL-CIO, compresi Unite Here e Service Employees
International Union, rappresentano in gran parte i lavoratori dei servizi,
e mirano ad ampliare il numero dei loro iscritti.
–
Unite Here, rappresenta i lavoratori del settore
alberghi e ristorazione, e abbigliamento, e sta cercando di organizzare
migliaia di lavoratori non sindacalizzati della catena Hilton.
Bruce Raynor, presidente di Unite Here: «Il nostro obiettivo
è di promuovere i lavoratori dei servizi a classe media, come hanno fatto i
sindacati del manifatturiero per i lavoratori delle fabbriche. Ci sono voluti
20 anni, e noi speriamo di fare altrettanto».
Il settore privato americano è diviso in due movimenti
operai molto diversi:
–
il primo è quello delle organizzazioni sindacali del manifatturiero, come auto e
meccanica, sulla difensiva e
in declino;
–
il secondo è costituito dai sindacati del settore servizi in espansione.
I sindacati del manifatturiero stanno pagando la
globalizzazione, quello dell’auto, UWA, fino a pochi anni fa il più numeroso e
il più forte, oggi è in ritirata ed è pronto a concessioni per salvare
l’industria americana dell’auto. La società di componentistica per auto Delphi nel 2005 ha chiesto un
procedimento di bancarotta ed ha annunciato la chiusura o la vendita di 21 dei
29 stabilimenti USA; ha chiesto che i lavoratori sindacalizzati accettassero la
riduzione da $27 a £12 l’ora, assieme a tagli su pensione e sanità.
UAW ha segnalato la disponibilità ad accettare forti tagli
salariali e altre rinunce nei negoziati in corso con Delphi (fino al 1999
faceva parte di GM), ad estendere le riduzioni nelle prestazioni sanitarie,
assieme ad altre concessioni, nei negoziati con GM, Ford, DaimlerChrysler; gli
aumenti salariali si riducono e lasciano il posto a una “condivisione dei
guadagni” ai lavoratori quando aumentano i profitti o la produttività.
–
l’accordo siglato la scorsa settimana con Delphi e GM prevede
incentivi ai licenziamenti e pacchetti per pensionamenti anticipati per tutti i
lavoratori sindacalizzati, 113 000 in GM e 23 000 in Delphi.
(30 000 avrebbero già accettato nei due gruppi +4 800 di Ford);
queste scelte saranno senza dubbio estese a tutti i tre grandi dell’auto nei
rinnovi contrattuali del 2007.
–
Il presidente UAW, rieletto secondo copione, ha sollecitato misure
protezionistiche, e ha auspicato il ritorno ai Democratici di Camera e
Senato nelle elezioni di mezzo termine di novembre. Il congresso sindacale non
ha neppure messo al voto una mozione che richiedeva che i pensionati UAW
avessero il diritto di esprimere il loro parare per le modifiche dei prossimi
contratti.
–
Il fondo generale UAW, che finanzia le attività
quotidiane (e i salari) della burocrazia è sceso a $37mn. nel 2005, dai $65mn.
di 4 anni fa’; invece il fondo
scioperi, meno dipendente dalle tessere, è cresciuto nello stesso periodo da
$805mn a $925mn., quasi un record, a segnalare l’abbandono dell’arma dello
sciopero da parte di UAW, e AFL-CIO, in un periodo di forti attacchi ai
lavoratori; il fondo scioperi è divenuto un grande fondo d’assicurazione per la
burocrazia sindacale.
Dato che per statuto il sindacato non può usare il fondo
scioperi per i salari della burocrazia, il congresso ha deciso di stornare $110mn. di cui 50 andranno
nel fondo generale e gli altri 60 in un fondo controllato dall’esecutivo UAW,
per organizzare attività, etc. (NYT: progetto di investire $60mn. per il
reclutamento di lavoratori non sindacalizzati).
–
In un decennio non è stato indetto neppure uno sciopero
nazionale contro i 3 grandi gruppi dell’auto.
La maggior parte dei lavoratori dei servizi non è soggetta
alla concorrenza internazionale, ma hanno anche bassi salari, e condizioni
previdenziali e di lavoro inferiori; molti sono immigrati, e hanno più
entusiasmo per il sindacato dei lavoratori nativi americani.
«Il settore dei
servizi rappresenta una grande opportunità per il movimento operaio. Nei
servizi vi è un gran numerosi lavoratori a basso salario, molti immigrati,
molti lavoratori che possono trarre profitto da un sindacato. Ma devono anche superare
un gran numero di impedimenti se vogliono organizzarsi in sindacato», Paul F.
Clark, docente di studi sul lavoro alla Pennsylvania State University.
Leo W.
Gerard, presidente sindacato United Steelworkers of America (siderurgia):
I produttori del manifatturiero Americano sono svantaggiati rispetto a quelli
di altri paesi perchè devono pagare la previdenza sanitaria, mentre altrove ci pensa
il governo, come in Canada.
——————-
Sindacato auto americano UAW – l’accordo per il contratto di mezzo termine con GM e Ford prevede per la
prima volta che i pensionati del settore paghino una quota significativa dei
costi sanitari, i lavoratori
attivi devono rinunciare a
futuri incrementi salariali (le concessioni hanno causato una perdita salariale di almeno $2000
per lavoratore).
Nel rapporto al congresso sindacale, la dirigenza UAW riferisce che gli iscritti
sono scesi a 557 000, il minimo storico dal 1942; il massimo degli
iscritti fu nel 1979, 1,5 mn.; nel 2002 erano 676 000, un’emorragia avvenuta
da quando è salito alla presidenza Gettelfinger.
Nyt 06-06-16
The
New Face of Solidarity
By STEVEN
GREENHOUSE
Manuel Alvarez is the type of worker
that service-sector unions are eager to attract. After 11 years as a
houseman at the Hilton Hotel at Los Angeles International Airport, he earns
$9.95 an hour, about $20,000 a year.
"It’s not enough to live
on," said Mr. Alvarez, an immigrant from Mexico who vacuums halls and
flips mattresses. "I go to two churches each week to pick up donated
food." On his days off, he collects bottles and cans for the deposit,
adding $200 a month to his income. His hope is to join a union, and soon.
This week, judging by the somber mood
at the United Automobile Workers convention, the state of organized labor would
seem dire.
–
Not so long ago, the U.A.W. was the nation’s largest and
most swaggering union, leading the way in building America’s middle class by
winning impressive wages, health coverage and pensions. But the U.A.W. is now
in full retreat, ready to make concessions to help save the American auto
industry.
Its plight points to a little-understood
development: the nation’s private sector is divided into two very different
labor movements.
–
The first comprises manufacturing unions, like the auto
workers and machinists, which are on the defensive and on the decline.
–
The second is made up of unions for the expanding service sector, which are upbeat and on the prowl for hundreds of thousands of
nursing home aides, janitors, supermarket cashiers and workers like Mr.
Alvarez.
–
Unite Here, the union that represents hotel, restaurant and
apparel workers, is seeking
to organize thousands of nonunion Hilton workers in a battle that could
culminate in a strike at many Hiltons this summer.
In a way, said Bruce Raynor, president
of Unite Here, the service-sector unions hope to imitate the manufacturing
unions of old. "Our goal
is to move service-sector workers into the middle class," he said.
"The manufacturing unions did that for factory workers. It took them 20
years to do that, and we hope to do the same thing."
–
The manufacturing unions have been devastated by
globalization, with many companies insisting that America’s unionized factory
workers are overpaid and their benefit packages too rich compared with overseas
workers. Delphi, the beleaguered auto parts company, has repeatedly trumpeted this assertion
as it called for cutting its workers’ $27-an-hour wages in half.
–
In contrast, the service-sector unions are largely immune
to globalization — just try to outsource the job of a
hamburger-flipper, hotel housekeeper or bedpan-emptier to China. Helping to
make service-sector unions optimistic about attracting more members is the
perception that workers like
hotel housekeepers and janitors are underpaid and have skimpy benefits.
Moreover, many of these workers are immigrants, who are often more enthusiastic
about unions than native-born workers.
–
To help his union rebound, Ron Gettelfinger, the president of
the auto workers, announced plans this week to spend $60 million more on
recruiting nonunion workers. But this could prove an uphill battle.
"The U.A.W. and the steelworkers
once defined the labor movement, but now they’re associated with declining
membership and declining influence," said Richard W. Hurd, a labor
relations professor at Cornell University. "It’s tough for the
manufacturing unions to overcome what has happened the last 20 years, and it
will make it harder for them to reach out to areas of manufacturing that are
still vibrant."
–
Today, just 2 million manufacturing workers belong to
unions, down from 3.5 million a decade ago. That compares with more than 3
million workers in service and retail unions, and more than 7 million in public
sector unions.
–
"The service sector presents a tremendous opportunity
for the labor movement," said Paul F. Clark, a
professor of labor studies at Pennsylvania State University. "There are lots of low-paid
workers, lots of immigrant workers, a lot of workers who can benefit from a
union. But there are a lot of hurdles they need to navigate if they are going
to form unions."
Some labor experts say the effort to
help workers like Mr. Alvarez join a union may not be easy. Companies have
grown more aggressive and sophisticated in combating unions, often hiring
consultants who lecture workers and show videos, hammering the point that unions
do not help workers and only want their dues. Even many workers who favor unions are scared to speak out
in favor of them, frightened that their employers will retaliate against them,
perhaps by firing them, perhaps by cutting back their hours.
"There’s great hostility to unions
in general," said Nancy B. Johnson, a professor of management at the
University of Kentucky.
"In the old days," she said,
"you’d see co-workers dying and you’d see raw exploitation, so you wanted
a union to protect you. Now if you work at nice retailers like Target or Kmart,
you don’t see people dying on the job. Yeah, you suffer some minor injustices,
but a lot of workers today have learned to settle with what they have."
Nonetheless, many labor leaders voice
confidence that unions will grow again. They point to some polls showing that
more than half of nonunion workers say they would vote to join a union if given
the chance. Despite such
sentiments, unions represent just 7.8 percent of the nation’s private-sector
work force, down from 35 percent in the 1950’s.
"I think the labor movement has a
bright future," said Mr. Raynor of Unite Here. "The objective conditions — income
inequality, employers using their power over workers to shift the burden of
health care and retirement, workers being paid below middle-class wage levels —
make it clear that many
workers need unions. Unions are the only institution in society that can force
employers to change the way they distribute their income."
He said it was outrageous that some luxury hotels paid their
workers $7 or $8 an hour.
Mr. Alvarez, 59, says that out of his $20,000 pay, he spends
$1,600 a year on health insurance premiums and another $2,500 on prescription
drugs for his wife’s asthma and for his high blood pressure and a thyroid ailment.
"I want a union because it would
give us more pay and far better health insurance," he said, noting that unionized workers at the Hilton in
Beverly Hills pay no premiums for their health insurance.
–
The unions that broke off from the A.F.L.-C.I.O., including
Unite Here and the Service Employees International Union, largely represent
service sector workers and have ambitious plans to unionize far more of them.
Daniel J. B. Mitchell, a professor of
public policy at the University of California, Los Angeles,
said many service-sector
workers held jobs that were every bit as blue-collar as factory jobs.
"It’s not surprising that unions are targeting workers in industrial
laundries," where the temperature is soaring and the pace intense, he
said. "It’s not
classified as manufacturing, but it’s like blue-collar work."
Manufacturing unions — their membership
and their image — have been devastated by the constant stream of plant closings
in recent years. General Motors, Ford and Delphi have announced widespread
closings, which will reduce their union work force by more than 60,000, while a
Maytag factory will soon close in Newton, Iowa, the town where the company was
founded. Since 2000, the
nation has lost three million manufacturing jobs, one-sixth of the total.
Nowadays many unionized factory workers
seem on their heels, worried about imports, plant closings and demands for
concessions.
–
Bob Perdue, a locomotive operator at AK Steel’s mill
in Middletown, Ohio, is in a surly mood because his company locked him out
along with its 2,700 unionized workers on March 1, when their union rejected
the company’s demands for concessions.
–
The company has called for a
pension freeze, having the workers start contributing toward health insurance
premiums and having retirees pay far more each year for their health insurance.
AK says those proposals are needed to
help it control costs and remain competitive against low-cost rivals.
"Things are bad," Mr. Perdue
said. "We never expected to be out this long. We want to protect ourselves
and protect our retirees.
Leo W. Gerard, president of the
United Steelworkers of America, said American manufacturers were at a
huge disadvantage because companies rather than the government shouldered the
cost of health coverage. If the United States adopted a national health care
plan like Canada’s, he said, that would go far to revive American
manufacturing.
"We need an economic policy in which the nation decides to have a
manufacturing base," he said.
New York Times
Usa, auto,
sindacato
Wsws 06-06-15
US
auto union signals its capitulation on wages, benefits and jobs
By Barry Grey
–
United Auto Workers President Ron Gettelfinger on Monday
made clear that the union will accept sweeping and permanent reductions in
health benefits, pensions and other conditions that for more than fifty years
were considered inviolable provisions of UAW contracts with the US auto
companies. The union’s abandonment of these core gains
of past labor struggles comes
in the midst of its collaboration with General Motors, Ford and the auto parts
maker Delphi in the elimination of tens of thousands of additional union jobs.
–
In his opening report to the
UAW constitutional convention in Las Vegas, Gettelfinger acknowledged that the
union had agreed last year
to mid-contract concessions at GM and Ford that for the first time required retired auto workers to
pay a significant part of their health care costs, while forcing active workers
to subsidize the companies by deferring future wage increases. (The
loss of pay per worker amounts to $2,000 or more this year alone).
This was not an aberration, Gettelfinger
indicated. Signaling the
readiness of the union to agree to draconian wage cuts and other give-backs in
its current negotiations with Delphi, and extend the cuts in health benefits,
along with other concessions, in its 2007 contract talks with GM, Ford and
DaimlerChrysler, the UAW president declared: “[I]t’s clear today that
our challenges are unlike any we’ve faced in the past, largely due to
globalization… Like it or not, these challenges aren’t the kind that can be
ridden out. They demand new and farsighted solutions —and we must be an
integral part of developing those solutions.”
These remarks were universally and rightly interpreted by the media as a
sign of the union’s capitulation to the demands of the companies. Gettelfinger was hailed by the corporate-controlled press, liberal
and conservative alike, for his “courage” and “farsightedness.”
Tom Walsh, the auto industry commentator for the Detroit Free Press, bluntly summed up the meaning of Gettelfinger’s speech in a June
13 column. “Ron Gettelfinger gets it,” he wrote. “And he’s proclaiming it
loudly and clearly to an audience that hates to hear it…
“Standard, even sacrosanct staples of past union contracts will soon be
history if they aren’t already:
“* The 100 percent defined-benefit pension plan? Gone.
“* Health insurance with no copays? Forget about it.
“* An income maintenance deal like the UAW jobs bank that pays
people indefinitely if there’s no work for them? You must be kidding.
“Even wage rates may slide backward, replaced by so-called
gain-sharing provisions that reward workers when profits
and/or productivity improve.”
Walsh alluded to the motivations of the
UAW leadership in agreeing to the cost-cutting measures: “A smart, focused
union can sell itself to prospective new members—and even employers—by showing that employee turnover
and training costs can fall, as quality and productivity improve, in a well-run
union shop.” (Emphasis added).
The UAW’s capitulation is a further
demonstration of the essential nature of the organization. It is not a workers’ organization.
Rather, it is the instrument of a corrupt upper-middle-class bureaucracy,
for whom the union is a
business, the purpose of which is to sustain the privileged life styles of
thousands of national, regional and local officials.
The bureaucracy exists as a parasite on
the workers, who are compelled to join the union and pay dues, which is
automatically deducted from their paychecks. They have no real voice in the
decisions or policies of the organization, and are seen by Gettelfinger and his
cohorts as little more than bargaining chips in the bureaucracy’s maneuverings
with management. The purpose of these dealings is to preserve the franchise of
the bureaucracy as the middleman between the bosses and the workers, in which
the union functions to keep the workers in check and impose the basic demands
of the employers.
–
The UAW exemplifies the collapse of the American labor
movement as a whole, and provides an irrefutable historical verdict on the
attempt to build a labor movement on foundations of nationalism,
anti-communism, and defense of the capitalist two-party system.
What prompted Gettelfinger’s
announcement was the failure
of the previous strategy of the UAW bureaucracy, which was to base its finances
on a dwindling core of older, relatively better-paid workers, while attempting
to place the most onerous concessions to the corporations on the backs of
new-hires and lower-seniority workers, in the form of two-tier wage and
benefits agreements and similar betrayals.
–
The mounting crisis of the US
auto companies, particularly General Motors and Ford, in the face of
intensifying international competition, has put paid to this intrinsically
myopic and unviable approach. In
its report to the convention, the UAW leadership acknowledged that union
membership has plummeted to 557,000, its lowest level since 1942.
–
In his opening report,
Gettelfinger noted that as
late as 2002 UAW membership stood at 676,000, tacitly acknowledging that the
union’s membership rolls have hemorrhaged since he took office.
–
This collapse is the outcome of
a protracted process. At its
height, in 1979, UAW membership stood at 1.5 million.
A week before the convention, the UAW
agreed to a deal with Delphi and General Motors that signaled a new approach on
the part of the union bureaucracy. Delphi, the parts division of GM until it was spun off as a separate
company in 1999, filed
for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection last year and promptly announced it would
close or sell off 21 of its 29 US factories. It simultaneously demanded that
the remaining unionized work force accept a cut in wages from $27 to $12 an
hour, along with pension and health care cuts.
In the agreement announced last week, the union underwrote a plan to slash
the work force at both Delphi and GM by offering buyouts and early retirement packages to all
union workers at both companies—113,000 at GM and 23,000 at Delphi. As
the June 12 Detroit Free Press wrote concerning the impact of the deal on UAW
membership rolls, “Those figures are likely to drop by tens of thousands more
this year. Up to 30,000
workers at GM and Delphi have signed up for early retirement or buyout offers,
and thousands more are expected to accept the exit package before it expires
June 23… And about 4,800 workers at Ford have also signed up for exit
packages.”
This policy of forcing higher seniority workers out of the plants
will undoubtedly be extended to the Big Three auto makers in the 2007 contracts.
Thus the UAW has adopted a policy of working with the companies to slash the
current work force and replace it with fresh blood—younger workers who will be
forced to perform the same tasks at a fraction of the pay and minus the health
and pension benefits of the older workers.
In this way, the UAW has deliberately set out to significantly lower
labor costs, in the hope that it will be able to stanch the decline in
its dues revenues by bringing in new members, with the support of the
companies, who will be compelled, in the manner of a protection racket, to pay
dues in return for low-wage, highly exploitative jobs.
The bureaucratized and reactionary
character of the UAW was on display at the convention itself. The event was an
assembly of the bureaucracy, not the rank-and-file workers or even delegates
selected by means of a democratic process. The 1,300 delegates were overwhelmingly comprised of local
union officials and a smaller number of hangers-on. Gettelfinger’s
reelection as president was a foregone conclusion, as was the election of his
entire slate of national officers.
–
Gettelfinger’s speech, punctuated by calls for economic
protectionist measures and injunctions to “take back the House and Senate” for
the Democratic Party in the November mid-term elections,
received four standing ovations. A motion to allow UAW retirees, whose health benefits have been slashed
and who face the gutting of their pensions, to have a vote on future contract
changes was not even put to a vote on the convention floor.
The main innovation approved by the
convention, presented by the leadership as a move to increase funding for union
organizing drives, was a scheme to siphon funds from the strike fund to sustain
the salaries and perks of the officialdom.
–
While the UAW’s general fund, which finances the day-to-day
activities (and salaries) of the bureaucracy, dropped to $37 million last year,
down from $65 million four years ago, as a result of the decline in dues revenues,
the strike fund, which is less dependent on dues income, has ballooned over the
same period from $805 million to more than $925 million, a near record.
–
The growth of the strike fund, in the midst of an
unprecedented attack on the jobs and conditions of auto workers, is itself a
testament to the degeneration and transformation of the union. The UAW, along
with the AFL-CIO and its rival “Change to Win” union coalition, has abandoned
the strike weapon. There has not been a national strike against one of
the Big Three American auto makers in decades, and even local strikes have all
but ceased. The strike fund has become a giant insurance fund to protect the
interests of the bureaucracy.
–
The problem for the UAW bureaucracy is that, legally, it
cannot use the strike fund to pay for its salaries, benefits and expense
accounts. So the convention agreed to shift up to $110 million from the strike
fund, with $50 million going to the union’s general fund and another $60
million to establish a slush fund controlled by the UAW executive board,
ostensibly for organizing activities, member education and advertising
campaigns.
There was also a sop to the local
bureaucrats. Back in the 1980s, after the first wave of plant closures, mass
layoffs and contract concessions, the UAW altered its constitution to provide a
“rebate” to the locals, financed from cash diverted from the strike fund. The rebate remained in effect as
long as the strike fund surpassed $550 million. This was, of course, a
direct cash incentive for local officials to avoid calling strikes and to
support the national leadership’s policy of shelving the strike weapon.
This week’s convention agreed to raise
the rebates to the locals and lower
the strike fund threshold to $500 million—providing the local officials
with more cash and increased confidence that the infusions of money will keep
rolling in.