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The CAW Turn: Bargaining vs Building
by Freda Coodin

What are we to make of the past round of bargaining between the Canadian Auto Workers (CAW) and the Big Three (GM, Ford, and DaimlerChrysler)? While Telus, Stelco, and CBC workers were in the midst of bitter struggles, the auto talks – reputedly ‘the most difficult set of bargaining in the union’s history’ – were in the end remarkably amiable and union and company press conferences had an aura of a mutual admiration society. So what happened to the CAW’s role in challenging the rest of the labour movement to push further, its status in opposing corporate-inspired neoliberalism, its reputation for practicing a brand of social movement unionism that defined itself in terms of uniting with the community to raise larger political issues?

The issue, it is crucial to emphasize, is not the particular economic outcome of the recent round of negotiations. The CAW achieved significant pension increases at a time when others were worried about hanging on to their pensions; it got a wage increase for its members guaranteeing over a dollar/hr over the three years which will most likely be more than doubled when the union’s cost-of living clause is factored in; and though there were caps placed on a few benefits, the CAW’s rich benefits package seemed intact. Moreover, the agreement received high ratification votes.

The vote, however, also reflected the union’s conscious lowering of expectations going into bargaining and it was this, along with the implicit lessons the union seemed to convey in this round of bargaining, that is so troubling. Collective bargaining is a moment of concentrated attention on what a union is about. The strategic issue beyond any gains themselves, especially in tough times, is how to strengthen the union and increase future options. That is, how to build the understanding, confidence and capacities of the members; and, for unions seeing themselves as leaders within a larger progressive movement, how to affect the general climate of the country and inspire that broader movement. It is on this score, the educational and mobilizing dimension of the agreement, that the outcome and process seemed a step backwards. Bargaining, it seemed, had lost any sense of vision and been reduced to a technical game of tactical manoeuvring amongst a few individuals.

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Where is the Vision?

Also includes responses by Jim Stanford and Sam Gindin.

[ 05 January 2006: Message edited by: robbie_dee ]

Still, I think the broader long term issues facing the CAW are worth their own thread, and I also thought that the Coodin and Gindin pieces above were worth some more attention. In the hope of furthering discussion, I also submit the following piece from this weekend's National Post:

Duncan Maven, "Is Buzz Tarnished Goods?" Financial Post 1/28/06

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TORONTO - It's election day and Buzz Hargrove is holding forth in a cramped meeting room in Toronto's Fairmont Royal York Hotel. Ford Motor Co. has just announced restructuring plans that will slash up to 30,000 jobs in North America. About 2,000 of those will be in Canada, Mr. Hargrove's power base, bringing to 8,000 the number of automotive jobs lost in this country in the past 18 months.

The combative president of the Canadian Auto Workers union is declaring his "anger and frustration" at "such a painful downsizing blow" by the No. 2 North American automaker. At the same time, Mr. Hargrove acknowledges that Ford's plan could feasibly save the company as it battles against shrinking North American profits. "I want to be fair," Mr. Hargrove tells reporters. "Ford will survive. General Motors will survive. Chrysler will survive. Toyota and Honda will survive. The question is, will we have the jobs?"

A better question may be whether Mr. Hargrove can survive.

With the industry shedding union jobs on both sides of the border while non-union automakers expand, there are many who say Mr. Hargrove's influence is waning. Moreover, Mr. Hargrove's stature as the highest-profile union leader in Canada has been tarnished by his gambit during the federal election in which he urged CAW members to vote Liberal in an effort to stop the Tories at all costs. The move simultaneously allied Mr. Hargrove with the only national party to lose seats and alienated labour movement leaders and allies in the NDP. Meanwhile, personal attacks on prime minister-designate Stephen Harper will hardly help smooth relations with the new political regime in Ottawa.

"His power base in the automotive industry has deteriorated badly," says Dennis DesRosiers, an industry analyst, noting that General Motors and Ford have announced cuts of about 20,000 union jobs in the past eight years, while the non-union side of the sector, fuelled by Japanese assembly and parts plants, has created 50,000 jobs in the same period.

Mr. DesRosiers adds Mr. Hargrove's support for Paul Martin in the election "was a disaster that has backfired in a major, major way. He's completely marginalized politically."

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[ 01 February 2006: Message edited by: robbie_dee ]

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From article: Big Three (GM, Ford, and DaimlerChrysler)

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No mention of the blurring of domestic vs. foreign production.

I still chuckle over the few unions that do not allow foreign cars to park in their office parking lots. You can't park a Subaru even though they are all made in North America. It is a small example of how the auto workers unions are failing.

[ 01 February 2006: Message edited by: scooter ]

John Intini, "The Buzz fracture: Canada's best-known union boss may face his first ever challenge this summer, even as critics argue that he is irrelevant," Macleans 2/08/06

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Rumours of a plot to overthrow Buzz Hargrove reached his spacious corner office on the fifth floor of CAW headquarters last week. "There are some people within the union and some outside of it who are apparently talking about trying to put a candidate up," says Hargrove, 61. "I just started hearing this in the last few days so I don't know how accurate it is -- but there may be an effort to try and knock me off."

But backing down isn't in Hargrove's DNA. And he has good reason to be cocky. He's been the top gun at Canada's largest labour union for more than 13 years. And despite some rumblings among the rank and file, the often controversial negotiator has plenty of support within the all-important voting council. Even when he boldly gave his endorsement (in the form of a hug and CAW jacket) to Paul Martin during the election campaign, the union didn't turn on him. At the council meeting on Dec. 3 -- a day after the infamous Martin stunt and Hargrove's call for members to vote for the Liberals in ridings where the NDP had little chance -- more than 50 of the 77 delegates who stepped up to the open mike tore into their boss. But when it came time to vote, more than 90 per cent lined up onside in favour of Hargrove's strategic voting motion. "There may be some blood-letting internally," says CUPE Ontario President Sid Ryan, an NDP candidate in Oshawa who pins some of the blame for his own election loss on Hargrove's strategy. "But in the end, CAW members are loyal. They'll close ranks."

Still, whether it's a serious fight for Hargrove's job or not, the fact that he might face competition at the CAW leadership convention in August is unprecedented. Hargrove has been acclaimed every three years since taking over the job from his mentor, Bob White, in 1992. But some argue that Hargrove's influence in the auto industry is deteriorating. "Buzz is of little to no relevance anymore," says Dennis DesRosiers, an industry analyst who estimates that the CAW has lost more than 20,000 automotive jobs in the past eight years (a number Hargrove vehemently challenges). "The people left in the union need him, and need him badly. But he's in serious trouble with the non-union group in North America -- a young workforce who see no reason to pay union dues. His biggest failure has been not providing a purpose."

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"Buzz is of little to no relevance anymore,"

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Desrosiers should stick to analyzing the auto sector and stay away from musing about unions and union leaders.

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Desrosiers and other so-called "auto industry analysts" are all corporate apologists. They're so-called "analysis" always consists of "its all the union's fault".

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And he has good reason to be cocky. He's been the top gun at Canada's largest labour union for more than 13 years.

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Maclean's can never get even basic facts right. The CAW is not "Canada's largest labour union"...CUPE is. The CAW is the largest "private sector union".

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more than 50 of the 77 delegates who stepped up to the open mike tore into their boss.

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Buzz Hargrove is not "their boss", he's the elected president...and Buzz is supposed to follow the wishes of the membership...not the other way around.

What particularly irritates me is not that the CAW took this or that position on how to deal with the federal election, my problem is with Buzz' gigantic "fuck you" to the rest of the labour movement in inviting Paul Martin to the CAW Council.

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The over-riding issue is whether there has been a turn within the CAW toward the centre or centre right. Such a political shift would not be a unique occurrence amongst formerly progressive individuals and institutions (including, it should be added, among social democratic parties themselves). In such instances, the common defense has been to redefine the nature of being “left” today, and insist that only tactics, and not principles and goals, have changed.

However, observing this through recent events makes it hard to accept that expectations and possibilities at the top have not been lowered. It is certainly true that many of the union's official policies remain very progressive, but this is now overshadowed by the impact on all perspectives in the union of the centrality of corporate subsidies for auto, as well as the growing emphasis on “élite politics” as opposed to confidence in the independent ideological and organizational potentials of the membership. No-one would, of course, argue against meeting company and state officials; the issue is whether such lobbying has come to replace pressures from below rather than complementing such mobilization.

This debate will be clarified in the months to come, but more than confirming who is right is at stake. The most important question — and one that will have a crucial impact on the direction of the Canadian labour movement as a whole — is what role the CAW's own rank-and-file and rich cadre of activists, developed and nurtured through struggles and the union's still impressive educational programs, will play. Will they simply wait to see the outcome, or become a decisive factor in its determination?

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