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Industry experts from Wall Street to
Washington are busy writing the obituary of the U.S. auto industry--but
someone needs to tell the Motor City. In sharp contrast to the
current wave of buyouts at Ford, General Motors, and Delphi,
new auto parts plants continue to spring up across Southeast
Michigan.
Conditions in these plants-mostly
non-union-bear little resemblance to those at the Big Three automakers.
HOPE FOR
DETROIT?
Hope Global is an important
(or "tier one") supplier of small parts to Lear and
the Big Three. In the small shop located just outside of Detroit,
workers-including many Mexican immigrants-do the difficult job
of building auto interiors by hand.
Earning around $10 an hour
with few benefits, employees complain of harsh work conditions.
Immigrants in the plant report that they are expected to work
harder-and produce more-than their co-workers.
When Hope Global workers attempted
to organize with the UAW, union supporters and outspoken leaders
were fired and intimidated. Workers took their concerns to Centro
Obrero, a Detroit-based worker center that focuses on immigrant
worker issues.
Centro Obrero organizer Elena
Herrada says that the conditions she saw at Hope Global weren't
out of the norm in the multiple non-union shops populating Southeast
Michigan. "Hope Global is a symbol of the symptoms in the
industry. This is the last outpost for U.S. auto parts jobs:
either we organize them or we shut them down."
THE RISE
OF THE PARTS INDUSTRY
Hard times at the Big Three
and the booming non-union auto parts sector are two sides of
the same problem, as profit-hungry auto makers have found outsourcing
an effective way to erode union-won wages and benefits in the
auto industry.
The numbers paint a stark picture.
In the early 1980s close to two-thirds of all auto workers were
union. By the early 1990s that number had fallen to half.
Unfortunately for the UAW,
as auto sales and auto employment picked up during the 1990s,
union membership declined just as rapidly, thanks in large part
to the expansion of non-union auto parts production.
Three-quarters of the new jobs
created in the 1990s were in the parts industry, and the Big
Three only heightened the importance of this sector with the
high profile spin-offs of American Axle, Delphi, and Visteon.
By 2000 only 37 percent of auto workers were union, and the current
crisis at the Big Three has only made things worse. Today, just
under 30 percent of the country's auto workers are union.
The rise of non-union plants
was the elephant in the room when UAW leaders agreed to a two-tier
wage scale at Delphi and Visteon in 2003 contract negotiations.
Delphi CEO Steve Miller framed the issue bluntly when the company
declared bankruptcy last October:
"Delphi was saddled with
OEM [original equipment manufacturer] wages and benefits, yet
expected to compete with other suppliers, often organized by
the same unions, paying less than half the OEM levels for their
workforces."
Miller's proposed solution
was to cut Delphi wages by 60 percent, down to $10 or $12 an
hour.
NEW GROUND
Lotus, another small non-union
shop outside of Detroit that produces TV screens for the automobile
industry, has been the site of even more intense conflict. This
summer the largely immigrant workforce walked off the job, claiming
that Lotus only paid them for 40 hours a week when they typically
worked 60 to 80.
Centro Obrero is helping 30
workers who were fired for the walkout file a lawsuit against
Lotus for back wages. Herrada says that large marches of immigrant
workers this spring helped workers take a stand:
"It's a sweatshop. Before
the big march people would have never protested, but now they
won't accept these conditions."
Skyway Precision, another non-union
parts manufacturer outside of Detroit, employs approximately
100 workers, many whom are immigrants. When workers attempted
to organize with the UAW, the company refused to recognize the
union.
In response, the workers walked
off the job March 1. According to officials from UAW Region 1A,
the company locked out the workers and re-populated the plant
with scabs.
Unions like the UAW and worker
center supporters struggle with organizing in the parts sector
because it's been easy for employers to isolate and intimidate
workers in small shops, many of whom worry about their legal
status.
Unions often shy away from
waging battles in these small shops. The fights are long and
the potential membership gains, at least in the short-term, are
small. Labor activists outside of the union structure, like those
at Centro Obrero, have stepped up to fill the void.
Herrada says that the tactics
used against immigrant workers "are changing everyday. This
is cutting-edge organizing."
Centro Obrero and the immigrant
workers in the factories know that the only way to win in a constantly
changing industry is to "continuously have high-profile
protests and not let up. The companies don't know what they're
doing either-its new ground for everyone."
The U.S. auto industry may
not be dead, but if the situations at Hope, Lotus, and Skyway
are any indication, the standard-setting wages and benefits pioneered
by the UAW are in danger of extinction.
Tiffany Ten Eyck covers the auto industry for Labor
Notes in Detroit.
Mark Brenner works as Labor Notes director in New
York City.
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