Rust bowl of the 1980s

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HOMESTEAD STEEL MORKS Mitter: notar « f(t."

Jack Marsh worked for six years as a millwright at U.S. Steel's South Works in Chicago. He was a member of Local 65, District 31, United Steelworkers.

1983 was a good year for bankers and business people but not for workers and minority groups.

Despite the high rate of small business bankruptcies and the constant worries of banking institutions over shaky foreign investments, the U.S. ruling class celebrated "a classical recovery" from the depths of a cyclical economic decline that began in July 1981. Corporate profits rose a whopping 40 percent in 1983 to an annual rate of $227.2 billion, and that's enough to make them all happy.

Commerce Secretary Malcolm Baldridge said the corporate profits picture "reflects the vigorous pace of economic growth, combined with stepped-up gains in productivity and moderate increases in wage rates." These are the major changes that make the employers and their political representatives most gleeful-rising productivity and low wages.

But they admit some dark spots, cautioning that the future remains uncertain. The big troubles ahead, they say, are growing inflation, rising interest rates, a federal budget deficit for the current fiscal year in excess of $200 billion, an increasingly unfavorable balance in foreign trade, and a steady flow at year's end of new unemployment claims.

Working people and minorities (including women, who are becoming aware of the economic exploitation and discrimination they are victims of) will not look back on 1983 with the same exuberance as their employers. Workers have not prospered. For them the headlines about economic recovery seem unreal.

It costs more to live than it did a year ago. Millions have used up their unemployment insurance and are subsisting on meager relief checks and food stamps. Many who in better times acquired homes have been dispossessed. The actual number of unemployed remains above 10 million. Of the 100-million workforce there is hardly anyone who does not have a friend, former shopmate, or relative presently out of workmany of whom have been without a job for several months and have no prospect of finding work. There are sections of the country—on the iron range in Minnesota, in the mine fields of Appalachia, and in the mill towns of Pennsylvaniawhere half the workforce is unemployed.

This does not mean that many who were let go when the auto plants and steel mills closed have not found other work. Some have been called back in the auto industry, fewer in steel. General Motors, for example, has recalled 75,000 laid-off workers. This giant corporation now boasts a big gain in profits and has announced that "the American auto industry remains competitive and able to provide secure, good-paying jobs." But GM doesn't say how many jobs will be preserved in relation to projected increases in production.

Old jobs gone

One of the ways the auto industry plans to remain competitive is through "joint ventures and import agreements" with Japanese and other foreign producers. GM has nearly completed its $300 million manufacturing venture with Toyoto Motor Corp. and plans to reopen its Fremont, Calif., plant under the new joint management. At the same time it announced in December that 50,000 12 Socialist Action January 1984 former employees remain on indefinite layoff. When GM's robotized plants are in full operation, the number of cars produced is expected to break all records but the number of laid-off workers may also break records.

Those who have returned to work this year after long periods of layoff discover that the new jobs are very different from those they left when the plants closed. The old jobs are gone forever, as are many of the old plants. The new jobs include combinations where the skilled trades are concerned; making adjustments where the new automated assembly lines are installed; and a new category of computer operators where the fully automated processes have been put into place.

Steel plant their jobs.

Millions of workers are being retrained under these new conditions of work, and they are beginning to gain a new understanding of their relation to production. It is a new stage in the education of the industrial workforce. A look around the industrial scene in Chicago, for example, shows that there are many idle plants such as U.S. Steel South Works, the old Falstaff Brewery, Wisconsin Steel, Pullman Standard Rail Car, Burnside Foundry, Naylor Pipe, Interlake Steel, American Bridge, and Wyman Gordon Foundry. This devastated area extends into Northwest Indiana where many more old ruins stand testimony to the great change. Journalists and commentators now refer to this area as the "Rust bowl of the '80s."

These once productive industrial facilities were alive not long ago with hundreds of thousands of "gainfully employed workers," as we used to say. These workers were mostly members of District 31 of the United Steelworkers of America. Few among them ever thought there would come a time when the mills would stand cold and empty. They thought they were fixed for life. Not well fixed, of course, but those in the skilled trades often expressed the mistaken notion that they "had it made" after completing their apprenticeship.

Such illusions are now shattered, along with the old brick shells of the buildings. With the massive unemployment-especially the layoffs in the skilled trades of heavy industry, in auto, steel, rail, mining, oil-the prospect of returning to work or looking for another job is a nightmare for the worker. It is an "employers' market" for the corporations and shoe-string operators alike.

How this affects the worker at the point of production is not much written about, but it is the subject of almost continuous discussion on the job. Formerly in the industrial unions (in the Steelworkers, for sure) each of the crafts was separate and distinct from all the others, clearly defined by what particular work came within its jurisdiction. There was no crossing of craft lines. The most common slogan among skilled workers in heavy industry for many years was, "That's not my job." For example, a millwright would refuse to take on the task of a pipefitter regardless of how small the task might be. The foreman would almost always call for another worker in the proper trade classification to help when something unexpected developed that required skills other than those of workers already on the job.

This long-established practice has now been almost completely abandoned. The reason is the drastic transformation of ,,000 steel the productive process resulting largely from the economic crisis of overproduction that developed on a world scale in the early 1970s. Competition in the world market has since forced the modernization and reorganization of U.S. industry. The shake-out effect of this is a further reduction and downgrading of skilled workers in the mass production industries.

LAYOFFS NOTHING CAN STAND.

IN THE WAY OF 980GRESS AUTOMATION What tradeoff?

Without being aware of the process that has overtaken them, the union officialdom has succumbed to its pressures and have offered no perspective that could prevent the devastation. They see no way to create or protect jobs except by trying to keep the corporations profitable and competitive, as before. All major industrial unions have made away wage concessions and are negotiating so-called tradeoffs of craft jurisdiction. Why this is called "tradeoff" remains a mystery because the union negotiators agree to combine several crafts under a new classification, accept the resulting reduction in the required number of workers, and get nothing in return— except, perhaps, the vague promise that the antiquated operation will not immediately be closed down entirely and forever.

The Rubber Workers union, for example, has negotiated national contracts that establish five trades in plants where 15 were previously employed in making tires and rubber products. Rail unions have agreed to eliminate firemen and conductors, to reduce crew size, and to extend the length of trips. The Steelworkers union has signed contracts in major steel mills that establish "super crafts," and create a new category called "operating technicians." These jobs require workers to perform both electrical and mechanical skills.

In the steel industry these jobs take the form of "circle craft" status. The skilled workers must be tested in six or eight crafts, both physically and mentally. In this way the employer can eliminate older workers with higher seniority by reason of their inability to pass both types of testing, and can force workers who manage to pass the tests to perform multiple jobs. The employers gain by circumventing seniority rights and by crossing and merging crafts. The smaller workforce becomes more efficient, more productive. The rate of productivity rises, profits increase.

The employers are demanding and getting more work and more careful attention to the quality of the product from workers reentering the job market after long periods of unemployment and layoff. Both union and nonunion shops make these demands and screen all new hires at the employment office and on the job. The applicant must produce proof of experience and recent training as a skilled worker; after being hired however the worker must perform-otherwise the gate opens and another statistic is recorded in the unemployed column.

The new worker (who may be in middle age and highly skilled in any one of the old crafts such as welding, tool grinding, or pattern making must pay close attention to how all the other jobs outside his or her particular skill are done; otherwise it is easy to get lost and be unable to complete a job assignment. But there is another side to this.

Changing attitudes

In the new work situation, workers from the ships on the Great Lakes, from the railroads, from steel mills, ore mines, and auto plants are all competing for the same jobs. In doing so, they are becoming increasingly aware that it is virtually impossible to be master of all trades. They are finding out that they are in the same boat in what they recognize is the beginning of the "big change." So these workers must acknowledge their limitations, many for the first time, and they are anxious to help each other. A new sense of cooperation develops. It is necessary to learn from each other and be mutually helpful. This changes the attitudes of all workers of widely different ages and backgrounds. By teaching each other on the job, and in this way helping themselves to overcome their feelings of inadequacy, they acquire a new sense of solidarity.

These early years of the 1980s are a time of great insecurity for most workers in this country. It is a time of change. Workers have no realistic prospect of early retirement, no hope of a job for the rest of their working lives, no way of knowing whether this new factory or (Continued on