Another milestone on the giveback trail

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friends, and supporters marched in New York City's Labor ine large turnout belled ine Central Labor Council's cancellation of last year's parade because of a supposed "lack of interest." The parade was re-established as an annual event in 1981 in response to the government's • SOCIALIST ACTION OCTOBER 1987 Ford-financed supplementary unemployment benefits—along with state unemployment insurance—will keep incomes of laid-off workers as much as 90 percent of normal wages during the life of the three-year contract. But even this commitment has an escape clause for Ford.

The costs to the company, according to a summary of the contract issued by the union, is capped at $500 million. It is presumed that if the costs due to production cutbacks exceed this amount, Ford would be free to lay off, without benefits, even protected workers.

The only positive side to the "jobsecurity" provision is that it prohibits layoffs resulting from improved efficiency or a decision to buy more cars or components from outside sources. But as we shall see, this too is laced with negative consequences.

Wage and work-rule concessions The "job-security plan," it is clear, has been gained at the expense of further union givebacks in the area of wages and working conditions. The contract provides for a 3percent wage increase for the first year and an equivalent increase in the form of " lump sum" payments for each of the next two years.

This means that such payments are not counted toward base pay-upon which overtime, benefit payments, and future wage increases are calculated. This is a continuation, in this period of booming profits, of a trend justified by union bureaucrats when employers were moaning over reduced profits because of sharpened competition in the auto and other industries.

Similarly, the trend begun in harder times toward major work-rule concessions is deepened by the new agreement. It opens the door wider to reducing the number of job classifications and allows working in groups on an assembly line rather than singly, thereby reducing the number of skilled tradespersons required on the job.

It also permits skilled employees to work Despite ominous members, families, Day Parade.

TL firing of the Air Traffic Controllers (PATCO). as part of teams. This also contributes to the tendency toward having lower-paid workers do the jobs of the higher paid— ultimately eliminating the premium paid for skilled work.

These job classification and allied changes are "not compulsory," but the contract provides for "joint unionmanagement committees" at the local and national levels to "explore" such matters and make recommendations six months after the contract is signed. Clearly, the union negotiators have committed themselves to encourage adoption of this speed-up plan.

This will undoubtedly exert great pressure on U.A.W. members to accept these changes, which will increase the workpace and permit harassment of militants who resist.

Local unions, moreover, will be whipsawed into compliance with more intensive work rules by companies playing one local against another while negotiating local agreements. Acceptance of more intensive work rules by weaker locals, with the least conscious memberships, will have the effect of forcing the stronger locals into line.

The "one-at-a-time" tactic The Ford agreement is even more of a setback for auto workers as a whole. The U.A.W. bureaucrats continue to follow their traditional "one-at-a-time" bargaining tactic. The Ford agreement, intended to be a pattern for one with General Motors, tends HORMEL ANI skies and a brief downpour, over 150,000 union to set a ceiling, but not a floor for contract with the latter corporation.

General Motors workers will be at a distinct bargaining disadvantage, especially since this company has not yet carried out its South African divestment plan. The decision has already been made by GM to cut production costs by contracting out portions of its product.

GM has also declared its intention to replace entire product lines, like Cadillac, with comparable autos more cheaply made by other companies.

For this reason, it will be difficult for the U.A.W. to win similar "job security" concessions from GM. But the union's concessions to Ford will be equally difficult to take off the table in the course of "pattern bargaining" with GM.

The latter will demand the right to reduce the percentage of components it produces, now approximately 70 percent, toward Ford's 50 percent level. Thus a "job security" plan applied to GM could mean mass layotts.

A strategy of capitulation The U.A.W.'s retreat will inevitably continue—in line with labor's general retreat-not because of an adverse relation of forces but because of the capitulationist strategy of the entire top leadership of American unions. The tactic of negotiating one at a time is justified by the labor bureaucrats as a "clever" playing of one giant corporation's greed against the others'.

Unlike the union "leaders," the corporate leaders put their class interests above their competing interests in the market place. This is completely in accord with the greed principle. They lose more, in the long run, by permitting their competing corporate interests to override their class interests.

They express their class solidarity in many ways ranging from not infringing upon the markets of struck companies to providing virtually unlimited financial aid to struck competitors.

And in the last analysis, they gang up behind the repressive agencies of the government and state-which they control lock, stock, and barrel—to use the courts and the cops to make strikes ineffectual, Even if there was something to be gained from the one-at-a-time tactic, any such advantages are dwarfed in comparison with the force exerted upon the bosses of an industry-wide strike.

Classes are opposed by nature But the one-at-a-time tactic-which, incidentally, has been elevated to a principle by the labor bureaucracy—s only a derivative mistake. It flows from their strategy of "partnership" between classes that are by nature irreconcilably opposed.

On the most elementary level, wages and profits are inversely related: a rise in workers' income depresses profit and a decline in wages raises it. And this conflict is expressed on every plane of economic, social, and political activity.

The labor bureaucracy's class-collaborationist strategy means that workers' income is subordinated to a level of profit that will permit "their" bosses to stay in business. The bureaucracy's infamous "Buy American" slogan is the code-word for keeping American capitalism profitable by any means necessary.

This is what explains why, for example, the labor bureaucracy refuses to advance the historic response of the workers' movement to unemployment-the shorter workweek with no reduction in pay. Instead they bureaucratically limit the demands of the workers' organizations to "job security" proposals that provide no security.

A new strategy needed So long as the current partnership between the labor bureaucracy and the employing class is allowed to prevail, workers are doomed to suffer more and deeper cuts in living standards. A new strategic outlook is urgently needed. An outlook that recognizes the diametrically opposed interests of labor and capital and which puts the interests of working people and their natural allies first.

That means, to illustrate, an ever-shorter workweek marching in step with ever-increasing levels of productivity. Workers should benefit from the increased productivity of the machines they create not be sacrificed on the altar of profits.

If, subsequently, capitalists try to close down plants because profits are too low or non-existent, such bankrupt enterprises must be nationalized and put under workers' control.

Of course, to realize such a perspective requires the mobilization of the entire work force and its natural allies for an economic, social, and political struggle independent of and in opposition to the class enemy. The needs of the class as a whole, along with those of every social layer victimized by the system, must be emblazoned on labor's banner. This is the only road to victory.

Such a class-struggle consciousness will inevitably sweep through the workers movement. Every setback experienced prepares the ground for a coming leap in consciousness.

But this is not to say that we can sit around and wait for coming of that great day.

We need to educate, organize, and prepare class-conscious workers for the coming struggle, the outcome of which will determine the future of the human race.

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