Chrysler retreats on Acustar, concession demands remain

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The threat of plant closings is being use by Chrysler to wrest concessions from DETROIT-After a demonstration of 2000 United Auto Workers union members outside Chrysler world headquarters in February and threats by the UAW to selectively strike local plants, Chrysler announced it would abandon plans to sell its Acustar subsidiary.

The March issue of Solidarity, a UAW publication, claimed a victory for workers, stating, "Chrysler backed down in the face of widespread worker opposition."

Acustar was set up last year as a division of Chrysler, grouping together its parts and trim plants representing 17,300 workers in the United States and 13,000 in Canada and Mexico.

The Solidarity article goes on to say that Chrysler's plan was to sell Acustar-to Harvard Industries, an anti-union company already notorious for setting up a scab operation at a UAW-organized factory in the city of Union, N.J.

With the Acustar sale, Chrysler, which now outsources 70 percent of its parts to outside companies-much more than GM (30 percent) and Ford (50 percent)— intended to secure the ability to outsource 100 percent of its parts and trim requirements, busting the unions at these plants in the process.

Chrysler abandoned this attempt after the UAW threatened local strikes and unilaterally suspended participation in joint union-management cooperation programs. However, at the same time, the company announced it would have to close four Acustar plants employing 2100 workers— Detroit Trim, Detroit Forge, Trenton Chemical (in Michigan), and Amplex Van Wert (Ohio)-within 18 months.

UAW leaders seek compromise In a thinly veiled request for the cooperation of the UAW tops, Chrysler promised it would not close the plants until after the Sept. 14 contract with Chrysler workers was concluded. In addition, the company announced it would go ahead with plans to set up Acustar as a completely independent subsidiary competing with Chrysler's outside parts and trim suppliers.

In response to this, Marc Stepp, a UAW vice president, convened the UAW National Chrysler Council and asked it to approve early contract talks with the company. auto workers.

Labor-management schemes were immediately resumed and plans to strike local plants were shelved.

With this maneuver, the UAW tops are prying the initiative away from the locals and the ranks of the union. The contrast between the militancy of the demonstration at Chrysler world headquarters and the drive of the UAW bureaucracy to seek a compromise with the auto companies could not be clearer.

But Stepp puts aside any doubts in an article in the Detroit Free Press (March 6, 1988): "In the old days we would sit down, strike or slow down. We're not going to slow down now. We're not going to strike. We're just not going to cooperate."

Contract negotiations begin If this is Stepp's plan for negotiating with Chrysler, workers had better hold on to their wallets. In the contract negotiations, which began on April 18, the bargaining platform is centered on the pattern agreement reached with GM and Ford in 1987.

According to news reports, the UAW is also bargaining for a two-year agreement Herbert Slodounik with Chrysler so that its next contract will expire at the same time as GM and Ford workers. It is also asking that the Chrysler national contract cover 1000 former AMC workers in Kenosha, Wisc. (Chrysler bought AMC in 1987 and closed the Kenosha plant. Under UAW workers' pressure, it agreed to maintain 1000 workers there to produce engines).

Chrysler wants the UAW to agree to reduced benefits for 5600 unionized salaried workers (non-unionized salaried workers have already had their benefits cut as at GM and Ford). The company also would still like a free hand with its Acustar subsidiary.

The GM and Ford patterns Chrysler workers should remember that GM and Ford also announced plant closings prior to the 1987 contract round. The pattern agreement was negotiated so that these closings were part of the deal.

The pattern agreement was rammed through the locals in lightning-quick fashion, supposedly guaranteeing jobs for autoworkers in return for softer work rules and union-management cooperation plans to boost productivity (read "speedup").

Then GM and Ford announced that the fine print allowed them not only to close the plants agreed to in the negotiations, but to "idle indefinitely" (as opposed to "close") other plants.

In essence, the job guarantees in the GM and Ford pattern agreement are good only in the case of a period of economic upturn. If sales go down, the plants will be "idled." Asked if the UAW would try to plug this loophole in the Chrysler agreement, Stepp replied, "You can't plug it..if there is a sales catastrophe, what can you do?" (Detroit Free Press, April 3, 1988)

A house built on sand The UAW tops have consistently given in to demands for concessions. Only the pressure of the ranks has stopped them from giving away the whole house. Along with the reality of concessions, came the battle to win the workers minds to the idea that profits for the Big Three meant jobs and security for autoworkers.

The October stock market crash is a warning to workers. The capitalist economy is a house built on sand. The impoverishment of the working class is the fuel of this economy. The crash shows that even the concessions that have been extracted from workers over the last decade-beginning with Chrysler workers —will not stop the capitalist economy from running out of gas.

The working-class means of fighting the capitalists' attack, that Shepp considers outmoded-the slowdown, the strike, the sitdown—were powerful because they relied on the initiative of the workers, the only class truly capable of junking the bankrupt machinery of the capitalist economy.

Even before the crash, autoworkers were beginning to fight back against concessions. Regrouping under local leaders, in local struggles, and partial victories, they have defeated the most vicious aspects of the drive for concessions—as the Chrysler workers have done in stopping the sale and union-busting of Acustar.

With the stock market collapse and the period of unprecedented attacks on the workers that it announces, the stakes are even higher.

Whatever the outcome of the Chrysler negotiations, unionists need to go back to the "old days," beginning with the unifying weapon of the national strike, and take the initiative away from the labor "statesmen" and the management piranhas. This is the way for autoworkers to turn partial gains into permanent victories.