Chrysler workers narrowly accept early contract offer

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In February, Detroit-area UAW members protested at Chrysler World HeadquarSocialist Workers Party candidates Mac Warren and Kathleen Mickells 4 SOCIALIST ACTION JUNE 1988 DETROIT-Last month, Chrysler workers narrowly adopted the tentative agreement worked out by United Auto Workers (UAW) union bargainers, who agreed to an early contract settlement with the company.

The Chrysler contract was set to expire in September 1988. Reportedly, the company requested the early negotiations after more than 3000 autoworkers demonstrated in front of Chrysler world headquarters against the proposed selling of Acustar, Chrysler's 29-plant parts-making operation.

While the selling of Acustar was stopped, the UAW did agree to open up early negotiations.

Interestingly enough, an initial Detroit Free Press tally of 18 key plants showed the contract to have been defeated by a 51.1-percent margin. UAW officials said this rejection was balanced out by approvals at small plants and three larger plants.

"The membership and the leadership of this local have one voice on this: We are not in the market for concessions," Ed Dean, a committeeman at Local 7 (representing workers at the Jefferson Avenue assembly plant) told the Detroit Free Press.

The committeeman knew the feeling of his brothers and sisters well; with only one exception, every plant in the Detroit area rejected the agreement.

Identical to Ford and GM pacts The narrow margin of approval for the Chrysler agreement (54 percent) contrasts sharply with the large margin of approval by Ford and GM workers on an essentially identical contract in 1987.

In that vote, GM workers ratified the proposal by an 80.7-percent margin and Ford workers by a 72-percent margin. That contract settlement, however, was made before the October stock-market crash.

Moreover, Chrysler workers had the benefit of watching GM and Ford interpret the supposed job "guarantee" provisions of the 1987 contract. (GM and Ford claim that (continued from page 1) to transfer his popular support to Democrat Walter Mondale met with little success, as Mondale didn't believe it was necessary to even tip his hat to Jackson's constituency. Instead, Mondale eschewed "special interest" groups—that is, working people and the oppressed minorities. He threatened to quarantine besieged Nicaragua.

Four years later, Jackson is hopeful that his proven loyalty to his party, combined with the deeper capitalist-generated economic and social crises in the country, will convince the party's hierarchy to adopt a platform more in keeping with his own.

There is every reason to believe that such concessions will be forthcoming—witness Michael Dukakis' sudden identification with Jackson's social concerns. From the ruling-class point of view, the times require more left-sounding politicians.

"We're discussing a fair return"

Jackson has gone to great lengths to prove his loyalty to the Democratic Party, an institution he recently likened to a capitalist bank.

According to the May 17, 1988, New York Times, Jackson informed some 200 top-ranking New Jersey Democrats at a Newark breakfast meeting that, "I have registered more Democrats than any other Democrat alive."

On the same day, Jackson chided the party hierarchy with assertions that his efforts to mobilize the Black vote in 1984 helped to elect several Democratic senators especially in the South.

Jackson explained what he wanted in ELUCA 21E2 ters against proposed Acustar parts division sell-off.

"indefinitely idling" a plant is not the same as closing it, and therefore does not fall under the provisions of the contract.)

The new agreement expires in September 1990—the same expiration date for both the GM and Ford contracts. This puts the Chrysler workers back in sync with other autoworkers for the first time in nine years. This is a positive step because workers at the Big Three auto companies will be able to confront their bosses together in 1990.

Laced with poison

As for the rest of the agreement, most of the pluses touted by the UAW tops are laced with poison. Workers will receive a signing bonus of from $1000 to $1500, which is basically nothing less than an attempted bribe to get the workers to vote for the contract.

This, along with an additional 3-percent annual lump-sum payment, will not be figured into the base pay. Therefore, at the return. "We're not discussing generosity," he said, " we're discussing reciprocity. We're discussing a fair return on our investment."

Jackson continued, "We've got an investment in our party. We're stockholders. You can't get mad and leave the bank. You must change bank officers but not your bank. It's our bank."

In recent days, Jackson has specified what he considers a "fair return." First, he is requesting that Dukakis choose a "progressive" Democrat as his vice-presidential running mate. This is designed to look good in the headlines. Nevertheless, the vice-presidential candidate will most likely come from the party's "center" or right wing, in order to "balance" the ticket.

Jackson also states that he expects to play a powerful role in the writing of the Democratic Party platform. However, only the most naive in politics-and this does not include Jackson-believe that the adopted platform of the capitalist parties is more than a scrap of paper, forgotten by all the moment the conventions adjourn.

Every Democratic Party platform for the past 40 years and longer has pledged peace while the party waged war across the globe. Every platform has professed fidelity in words to the labor and civil-rights movements—only to advance the interests of the rich in deeds.

Jackson and his campaign managers have something else in mind. They intend to broker the votes of the oppressed for a handful of behind-the-scenes deals which place their favored political friends in positions of power to advance not the majority concerns which Jackson demagoend of the contract, workers will start out negotiating from the same base pay they have now.

Four Acustar plants will be closed. In addition, almost 6000 of the present 7000 workers in Kenosha, Wisc., will lose their jobs to add to the 8100 Chrysler workers currently on lay-off.

In addition, according to company spokespeople, Chrysler workers will have 15 cents in cost-of-living payments held back in order to bring their COLA into line with current Ford and GM workers, who make less.

The union also agreed to implement Modern Operating Agreements, so-called MOA's, which simply mean labormanagement collaboration to change work rules and speed up production.

Why early negotiations?

William Mitchell, a pipefitter with 23 years at Chrysler, stated in the Detroit gically expresses, but the narrow interests of the capitalist class.

•Need for a labor party Working people have nothing to gain by supporting the Jackson campaign today or Jackson's man, Dukakis, tomorrow. Their fundamental problems will best be addressed by the formation of a new political party based on a revitalized tradeunion movement, a labor party accountable to the rank and file.

The need for a labor party to complement workers' economic struggles in the political arena is understood today by an important but very small minority of the working class. News (May 5, 1988): "I don't know why we had to reach an agreement ahead of time. Why couldn't we have waited until September?"

Mitchell is not the only worker who asked this question during negotiations. UAW officials like Marc Stepp, who heads the union's Chrysler department, attributed the early negotiations to the fact that Chrysler workers just couldn't wait to get in on the good deal that GM and Ford workers got.

But the near rejection of the agreement belies this explanation. In fact, this is the first contract negotiated by Chrysler workers without the expressed threat of a A more plausible reason for opening negotiations early can be seen in the mutual desire of the company and the union heads to avoid a confrontation in September. They know that the threat of a strike could be especially embarrassing if it were to occur only two months before the The fact is that the leaders of the UAW play a key role in the Democratic Party. In addition, Chrysler is the only auto company with a member of the UAW on its board of directors. This directly puts the UAW tops in the service of Chrysler.

Chrysler wanted to avoid a confrontation with autoworkers not only for its own aims, but because of what an offensive by Chrysler workers, who were the first major unionized workers to give concessions in 1979, would mean to the American working class. Sections of the working class have begun to fight back against concessions in recent years.

It's time for a change While the UAW misleaders may have done their part and prevented a showdown with autoworkers, the struggle is hardly finished. The Chrysler workers did make partial gains in some instances. Their vote tells all autoworkers that "the times they are a changin'."

And looking further ahead, autoworkers should draw some conclusions about the Democratic Party that the UAW tops will be asking them to vote for in November as a lesser evil to the Republicans.

Perhaps it's time for a change here too, time for candidates that put labor's interests above the bosses, and time for a movement in the unions to build a labor party and break with the Democratic Party.

Such a party is not on the immediate political horizon. But as the attacks on workers deepen, a new generation of militants will develop who will challenge the status quo at the plant gates and in the political arena.

In the meantime, an important statement in support of independent working-class political action can be registered by a vote for the Socialist Workers Party's candidates for president and vice president, James Warren and Kathleen Mickells.

Despite its abandonment of key aspects of its historic revolutionary program, the SWP retains its commitment to building a working-class alternative to the two capitalist parties in this country.

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By NATALIE TEATINI and

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