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Our current collective agreements vary in length, but are generally of three years duration. Three year agreements provided companies with labour stability. In exchange, they accepted our demands for income stability by way of annual wage increases, quarterly inflation adjustments, and income guarantees during periods of temporary layoffs. The longer-term agreements have been particularly significant in Canada because, unlike the United States, there is no legal right to withdraw our labour over any issues during the term of a collective agreement.
Four trends, each of which changes the conditions under which our collective agreements were signed, have led us to question whether this trade-off is still of benefit to workers.
(1) The accelerating tendency of corporations to unilaterally reorganize work with no regard for the impact on workers (eg speed-up).
(2) The accelerating tendency of corporations to unilaterally remove existing bargaining unit work (eg outsourcing, subcontracting).
(3) Unilateral changes in labour legislation and standards which undermine previous worker and union rights (eg health and safety legislation, overtime).
(4) Unilateral changes in social programs which also impact on negotiated benefits (eg erosion of Old Age Security, CPP/QPP, and UI).
In this context, our goal is to change labour legislation so we can withdraw our labour when the conditions of work are adversely affected. Until this is achieved, there is a strong case in favour of shorter-term agreements. Unless our contract language in three year agreements provides effective protection against sudden corporate and legislative changes, we will move towards one-year agreements.
These stagnating incomes for workers contrasted with the accelerating productivity of our workplaces, the recovery of profits, and the incredible compensation arrogant executives paid themselves. Adding to the frustration was the tax load carried by workers that wasn't directed to improve services - services and programs were slashed - but to offset tax reductions the rich got over the past decade and to pay interest to bankers.
Wage increases are one dimension of the broader fight to share in our society's wealth and to shape the priorities our economy serves. We're not going to accept the hypocritical calls for restraint from people only concerned with maintaining their privilege at our expense. By the spring of 1996, there were some signs that wages might finally be rising significantly again.
There is no reason to change the basic structure of our wage demands. We see no solutions to workers' problems in "new" forms of payment that in fact undermine our base rates (eg. lump sum payments), or undermine worker solidarity (eg. two-tier systems), or are conditional on management performance (eg. profit-sharing, which in turn, also undermines both base rates and solidarity). We will, therefore, continue to maintain and expand COLA clauses and fight to share in productivity improvements through annual improvement factors over and above inflation.
Although wages within our workplaces vary considerably, we have tried to limit the disparities by emphasizing the need to especially raise the wages (and benefits) of lower paid workers. In general, we have done this relatively well compared to other countries and to non-union workplaces. But as more and more newly organized units join our union, and as we move into jurisdictions with relatively lower wages, the gap between different workers becomes evident. Correcting this - through the overall support of the union's resources and the solidarity of the membership - is part of our overall fight for equality.
Worktime issues are one aspect of the broader issue of control over our labour. It therefore overlaps all kinds of working-class concerns. Given the acceleration of productivity, can we earn an adequate income while selling less labour and retaining more of our own time with families and friends or to read, learn, and be active in the community? With more women in the workforce (including single mothers) can we control more of our time to deal with daily problems (eg more flexible family leave) or is corporate flexibility the only flexibility that matters?
That corporate flexibility has meant more involuntary part-time workers, often with inferior benefits. Can we push an alternate restructuring, one that reschedules work-time so that more of those part-time jobs become normal full-time jobs? Can we figure out how to address disruptive shifts, like split-shifts, or does the entire burden of inconvenience have to rest with the worker? At work, can we get more time - during each product cycle as well as special intervals during the workday - to recuperate from management pressures that forget we're human?
The over-riding work-time concern today, however, centers around its relationship to jobs. No-one has any credible answers to where new jobs - for the currently unemployed, the underemployed, for our kids - will come from. But opening up jobs through reduced worktime is something we can directly address ourselves without just waiting for solutions to come from above.
It's not that the redistribution of worktime will, by itself, solve the jobs crisis - it won't - but any serious solution will have to include worktime as a critical component. Historically, the struggle over hours of work played a key role in building the labour movement. Leading that battle today, as a concrete fight for jobs, is part of building ties in the community and amongst unorganized and unemployed workers that will be crucial for the broader mobilization to affect change in our society.
In the discussions leading up to this convention, activists and members emphasized the following aspects of a work-time strategy to create new job openings:
1. We must reduce worktime for the full-time workforce.
The form such reductions take will vary across sectors and will depend on worker preferences. Whatever form this takes, the time off must in fact be taken and guarantees put in place to ensure that the time off is translated into actual jobs.
In general, we have done relatively well in increasing vacations and holidays over the years. We have also experimented with new kinds of shifts like the weekend worker (or a third shift in an assembly plant) as ways to limit the potential overtime, reduce hours per worker, create new job openings, and provide more options which might be especially attractive for some workers. Unlike European blue-collar workers, however, we have not made any sustained breakthroughs in the work week or work day.
The German Metalworkers have led the way on this, establishing a 35 hour week with no loss in pay but, in the absence of others moving in the same direction, they are under heavy attack. The problem isn't a lack of international coordination - it's whether we internationalize the struggle by doing everything we can in our own country, thereby encouraging and supporting the struggles elsewhere.
2. We must take the time off we already have.
We can't call for reduced worktime, yet not fully take the time we've already negotiated. For example at Ford - and in most other workplaces - negotiated vacation time is time that all workers take; at GM and Chrysler many workers work through their vacation time. As part of moving towards workers taking all the time off they have, we want to: a) increase the level of vacation pay and b) ensure that the increased time off translates into new job openings rather than overtime or speed-up.
3. We must reduce overtime
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Excerpt from first UAW-Ford Agreement in Canada (Local 200), 15 January 1942:
8.(n) If there be a general reduction in the number of employees in the Windsor plants the following procedures shall apply: First-- Probationary employees shall be the first to be laid off. Second-- As far as reasonably practicable the hours of work will be reduced to thirty-two hours per week and thereafter layoffs shall take place according to seniority. |
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These and other steps can be introduced in ways that don't undermine the full utilization of expensive facilities nor get in the way of legitimate emergency overtime. In the case of the Chrysler Minivan plant, for example, the reduction of the work-week to 7.5 hours (for 8 hours pay) was accompanied by a third shift and greater plant utilization.
4. More relief during working hours
Increased work pressures have raised the issue of time allotted for the worker during each production cycle, hourly breaks and more daily relief from speed-up. Although primarily an issue of working conditions, this can affect job openings as much as other forms of reduced working-time (eg if the work is distributed amongst more workers through tag relief).
5. Time-off, Early Retirement, and Jobs
The announced cutbacks in public pensions and uncertainty over further cutbacks, may lead to workers prolonging their working lives. This contradicts our early retirement program which, in addition to its inherent appeal, has been a vehicle for opening up jobs for younger workers (or limiting their layoffs).
Our first goal is obviously to fight against the loss of our public pension system. But if workers do decide to stay on longer, one option might be to introduce a program of phased retirement (we have it in the airlines and are trying out some very modest pilot projects in auto). The basic idea is to provide older workers with a shorter work-week and an income supplement till they retire. This has advantages for the worker, may help in dealing with split shifts, and opens up jobs (if ten workers are working half-time, five additional full-time openings could be created).
Unions have normally concentrated on negotiating the price and hours of labour and the conditions under which our members work. However - with the exception of reduced worktime - we have not generally been able to influence the number of jobs in our workplaces.
In the past, our primary response to layoffs and lost jobs was to cushion the impact on those affected through higher severance payments, a measure of income continuation, and pension security. In auto, we established the principle that any worker laid off would have the right to continuation of benefits and a certain level of income for at least three years (ie beyond the agreement itself). In rail, the negotiated security was even stronger though it has been undermined by the restructuring and gutting of our rail system.
As job loss accelerated, we extended this to trying to protect younger workers: we negotiated incentive packages for senior workers to limit the number of layoffs. These gains played a very important role in cushioning the effects of restructuring on our members and their families. But they did not solve the problem of maintaining decent jobs. The issue of income maintenance and adjustment support as the economy changes will always remain crucial, but we must now also extend our responses to directly deal with jobs.
At a time when neither corporations nor governments have any credible strategy for delivering on more good jobs, no fight is more important to workers than the fight to at least keep the few good jobs that we currently have. The acceleration of the corporate (and government) drive to outsource decent unionized jobs and replace them with lower-paying, generally non-union jobs with lower standards has therefore become a key priority in all sectors of our union. This ranges from subcontractors being brought in to do the work of the trades (see discussion in skilled trades section) to companies in the service sector paying parasitical temp agencies to replace moderately paid workers with lower-paid, benefit-less temporary workers (see service section). In all cases, taking on this issue means challenging the "sacred" management right to reorganize "their" workplace as they see fit.
"...the company had not the right to contract with outside contractors to do the work formerly done by janitors within the unit." (arbitration ruling in fabour of union, August 12, 1957, UAW Local 525 and Studebaker-Packard Ltd). |
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Work is outsourced to maximize corporate profits independent of its impact on the workers or community. Corporations turn to such strategies for three inter-related reasons:
i) Retreating to their core business:
In order to concentrate their research, finances, and managerial expertise on their main activities ("core business"), companies sell off, close, or contract out other sections of their business.
ii) Access to technology:
Outsourcing may be a vehicle for getting access to new technologies when a company is unable or unwilling to develop that technology itself.
iii) Lower labour costs and weaker labour standards:
This often, but not always, involves transferring the work to non-union workplaces and intensifies competition amongst workers desperate for jobs.
Outsourcing steals our jobs and, because many of the jobs that leave are often favoured jobs (eg off-line jobs in an assembly plant), they further erode working conditions. What is especially frustrating about this kind of job loss, as opposed to losses due to robotics, computerization or shrinking markets, is that the jobs don't just disappear into thin air but continue to exist - yet our members no longer have them.
The following points summarize our approach to corporate outsourcing, sell-offs, and replacement of work for technological reasons:
1. Outsourcing of existing components and services:
We absolutely oppose outsourcing based on trying to escape labour standards developed and fought for over decades. When companies like General Motors of Canada announce the most profit ever recorded by any company in Canada and within days tell their workers that more jobs are leaving so they can make even more money, it's time to say NO!
2. Selling departments or entire facilities:
We do not accept the right of a corporation to sell an operation and the work we have historically done. Where we cannot prevent a private corporation from carrying out such a sale, we intend to keep the work within the bargaining unit and the workers within the broader (eg master) agreement. In spite of any change in ownership the new operation remains, in reality, a "satellite" of the former company and there is no justification to change our relationship to the work and the parent company.
3. Technology-driven outsourcing:
Finally, the company must provide the union with information on its suppliers, their products, and the corporations' long-term outsourcing plans so we can monitor changes. There will, of course, be many grey areas as we move in this new direction. But we are determined, in 1996, to establish a worker voice in corporate production plans. The principle of "job ownership" on the part of workers will no longer be ignored.
The most significant "income security" program available for most workers has been Unemployment Insurance. While of prime importance to workers without collective agreements, it has also been an enormously important supplement to many of our negotiated income security programs. However, once more we find ourselves in a struggle against the further erosion of this fundamental social insurance program.
In looking back at previous conventions it is striking how relentless the battle has been. In 1984 we were concerned about the elimination of the variable entrance requirement, the unreasonable job search demands placed on claimants for jobs which did not exist, and the lack of coverage for workers unable to find a job. In 1987 we commented on the results of the Forget Commission which had proposed drastic cuts in benefits. In 1990 our primary concerns with U.I. were centred on increases in entrance requirements, reductions in the duration of benefits, penalties for those who quit without "just cause", and as well as the abandonment of any federal funding for U.I. In 1993 our attention focused on further erosions through a cut to all benefit levels as well as an absolute denial of benefits for those who left their jobs without "just cause".
Now in 1996 the struggle continues unabated, with undoubtedly the most serious attack ever launched by any government yet on the most critical income security program for Canadians. The changes contained in Bill C-12 are perhaps the most disturbing and far reaching of any of the "reforms" of U.I. to date. The proposals include:
The cumulative impact of corporate restructuring, coupled with the further erosion of U.I., will continue to put extreme pressure on the collective bargaining process. Our Supplementary Unemployment Benefit plans have generally been designed to deal with short term temporary layoffs, and not the mass layoffs and closures which have been so prevalent in recent years. We will have to develop new and imaginative ways of responding to the challenge posed by the twin forces of corporate restructuring and continued dismantling of social programs.
A major goal in each round of bargaining has been to continually improve our income security programs. By now we have established the principle in the major auto industry that once a collective agreement is signed, the employer has an obligation to provide income security over the life of that collective agreement. Although we have initiated this principle in the auto industry, we are still a long way from seeing it take hold in other sectors. Programs which have extended income protection for longer service employees after SUB is exhausted are still only prevalent in major auto, and while we have created some new programs for smaller units for which SUB-type structures are not well suited, much remains to be done.
In 1993, building on the success of the Worker Security Program at the Big 3, we significantly enhanced the program by providing for a Retirement Allowance of $35,000 as part of an incentive to induce older workers to retire and provide some measure of job security for younger workers. As well, we significantly improved the severance portion of these plans. These programs have been extremely successful, and have saved the jobs of many younger and junior employees. Components of these programs have also been negotiated in other sectors, including several auto parts facilities.
The pressures of corporate restructuring and the continued erosion of U.I. means, however, that we must confront our employers at the bargaining table to ensure that our income security programs are expanded and improved so that they meet the test of answering the needs of our members. We need to:
In the continued absence of any appropriate government adjustment programs, and in the face of the continuing destruction of our society's pivotal adjustment program, namely U.I., we must continue to ensure that employers have a contractual commitment to provide adequate adjustment programs. While we have had some success in bargaining an adjustment program in some contracts, it is still a priority item, and should be addressed through the following program:
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