[R-G] Gindin: Beyond Wage Cuts, Beyond the Bailout

[Anthony Fenton]

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A Socialist Project e-bulletin .... No. 158 .... November 26, 2008
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Beyond Wage Cuts, Beyond the Bailout
Sam Gindin

The global crisis quickly engulfing us threatens to become the worst  
since the Great Depression, and this means that past ways of doing  
things need to be fundamentally rethought. But Gord Henderson's focus  
on wage cuts for autoworkers (Windsor Star, November 20, 2008) is the  
absolutely wrong way to go – that much we already learned from the  
1930s, when competitive cuts in workers' wages only aggravated the  
depression. When Henderson responds to CAW President Ken Lewenza's  
defence of workers' wages with a glib "Tell that to all those low-wage  
Mexican autoworkers," what exactly does this mean?

In the face of the general concern that consumers are retrenching (and  
business consequently holding back investments), how much sense does  
it make to advocate autoworkers setting a pattern for lower wages and  
less purchasing power? And what kind of notion of progress and vision  
for the future does the target of Mexican wage standards suggest?

The fact is that Canadian hourly compensation in the auto industry is  
now below the U.S., at about par with Japan and less than three  
quarters of hourly compensation in Germany (U.S. Bureau of Labour data  
for 2006, adjusted for current exchange rates). Because the industry  
is integrated into the American industry, Canada is affected by the  
higher costs in the U.S., particularly which of health care. But here,  
too, the answer is hardly to blame the workers, but rather to point to  
the social and economicstupidity of the U.S. not having the kind of  
single-payer public health care system that is common in the rest of  
the developed world.

Union Shortfalls
Where the union can be blamed is not in what it has achieved for  
working people, but in its refusal to play a leading role in  
challenging the direction of the industry, especially in terms of its  
laggard move to fuel-efficient, non-polluting vehicles. Saving future  
jobs – and also addressing the thousands of lost jobs of former  
members whom the bailout won't bring back – necessitates correcting  
that earlier shortcoming in two specific ways.

First, as absolutely essential as the bailout is, it won't end the  
crisis in the auto industry even if the Detroit-based companies adjust  
their models. That's because the industry has so much excess capacity  
and slow growth will characterize at least the next few years, if not  
beyond. This means that even as the union lobbies to achieve the  
bailout, it needs to raise its perspective beyond auto. It needs to  
start thinking about the application of existing facilities and skills  
to a larger set of products. Here, the environment re-enters, but  
rather than being a threat to jobs it holds out the potential of  
adding jobs. If the environment is going to be seriously addressed in  
this century, it will mean changing not just the kind of cars we drive  
and how they are powered, but everything about how we work, consume,  
travel, live. To that end, auto's assembly, component and tool and die  
shops, along with its body of skilled and committed workers, are an  
asset that can be converted into producing wind turbines, solar  
panels, parts for mass transit vehicles, more energy-sensitive  
industrial machinery and more energy efficient home appliances.

Second, we need to move from thinking about saving the auto industry  
to saving communities. The auto industry is concentrated into  
particular communities that, like Windsor, were in crisis well before  
GM asked for a bailout. What's at issue is not just hanging on to jobs  
in auto (which, as productivity grows, will continue to decrease over  
time even with a bailout) but also finding productive jobs for all  
those already unemployed or looking for their first job. To address  
this crisis in the community means not only introducing new car models  
and addressing the kind of conversions of Windsor's vast productive  
potential raised above, but also fixing and expanding Windsor's  
deteriorated infrastructure (like other municipalities, Windsor has a  
long list of such projects sitting on the shelf) and addressing the  
social needs that make cities into 'communities' (from resources for  
public facilities and sports, to converting vacant lots into green  
parks and gardens; from child-care to in-home assistance for the  
disabled and the aged).

'Leave it to the Market' or Democratic Planning?
It should be obvious that none of this can happen if we 'leave it to  
the market,' or even with some ad-hoc patchwork government  
intervention. It requires serious national and city-level planning and  
planning that develops the democratic structures to encourage and  
facilitate popular participation. This takes us far beyond the auto  
industry and many might say 'sorry, I'm too busy surviving to think  
about that.' But that response has a lot to do with why autoworkers  
are in their current awful predicament. If there's anything the recent  
past teaches us is that if we don't start acing on the future now – if  
we think it will fix itself – then 'later' becomes too late, or at  
least confronts us with even more difficult problems.

Survival tomorrow and in the future means daring to think and act  
'big' today. What kind of country do we want? What kind of community  
do we want to live in? How do we get there? •

Sam Gindin was the former assistant to the past two presidents of the  
Canadian Auto Workers and is currently the Packer Chair in Social  
Justice at York University.

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