The Illinois Labor History Society

UAW debacle at Caterpillar: The Political Lessons
18 December 1995

By Shannon Jones and Barry Grey
provided courtesy of the World Socialists Web Site
wsw.org

For the second time in four years, the United Auto Workers has ignominiously surrendered to the heavy machinery maker Caterpillar.

In April 1992 the UAW ended a six-month partial strike in the face of a threat by management to hire strikebreakers. This months's cave-in was even more humiliating. The ending of the second, 17-month-long strike and the unconditional return to work announced by the UAW on December 3 meant that returning strikers would face terms far harsher than those initially rejected by the UAW in 1991.

The UAW's action was universally interpreted by the media and big business for precisely what it was. The Detroit News ran a banner headline: "UAW Surrenders at Caterpillar." Wall Street took the calling off of the strike as further proof that the UAW and the AFL-CIO as a whole would do nothing to oppose its continuing attack on jobs, wages and working conditions. Already celebrating an extraordinary bull market, buoyed by falling wages, rising productivity and low inflation in the midst of record profits, the Dow Jones industrial average jumped another 52 points.

While many Caterpillar strikers initially reacted with stunned outrage and shock over this latest betrayal, it came as no surprise to the Workers League and others who have closely followed the policies of the UAW and AFL-CIO over past 15 years. The International Workers Bulletin warned at the beginning of the strike that if its direction remained in the hands of the UAW bureaucracy, it would end in disaster.

Nevertheless, the way in which the union leadership capitulated was remarkable for its sheer cowardice toward the company and arrogance toward the rank-and-file workers. At membership meetings held the weekend of December 2-3, UAW officials presented management's offer and told workers the union would unconditionally end the strike and cut off strike pay, no matter how the workers voted.

The strikers rejected the contract proposal by an overall margin of more than 80 percent, with some locals voting against the proposal by over 90 percent. In East Peoria and other cities strikers angrily protested the UAW's order to end the strike.

The UAW refused to explain its surrender. It merely issued a perfunctory announcement to the press, never considering itself accountable to the working class public that has been following the Caterpillar strike for months. Not even the most corrupt corporate management operates with such flagrant irresponsibility and disdain toward its stockholders, employees and the general public.

UAW officials anonymously told reporters that a major consideration was the desire to end the payouts to strikers, so as not to deplete further the union's strike fund--a massive cash hoard of over $800 million.

One aspect of the return-to-work order deserves particular mention. In talks with the company prior to calling off the strike, the UAW agreed to Caterpillar's new "rules of conduct" for returning strikers. From the little that has been revealed about these rules, it is clear that the company, with the collaboration of the union, intends to trample on the rights of the workers and impose a humiliating regime inside the plants.

The rules include a gag order on discussion of the strike and a ban on "controversial" logos and insignia. The use of "derogatory slurs or epithets" such as "scab" is prohibited. Each work-er, on being called back to work, will have to meet individually with his or her supervisor to be informed of these rules and declare obedience before returning to the shop floor. The UAW did not reveal the "rules of conduct" when it distributed the contract summary to the strikers.

Nothing could more clearly expose the democratic pretensions of the UAW than this outrage against the membership. With this act, the UAW bureaucracy has demonstrated conclusively its real relationship to the working class and its own social character, i.e., a privileged upper-middle-class layer that uses its control of the union to defend its own parasitic interests, at the expense of the workers it claims to represent.

Caterpillar has set no specific timetable for when strikers can expect to be called back and has indicated that hundreds of jobs will be eliminated. By ordering an unconditional return to work, the UAW has freed the company to impose its own terms. Caterpillar's proposed six-year contract includes the following:

• A 30 percent pay cut for new hires.
• A sharply lower wage rate at the company's parts facilities.
• New hires at these plants will start at $7 an hour.
• A restructuring of overtime pay. Workers will no longer be paid time-and-a-half after working eight hours in a given day or for working on weekends. They will receive the overtime rate only after putting in more than 40 hours for the entire week.
• No wage increase for six years and a reduction in the cost-of-living allowance.
• The elimination of minimum staffing requirements, a change that will result in the destruction of thousands of jobs.
• A work force up to 15 percent part-timers.
• The elimination of work rules and grievance rights.
• Medical care to be provided only by company-approved physicians and hospitals.
• The elimination of sick days and bereavement pay for some workers.
• The right of management to lay off workers for up to 10 weeks per year.

One-hundred and fifty workers victimized for strike-related activities will not be reinstated and returning strikers will face an eight-week probationary period.

These terms embody a devastating defeat for Caterpillar workers. But the result has a different significance for the UAW apparatus. In the end, the bureaucrats uphold their overriding interest: they continue to serve as the legally-recognized, official representative of the work force, and are thereby entitled to extract dues from the rank and file.

Thus Caterpillar workers will face conditions no better, and in some cases worse, than those which exist in many nonunion plants, but will be forced to continue paying tribute to the UAW bureaucracy.

The Caterpillar bosses have, for their part, emphasized their desire to continue working with the UAW. During the entire four-year conflict, despite the absence of a contract, the company never attempted to decertify the UAW. Caterpillar has made a point of keeping the UAW around because it knows it can count on the union leaders to discipline the workers. Immediately after the UAW ordered an end to the strike, Caterpillar announced it would hold talks with the union to ensure an orderly return to work.

The importance of the UAW and AFL-CIO for big business is widely recognized. After the UAW's capitulation, William Gould, chairman of the National Labor Relations Board, warned that the discrediting of the unions could undermine their ability to manage the discontent of workers in a way that did not threaten the profit system. "Strikes," he said, "are part of an orderly process that produces some resolution."

Many workers feel they have been used by both the company and the union and are justifiably outraged and disgusted. But in the coming weeks and months, these feelings must give way to a more conscious understanding of what has happened, and why.

1991-95: How the UAW sabotaged the workers fight

A review of the events between 1991 and 1995 makes clear that the UAW never attempted to mobilize the full strength of the Caterpillar workers, not to mention the hundreds of thousands of workers in the auto plants. For the UAW leadership these strikes were essentially maneuvers, an attempt to use the rank and file to pressure the company--not to defend the conditions of the workers, but to safeguard the income of the UAW bureaucracy by maintaining its position as bargaining agent.

The UAW leadership only reluctantly sanctioned strike action and then intervened to thwart the effective mobilization of the rank and file, thus minimizing the economic impact on Caterpillar.

In the fall of 1991, Caterpillar refused to agree to the pattern settlement that the UAW had obtained with Deere & Co. Nevertheless, the UAW delayed taking strike action and then only called out a small fraction of the more than 13,000 unionized workers. This splitting of the rank and file fostered animosity between those on the picket line and those inside the plants, undermining solidarity.

In April 1992, when Caterpillar announced plans to hire permanent replacements, the UAW staged a humiliating climbdown, abruptly calling off the strike and ordering workers back without a contract. The UAW justified this surrender by claiming that it was impossible to conduct a successful fight with the White House controlled by the Republicans. Union officials urged Caterpillar workers to support the campaign of Bill Clinton, claiming the election of a Democratic president and a Democratic Congress would reverse the corporate assault on labor and ensure passage of anti-strikebreaker legislation.

Needless to say, the election of Clinton did not deter Caterpillar. Clinton made no serious attempt to pass the anti-strikebreaker bill and the legislation died in Congress.

Management continued to insist on its concessionary demands and sought to forestall the threat of another strike by shifting production to nonunion and overseas plants, while it stockpiled inventory. The UAW meanwhile diverted workers with protest stunts--the wearing of T-shirts with antimanagement logos, the picketing of Caterpillar dealerships--that resulted in the victimization of many militants. On several occasions workers staged wildcat strikes over management firings, only to be ordered back to work by the UAW.

The 1994 strike

The UAW finally sanctioned a companywide strike in June 1994, but by this time management was even better prepared than it had been for the previous strike. Caterpillar used salaried personnel and temporary workers to continue production. The UAW refused to allow mass picketing to shut down the plants, forcing workers to stand idly by as strikebreakers took their jobs. In an attempt to soothe strikers' concern, the union leadership lied. The UAW claimed Caterpillar could not get enough skilled replacements and was having difficulty meeting orders, even after the company had resumed full production and was posting record profits.

While doing nothing to stop the strikebreakers, the UAW further isolated the strike by ordering members at assembly plants that used engines manufactured by Caterpillar to continue handling the parts. It ordered Caterpillar workers at parts facilities in Morton, Illinois and Memphis, Tennessee to remain on the job during the strike, honoring a no-strike pledge it had made to management in 1988.

As the cost of weekly strike benefits mounted, union leaders made a calculated decision to wrap up the strike, regardless of the sentiment of the workers. A further prolongation of the walkout could have drawn down the strike fund. As stipulated by the UAW constitution, if the strike fund dropped below $550 million, the diversion of per capita tax income from the strike fund to the UAW locals and the international would stop, threatening the hefty salaries and expense accounts of the bureaucrats.

Even before his election last June as UAW president, Stephen Yokich made clear that winding up the Caterpillar strike was his top priority. One of Yokich's first acts as president was to end the UAW's campaign of token protests, such as the picketing of Caterpillar headquarters, as a gesture of good faith to management.

Who are the real scabs?

In the wake of the return to work, UAW officials have attempted to absolve themselves of blame for what has happened by diverting the anger of strikers towards the "scabs," i.e., those union members who decided to cross picket lines.

For bureaucrats who never missed a paycheck throughout the entire four years to blame the defeat on a lack of solidarity and resolve on the part of workers is nothing less than obscene.

The large majority of the 4,000 union members who returned to work were not right-wing or anti-union. Most simply recognized the futility of the policies being pursued by the UAW, which had, after all, abandoned the previous strike. They knew the bureaucracy was lying and preparing an even worse sellout. If the UAW had made a serious attempt to mobilize the working class to shut down Caterpillar, all but a handful of those who returned to work would have remained on strike.

The appropriate target for the designation "scab" is Yokich and his fellow bureaucrats in the local leadership and the international, for whom back-stabbing of the membership and collaboration with management is a way of life and a source of income.

From class collaboration to corporatism

The Caterpillar strike is the latest in a series of defeats for the labor movement beginning with the PATCO air traffic controllers in 1981, continuing through the Phelps Dodge copper miners strike in 1983-4, the struggle of the Hormel meat packers in 1985-86, Greyhound in 1990 and many others. In every case the AFL-CIO and UAW leadership isolated the workers and opposed any mobilization of the working class against strikebreaking and unionbusting.

The trade union bureaucracy deliberately sabotaged these struggles in order to weaken the working class and facilitate the imposition of mass layoffs and concessions, which have devastated the wages, working conditions and job security of tens of millions of workers. In this way, the AFL-CIO used its influence to assist American big business in its increasingly bitter struggle for markets and profits against its rivals in Europe and Asia. It sought to defend its own position by helping "its" ruling class intensify the exploitation of workers.

The UAW blazed the trail for the rest of the AFL-CIO bureaucracy with the bailout of Chrysler in 1979-80, establishing the pattern of give-backs and concessions which continues today. An essential component of this historic betrayal was the adoption and promotion of the ideology of corporatism, signalled by the entry of then-UAW President Douglas Fraser onto the Chrysler board of directors. From this point on, the UAW worked systematically to destroy the traditions of militant class struggle dating back to the sit-down strikes of the 1930s and replace it with the conception that workers have no interests independent of the needs of the capitalist owners. Even the most elementary forms of trade union militancy were declared to be outmoded. What was needed instead, the UAW preached, was a partnership between capital and labor, to be effected through the unions.

To help the auto companies cut their costs, the UAW forced through wage concessions and sanctioned the breaking of union locals at numerous parts plants that supplied the Big Three.

At the 1983 constitutional convention, the UAW officially adopted the program of corporatism, adopting a plan for labor-management-government control of the working class entitled "Blueprint for a Working America: a Proposal for an Industrial Policy." This policy statement bore a remarkable resemblance to the corporatist schemes imposed by the fascist dictator Mussolini on the Italian working class in the 1920s and 1930s.

Beginning with the 1984 contracts with General Motors, Ford and Chrysler, the UAW and the auto bosses began systematically implementing the program of corporatism by establishing a network of union-management committees and joint slush funds extending from the shop floor to the highest levels of corporate management and the UAW headquarters in Detroit. The UAW established similar programs at Caterpillar and the other heavy equipment companies.

Union officials increasingly took on the functions formerly carried out by company foremen and supervisors, enabling the auto bosses to lay off tens of thousands of low and middle-level management personnel.

The more the UAW collaborated, the greater the toll in jobs and union membership, the more closely the bureaucracy sought to integrate itself with corporate management, so as to find new sources of income to replace its declining dues base. By establishing a web of financial, legal and personal connections with management, the union leaders effected a transformation in the character of the UAW itself, converting it into little more than an arm of the bosses.

The UAW played the crucial role in driving tens of thousands of workers out of the industry and into poverty, and slashing the living standards and conditions of those who remained, but it was highly successful in protecting the selfish interests of the bureaucracy. Throughout the 1980s and early 1990s, the financial assets controlled by the UAW apparatus rose, reaching the billion dollar mark.

The political basis of the UAW's degeneration

The corporatist transformation of the UAW is rooted in the political foundations of the official labor movement in the US as it emerged following World War II. The trade union bureaucracy, with the crucial assistance of the Stalinists in the Communist Party, had devoted its efforts in the preceding decade to taming the CIO labor upsurge by bringing it under the wing of Roosevelt and the Democratic Party. The wartime collaboration of the CIO and AFL leaderships with the government strengthened the ties between the official unions and the state.

In the 1940s and '50s the bureaucracy consolidated its power, basing itself on the defense of capitalism and the promotion of American nationalism. It opposed the establishment of an independent political party of the working class, maintaining instead its alliance with the big business Democratic Party.

From that period to the present, the ideological lynchpin of the American trade union bureaucracy has been fanatical opposition to socialism. Union leaders saw their main role as serving the interests of American capitalism in its Cold War crusade against the Soviet Union.

The bureaucracy strengthened its grip on the working class by carrying out an anticommunist witch-hunt in the 1940s and '50s. The workers who were branded as "reds" and thrown out of the labor movement were precisely the socialist-minded militants who had played the leading role in the upsurge of the 1930s that created the UAW and the other mass industrial unions.

What was the basic line of the UAW and the AFL-CIO? It was the claim that workers didn't need to build their own party and carry out a political struggle against big business and the capitalist system. By accepting the profit system and collaborating with the bosses to increase production and profits, the bureaucracy maintained, workers could win a fair share of the increased wealth for themselves. During the boom period of the 1950s and 1960s these claims seemed to bear a certain relationship to reality.

But from the 1970s on this reformist myth has been increasingly exposed. The policy of the trade union bureaucracy has led the working class into a quagmire. Today workers produce ever greater wealth, but only the wealthy benefit, while the social position of the working class declines. Corporate profits soar, even as decent-paying jobs are eliminated and the wages and living standards of working people plummet.

Media commentators interpret the Caterpillar debacle as further "proof" that working class resistance is futile. To back up this contention they cite vast social and economic changes which have vitiated the effectiveness of strikes: the globalization of production, the spread of automation and computerized production, the declining percentage of union membership, the growth of part-time and temporary labor. All such conclusions, however, begin from an uncritical acceptance of the political premises of the official labor movement, when it is precisely these premises and the organizations based upon them which block the effective mobilization of the working class.

It should be added that the media takes care to cover up the specific ways in which the UAW and AFL-CIO bureaucracy sabotage strike struggles and contribute through their betrayals to the growth in the supply of cheap and superexploited labor. But the more basic falsehood is the equation of working class struggle with economic strikes. The strike is only one weapon in the arsenal of the working class, and, in and of itself, a limited one.

It can still serve as an effective tactic, but only if it is utilized as part of an entirely new political strategy. What has failed the working class is the procapitalist and nationalist political perspective of trade union reformism and the organizations which are wedded to that perspective.

It is impossible on the basis of a national orientation and the perspective of exerting economic pressure on big business and its political representatives to counter the ruling class's use of international production and modern technology to drive down the conditions of the working class. The ability of Caterpillar to maintain production and register record profits throughout the strike, by shifting production to overseas plants, hiring skilled part-time labor and utilizing automated and computerized production methods, has demonstrated this fact conclusively.

That is why the working class must adopt its own, independent political strategy and build its own political party, organizing its struggles on an international scale. Moreover, it must reject the framework of capitalist private ownership of the means of production and production for profit, and strive for the reorganization of economic life on a new basis, one geared to the needs of the masses of working people, rather than the profit of an elite.

There is no reformist or nationalist answer to the bosses' use of automation to destroy jobs, or to the global reach of transnational corporations and their policy of shifting production to exploit the cheapest possible labor. But there is a political and internationalist answer.

The response of class-conscious workers to the latest UAW betrayal at Caterpillar must be the beginning of a struggle for the reorganization of the working class as a political movement fighting for the unity of all workers and the establishment of a workers government. The working class must take political power into its own hands, so that it can gain control of the most important levers of the economy, place them under public ownership and democratic workers control, and utilize the advances in technology to improve the living standards of working people.

As for the old bureaucratic labor organizations, the verdict issued by the Workers League following the UAW's capitulation to Caterpillar in April 1992 has been more than vindicated by the events of the past month. As we said in our statement of April 17, 1992 entitled Caterpillar Workers Betrayed: "The trade unions as they have existed for the past 50 years are finished. There is no future for organizations whose perspective is to improve or maintain the conditions of workers on the basis of the profit system and which subordinate the working class politically to big business and the Democratic Party."

The humiliating defeat of the Caterpillar strike shows the necessity for the working class to find a new road of struggle. If it is impossible within the framework of capitalism to defend jobs, living standards and the right to genuine unions, as opposed to de facto company unions like the UAW, then the working class must turn to a socialist perspective and launch a political struggle against the profit system. It must break free of the UAW and AFL-CIO apparatus and build a new leadership, based on the fight for the political independence of the working class and the unity of American workers with their brothers and sisters internationally. This is the significance of the Workers League and our fight for the building of a party of the working class based on a socialist program and fighting for a workers government. The fundamental lesson to be drawn from the bureaucracy's shameless betrayal of the Caterpillar strike is the need to build the Workers League as the new leadership of the working class.

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