Comment by Andrew Watson
ADELAIDE — "Your vote will determine the future and viability of the company ... don't be selfish!" It's the assembly plant manager introducing workers to enterprise bargaining. Such views are to be expected from the manager, but when the union organiser starts saying the same thing, it's time to watch out!
Workers at Mitsubishi's plants here didn't take the advice of their union officials on May 22, when they voted to reject a proposed enterprise agreement, central to which was a 9
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55D> hour day, four-day week and a 7.5% wage rise over 18 months.
This was the third enterprise agreement to be rejected by vehicle workers. The Toyota package, which included an 8% wage rise in return for a no-strike agreement and flexible work hours (possibly including 12-hour shifts), was turned down by the ranks after it had been stitched up in secret by management and vehicle union (VBEF) officials.
Holden workers also voted down their agreement on May 13. It promised a $12.50 wage rise in return for compulsory overtime up to 43 hours weekly, a no-strike agreement and further pay increases based on 5% improvements in productivity every three months!
Only the Ford workers picked up their package, which includes two 5% wage rises over two years in exchange for concessions similar to those in the other agreements.
Questions
Amidst all this, many vehicle workers are asking who got them into this mess, where is the industry heading, and what is the role of their union? It is certain there will be further rationalisation, as the federal government's car plan envisages more efficient but fewer manufacturers.
Already 10,000 jobs have been lost from the vehicle and component industries in the past two years, and another 6000 are threatened in the component sector as a result of the Nissan closure last February, which cost 1800 jobs directly.
At the heart of the crisis is a situation faced by working people everywhere — an absence of democratic control over the economy, which means business can do what it likes, when it likes. This translates into permanent job insecurity.
All the car manufacturers are multinational corporations seeking the highest rates of profit wherever they can. This was the bottom line at Nissan; profits weren't satisfactory, never mind that people's livelihoods were at stake.
The Nissan closure raises many serious questions for the union movement, in particular the VBEF. What's to prevent further plant closures? Is it enough to say, as the VBEF leadership does, that concessions to the companies are necessary to guarantee jobs? Years of union-supported concessions failed to save the jobs at Nissan.
In fact, concessions haven't worked anywhere in the vehicle industry. The US auto industry is a prime example. For a decade the United Auto Workers leadership has championed concessions as a means of prodding the companies to provide job security. But by the end of the 1980s, approximately 60 plants had closed and about 400,000 jobs had been lost.
More recently, General Motors announced that another 75,000 jobs will go this year. Yet UAW leaders still tout union-management cooperation and "Vote Democrat" as the main answers to its members' problems.
The VBEF offers a similar view. While union officials didn't actually campaign for the Mitsubishi package, they failed to offer any alternative. Workers were told that it was the best they could get, it was better than other unions were getting, the current climate wasn't good for workers and so on.
After shop stewards made it clear that most workers would vote against the agreement, VBEF president Wayne Blair was flown in to deliver the hard sell. He used scare tactics, claiming the company would move offshore if it didn't get what it wanted. Another official said it was better that workers do the right thing and take the moral high ground rather than be seen to cause the demise of the company: how to end up on the dole feeling virtuous!
Worst of all, the officials failed to challenge management's statement that the future of the company was at stake. Are they for real? Certainly, in the long run all the multinationals may decide to close up shop. But that decision won't be made because "greedy" workers are forcing them out. It will be a question of what is hottest on the global market. Petrochemicals? Arms? Ripping up Third World rainforest? Meanwhile, they're taking full advantage of the Labor government's handouts.
Subsidies
A good example is the export facilitation subsidy scheme, under which locally based car manufacturers are encouraged to export cars and components by dollar-for-dollar credits towards duty-free imports of fully assembled vehicles, which have become the real profit base of the car manufacturers.
In 1988, the five manufacturers made an aggregate loss of $12 million on their domestic production. However, sales of duty-free imported passenger vehicles turned this into a $174 million profit. In 1989-90, car manufacturers' aggregate pre-tax profits were $127 million, which became $316 million after inclusion of $189 million from sales of imported vehicles. In 1989-90, Mitsubishi sold enough cars and components back to its parent company to import all of its vehicles duty free.
Through all this, slashing of car workers' jobs, wages and conditions continued on the pretext that this would make domestic production more competitive. However, the car companies' real profits were coming from imports. According to Martec, the leading motor industry analytical and forecast group, Nissan failed precisely because it didn't capitalise sufficiently on the import bonanza. In 1991, Toyota sold 30,000 more imported cars than Nissan.
Clearly, huge public subsidies to the vehicle industry have produced no worthwhile results for workers. After nine years of the Accord and ALP domination of union politics, workers are still paying to maintain company profits. This places the need for an alternative political strategy on the vehicle unions' agenda.
Disaffiliation from the ALP would be a good start; a break from the empty promises of the past decade and a return to grassroots unionism. Then we might get a union movement prepared to demand worthwhile policies in return for its support. Such policies could include standing up to the power of the multinationals, nationalising their operations if necessary, rather than futile attempts to bribe them with subsidies. It's high time unions began to campaign for a pro-worker economic vision.
[Andrew Watson is a VBEF shop steward at Tonsley Park Mitsubishi plant in Adelaide.]