The UAW: Limitations of Unionism

One wet October morning the telephone at the foreman’s desk rang. It was a call from the chairman of the shop committee. “I’m putting you in my place as committeeman,” he said. “Why?” “Because,” he answered, “I’ve been fired. 1 was escorted out of the plant. I’m calling from the Local.” The technical grounds were insubordination.

As I kept trying to assess the impact of this event and waited for confirmation of my new status from the company’s labor relations department, one thought stayed in my mind: How soon will the inevitable walk-out take place, and what will be its consequences? For in our Local it was traditional for the ranks to shut the plant whenever a union representative was fired. It was also a tradition for the company to crack down on wild-catters.

This new crisis would increase the turmoil of the past four months. We had been working without a contract because of the UAW strategy of “rock and roll” negotiations with the Big Three auto companies (that is, avoiding a major strike). The in-plant struggle had been fierce. The company, taking the offensive, had modified union representative rights, made grievance procedures stricter and pushed for higher work norms. The men had retaliated with a kind of passive resistance. Just two days ago the new contract had gone into effect, which meant—in theory—that the rules had been set down under which both sides would have to function in regard to wages, hours and conditions. But between theory and practice there was, as usual, a gap.

At a membership meeting of the Local the contract had been ratified almost unanimously. Yet the confusion among the workers was such that the very next day they had voted, under an old motion on the books, to go on strike. The contradictory character of these two decisions reflected ambivalent feelings among both the ranks and the secondary leaders of the Local in regard to the value of the new contract. Now that the committee man, a well-known union veteran, had been fired, explosive sentiments were certain to burst forth.