One of the sticking points in the negotiations for the bailout of
the Big Three has been the question of how much more the United
Auto Workers (UAW) should give up to save at least two of
America's auto companies.
Clearly, more must be sacrificed to make the companies
competitive with the foreign transplants and the other auto
imports into the North American market. The substantial
differential in the overall compensation package-wages, benefits,
vacation, retirement, work rules and the like-cannot remain if,
say, GM is to survive as anything other than a ward of the
federal government. This is a hard truth, one that is painful to
embrace absent the sharp lash of necessity.
My own personal UAW story involves an appeal of a denial of a
permit to build a pole barn on a wetland in Michigan. I was
working in the state environmental agency on Great Lakes issues
at the time, the late-1990s. Since I was an attorney and had run
regulatory programs in my home state of Missouri, I was asked to
help clear up a backlog of cases through mediation and,
hopefully, settlement without recourse to costly, full-blown
administrative hearings complete with lawyers, court reporters,
further appeals and aggravation for all involved.
One day I traveled to northern Michigan, to the field office in
Gaylord, I think, about two-thirds of the way up the Lower
Peninsula, the mitt of Michigan so to speak, to meet with the
person appealing his permit denial.
As it turned out, the fellow appealing the unfavorable decision
was from southeast Michigan, just outside of Detroit. He walked
into the room accompanied by a GM legal insurance lawyer, with
his wife. His four kids were waiting outside in his 30-foot
Suburban.
He was a gregarious, big fellow, with muscular arms and a barrel
chest. He sported a GM baseball cap and a T-shirt with UAW on it.
Or maybe it was the reverse.
In any event, he was a very nice guy, a family man, which
immediately put him on my good side. He had a place or cottage
"up north," which everyone in Michigan, Wisconsin (including my
wife) and Minnesota has, usually handed down through the
generations. Seasonal migrations "up north" are rivaled only by
the mass migration to Florida at spring break in that part of the
country.
This fellow wanted to build this barn at his cottage, his home
away from home.
"Mr. Mehan, I love the environment; but I have to build this
barn," he said after we got through the pleasantries and down to
business. "I own a jet ski, a party barge, a snow mobile and a
boat. I can't leave them out through the winter, and I don't want
to haul them back and forth each year."
What came of the mediation totally escapes my memory, but I
vividly recall thinking about the lawyer, the wife, the four
kids, the Suburban, the jet skis, the boat, the snow mobile, the
party barge, and the fact this guy probably worked hard on an
assembly line.
"Is this a great country or what?" was my first thought.
My second was: "This can't last -- can it?"
For decades people who worked for the Big Three were not
working-class but definitely members of the middle class, without
the tie or gray flannel suit. You could quit high school, if you
were so inclined, and get a really well-paying job working on the
lines at Ford, Chrysler and GM, although hard overtime was
assumed. The pay-off was great wages, tremendous benefits, a lot
of vacation and a wonderful retirement. It was not just a living
wage, but a very robust and comprehensive compensation package.
An autoworker could support a good-sized family without his wife
having to take a job outside the home unless she wanted to.
It was an exceptional set of circumstances, not duplicated in
many other industries or other parts of the country.
The Big Three and the UAW no longer dominate even our domestic
market anymore. They carry heavy legacy costs, too many
dealerships and old ways of thinking that hobble them in a global
economy, Darwinian in its ruthless application of "creative
destruction." They are struggling to adapt their old modes of
labor and production to the grease-lightning speed and
ever-changing configurations of an unforgiving marketplace.
My heart goes out to Michigan, my adopted state.
topics:
United Auto Workers, Michigan
