Did Obama ‘save’ the UAW?

By MARTY GOODMAN

On the eve of the Democratic Party Convention, President Obama tried his best to firm up his pro-labor credentials. During a Labor Day campaign gathering of autoworkers and steelworkers in Toledo, Ohio, Obama boasted of his role in handing the big automakers a financial bailout in 2009. That measure, he told his audience, was responsible for saving jobs. But what is the truth?

In 2009, Floyd Norris, a New York Times columnist, wrote, “It took a conservative Republican to open relations with the largest Communist country in the world, it took a liberal Democrat to break the UAW.” Obama, so-called friend of working families, destroyed one of the powerhouses of U.S. labor, the United Auto Workers union, after only a couple of months on the job.

After the government takeover of GM and Chrysler, the president’s “Auto Task Force,” packed with corporate executives, told the UAW to reduce its labor costs to that of non-union manufacturers like Honda, Toyota, and other non-union outfits.

And under the government threat of imposing bankruptcy and voiding out union contracts, the UAW bureaucrats shamelessly—without a fight of any kind—negotiated the terms of surrender.

While the auto companies got billions in bailout dough for making gas-guzzlers (the big auto shareholders were financial corporations like Goldman Sachs), new employee wages were cut in half. That destroyed in one blow the UAW traditions of solidarity. There were thousands of layoffs, despite bosses’ promises.

Health benefits were off-loaded onto a union-run Voluntary Employee Benefits Association (VEBA), with limited corporate contributions. Ford motors, which had not asked for a bailout, got the UAW to agree to a deal that echoed the massive concessions at GM and Chrysler, in order to “stay competitive.”

In October 2011, after a vigorous fear campaign, auto members approved a contract that upheld the main features of the previous rout. Included was the continuation of a no-strike pledge and a first time zero pension increase. A side agreement allows the bosses and UAW brass to amend the pension plan without a membership vote.

UAW members have pointed out that the union has adopted concession-laden contracts for 30 years only to see its ranks drop by 50 percent since 2001! In 1979, another Democrat, Jimmy Carter, twisted the UAW’s arm to accept concessions as condition for bailing out the Chrysler bosses. In return, autoworkers got mass layoffs.

It makes no sense for union members to vote for the Democrats, who have sold them out repeatedly. Both major parties serve the interests of the wealthy 1%, not working people. Workers need their own party—a Labor Party that can effectively lead the fightback against the bosses and win!