Not All the Blue Collar Workers Like New UAW-Chrysler Contract

THERE'S NOT much to see or do in downtown Detroit. There is no theater to speak of, little music and less art. But what Detroit lacks in culture, it makes up for in cars.

None of the 100 bus routes in the Department of street Railways (DSR) system runs in a straight line. It is said by some that a cartographer would need about an hour to map a bus route to the city from a starting point ten miles away. So if you live ten miles away from your job, you either take five buses to work, or you buy a car.

The Detroit metropolitan area is an economic dependent of the automobile industry. In fact, Highland Park and Hamtramck, the two small cities that sit in the center of Detroit, have only one industry--Chrysler.

In 1970, the UAW struck against the General Motors Corporation for 67 days, paralyzing production of Chevrolets, Buicks. Oldsmobiles and Cadillacs, and shifting the Motor City into low gear. That strike was not of record breaking length.

But the duration of last week's walkout against the Chrysler Corporation, the baby of the Big Three auto manufacturers, did challenge the record books: It was the shortest in UAW history. In comparison to past UAW actions, the cost of the shut-down to Chrysler was inconsequential.

The strike--the first nation-wide shutdown of Chrysler plants since 1950--ran up a daily cost to the corporation of about 7400 cars and 1100 trucks in lost production for the ten days of picketing. The price was still low, however, compared to the production toll taken by the 1970 strike against G.M., the giant of the Big Three auto companies.

Chrysler, albeit the baby of the three auto makers, is the largest employer and largest taxpayer in the Detroit metropolitian area. Of the 127,500 UAW-represented Chrysler workers throughout the U.S. and Canada, 95,000 work in the Detroit metropolitain area.

The strike had an indirect impact on the large percentage of Detroit's working population that is employed in jobs directly related to auto production. When the strike began September 14, Chrysler directed its suppliers to curb shipments of steel, tires and parts. As a result, the Budd Company, a Detroit-based supplier, laid off 250 of its 2500 employees.

But in general, last week's strike was expensive for the UAW. The shutdown reportedly cost the UAW about $5 million a day in strike benefits alone. The UAW gives each striking employee $30 to $40 a week, based on the striker's number of dependents.

The UAW decision to strike against Chrysler when contracts with all three manufacturers came up for renewal this year was no coincedence. In a record-breaking year of Chrysler sales, the corporation's employees had conducted several wildcat strikes to protest working conditions. The cited poor ventilation, oily floors, excessive heat and dangerously faulty equipment.

As usual under compulsory overtime, record sales meant employees worked nine hours a day, six days a week, and it was not unusual for some to work twelve hours a day, seven days a week. The Chrysler management held to its traditional prerogative to require extra working hours from employees to meet the demands of production.

The workers were essentially aiming for improved working conditions and fringe benefits. The financial side of the coin was secondary. UAW officials hailed the new contract, tentatively initiated with Chrysler on September 17, as the most far-reaching ever negotiated by the union. But although the union's rank-and-file members ratified the settlement this weekend and returned to their stations on the assembly lines Monday, not all is peaches and cream.

DIFFERENCES over the relative importance of the two major issues polarized the younger assembly line workers and their older colleagues. The senior employees wanted "30 and out," eligibility for full pension benefits after 30 years of service, regardless of age, and an increase over the current size of pension benefits. They got both.

For the younger workers, the prime issue was non-compulsory overtime. The new contract handed them only a very limited victory--assurances that they would not be forced to work twelve hours a day, seven days a week.

The overtime compromise stipulates that workers will not be required to work more than nine hours a day six days a week; they cannot be forced to work Sunday; and they will be entitled to every third Saturday off if they tell their supervisor of their intentions on the previous Monday. So the issue of truly voluntary overtime remains a big one within the UAW ranks.

Most of the younger workers were looking forward to a maximum 40-or-45 hour week agreement. But Chrysler employees may still be forced to work 54 hours a week, and with those kinds of hours there's not much chance that the men and women who work on the line will have an opportunity to do anything but sleep off their nine-hour days.

Voluntary overtime, although not a new idea in the auto industry, was the stickiest issue of the UAW-Chrysler negotiations. In response to the UAW's high-priority demand that all overtime be voluntary, Chrysler argued that non-compulsory overtime would create administrative and began headaches and be costly in terms of checks, lost production.

There was precedent for management's claims. When American Motors, an infant by comparison to the smallest of the Big Three car manufacturers, pioneered a voluntary overtime in the auto industry, the company was forced to hire several hundred "Saturday specials" to maintain weekend production at its Milwaukee body plant. The special Saturday force that worked the Saturday shift consisted largely of college students who received time-and-a-half for a job they did not do at any other time during the week.

Most of the men and women who have manned the assembly lines at Chrysler plants for 15 or 20 years are not unhappy about the contract's meager limits on mandatory overtime. Many of them say that the long working hours have become part of daily life. After thirty years of the same day-to-day tedium, they said they hoped mainly to retired with full pensions, regardless of age.

THE ONLY UAW members who probably are not satisfied with the "30 and out" provision of the contract are the foundry workers at the Jefferson Plant, about five miles east of downtown Detroit. They were asking for full benefits after 25 years. Most employees from other segments of the assembly line agree that their Jefferson brothers, who statistically have lower life expectancies, rate "25 and out."

The new Chrysler contract includes a full "30 and out" clause: A worker may retire after 30 years with the company at any age and he will receive full pensions benefits. Although the union was asking for an increase in pensions to $650 a month, the contract sets benefits at $550. But it insures that retired workers will continue to collect that full sum even after they begin receiving social security benefits. By 1978, the average 65-year-old retired worker's monthly benefits will thus total about $700.

Under the old contract a worker could retire after 30 year of service with full pension benefits only if he had reached the age of 56. Full pension was $500 a month. But the employee suffered a reduction in benefits once he became eligible for and began receiving social security checks.

In the medical area, the UAW convinced the Chrysler company to pick up the tab for the workers' share of national health insurance preminums, should such a program be established. (Senator Edward M. Kennedy '54 has introduced a bill for national health insurance into Congress, but it remains in committee at this time.)

In addition, the union members got a company-paid dental plan that will begin in the second year of the three-year contract, longer uninterrupted holidays during the Christmas-New Year season and a new paid holiday on the Friday after Thanksgiving, also beginning in the second year.

Workers will receive a three a per cent wage increase in each of the three years covered by the new contract, plus an additional 12 cents an hour in the first year. The contract also includes a new cost-of-living "escalator," a formula pioneered by the auto industry and based on the Consumer Price Index. During the most recent quarterly period, a worker received more than $20 a week over and above his base wage to compensate for the cost-of-living increase. Under the new formula, based on the same inflation conditions, this figure would rise to $25.

The total money a package represents about a 7 percent wage increase. As in all recent labor disputes; the Cost of Living Council guidelines complicated the settlement of wage boosts and fringe benefit increases. The Nixon Administration's current guidelines allow for a maximum 5.5 per cent pay hike with fringes not to exceed 0.7 per cent annually.

But while Chrysler argued that the Federal government would allow only a 6.2 per cent total increase, the UAW repeatedly cited the Teamsters' 7 per cent increase that was approved by the Cost of Living Council. Observers have noted that the UAW settlement is comparable to the Teamsters' most recent contract. The UAW contract must still be approved by the Cost of Living Council.

MOST OF the disputes regarding working conditions not covered in the contract must be negotiated at the local level and discussions about these issues are still going on in Detroit. When Woodcock announced a tentative settlement July 17, UAW Secretary-Treasurer Emil Mazey estimated that the local negotiations would take another three weeks.

But the union has won the right to participate in experimental projects aimed at reducing assembly-line tedium. In the last few years, Chrysler has run some small pilot programs that allow workers to organize a job as they wish, supervise themselves and pace themselves, with the only management requirement being delivery of the finished product at the designated time.

When the union completes its negotiations with Chrysler it will begin arbitration with the Ford Motor Company, and in time with G.M. Both of these companies agreed to a day by, day extention of their old contract with the UAW when the Chrysler strike began.

The union will ask from Ford and G.M. the same terms it got from Chrysler. And Ford and G.M. will follow the pattern set by their little brother and approve a contract that is comparable to their competitor's.