JournalStar.com, October 13, 2007, Saturday

JournalStar.com, October 13, 2007, Saturday

JournalStar.com

Analysts puzzle over UAW’s strike strategy

By STEPHEN FRANKLIN and RICK POPELY/Chicago Tribune

CHICAGO — With its two short walkouts, the United Auto Workers union employed a strategy that has almost become a relic for organized labor — the strike.

Before the UAW’s recent two-day strike at General Motors Corp. and its roughly six hour walkout Wednesday at Chrysler LLC, the union hadn’t struck a major automaker in 31 years.

These days there are fewer than two dozen major walkouts each year, down from 400 or more annually in the 1950s. And the fact that unions so seldom take to the picket lines raises some questions: n Will the UAW’s quick settlements with the two automakers on the heels of strikes pump new life into an old tactic?

n Or will U.S. unions remain gun-shy of the tactic that has often backfired?

Though the UAW had warned about a walkout if it could not reach a deal by Wednesday morning, its decision to send its members onto the streets came as somewhat of a surprise partly because in its unusually long bargaining with GM, the union had repeatedly pushed back its deadline.

But with no extension of its deadline with Chrysler, UAW workers starting walking out of most of car maker’s 32 U.S. plants and major parts facilities at 10 a.m. Wednesday.

A little more than six hours later, the strike was over and the union said it had reached a tentative contract.

With GM, the UAW struck on Sept. 24 and reached a tentative deal two days later.

The GM contract was ratified by a nearly two-thirds vote, the UAW said in a statement Wednesday, though it did not say how many of the 73,000 union members at GM voted.

The walkout at Chrysler did not include five of the company’s nine U.S. assembly plants, including one in Belvidere, near Rockford. Ill.. Belvidere was one of five assembly plants that already were idle to counter slow sales.

The UAW’s contracts with Chrysler, GM and Ford Motor Co. expired Sept. 14, and the union still has to negotiate with Ford.

The Chrysler walkout, the equivalent of a New York minute in labor disputes, left analysts scratching their heads.

“Why send everyone out if you’re that close to an agreement? If you’re that close, you can just make a phone call and tell everyone to hold on,” said Global Insight analyst Aaron Bragman. “This is a mystery for us to figure out.”

Adding to the mystery, Gragman said, was word that the two sides reached a deal within two hours of the strike’s start.

Some experts suggested that UAW officials may have stumbled into a showdown with Chrysler and kept going because they wanted to show the rank and file that they were hanging tough.

That would make sense, they added, if union officials realized they would have to present a contract with unpopular concessions to their members.

Going into contract talks with GM, UAW President Ron Gettelfinger had faced criticism from foes within the union that he was unlikely to stand up to the automakers.

It is also unclear whether the union’s short-lived shows of strength will set a precedent.

Quickie strikes barely provide a union with leverage against a company, say experts such as Gary Olson at the University of Illinois.

“I don’t think you could argue that either side achieved anything sufficient from a two-day strike,” Olson said. “The settlement had to be close.”

In fact, even longer strikes have been “failures,” said Rick Hurd, a labor expert at Cornell University.

Like others, he pointed to failed strikes by mechanics at Northwest Airlines Inc. where after 15 months on the picket lines most of the mechanics lost their jobs and truckers against Overnite Transportation where after three years, the trucking company defeated the Teamsters Union’s organizing efforts.

Still, unions have come winners in some strikes, but as Hurd and others pointed out, such victories have been few and far between.

The Teamsters, for example, won a good contract from UPS after a 16-day strike in 1997, and white collar workers at the Boeing Co. won bonuses and pay hikes after a 40-day strike in 2000. In these disputes, the unions relied on timing and rank and file solidarity for leverage.

More recently unions in the health care and service industries have been increasingly willing to launch large scale strikes. “Because they are growing, they are more willing to take risks,” Hurd said.

Similarly, unions that represent factory and airline workers talk more nowadays about taking on their companies, said Hurd. But these unions are driven more by despair than a newborn zeal, he added. “It’s more of a sign of the difficulties that unions are facing as companies go after them for concessions,” he said.

To Gerald Meyers, retired chairman of American Motors Corp., the GM strike was “very carefully choreographed” as a dramatic end to negotiations. Gettelfinger appeared at a press conference shortly after the strike started, and explained to union members why they were striking, then returned to the bargaining table later the same day.

In contrast, the union’s brief face off with Chrysler did not follow the same scenario, said Meyers.

“Neither side was prepared,” he said.