opinion
In the age of instant analysis, almost any unfortunate event — a civil war, a mass shooting, a paralyzing strike or a power outage — conjures a corps of expert commenters eager to explain why it should never have happened.
The premise of these critiques is always the same: If only a few key participants had been smarter, or less greedy, or more far-sighted, we might have avoided whatever unpleasantness we are all busy deploring.
But there is more humble theory of history, one that traces great cataclysms to tidal forces mightier than the men and women tasked to contain them. According to this school of thought, some man-made events are as inevitable as the earthquake that result when one tectonic plate breaks free of another.
The UAW's ongoing strike against General Motors, which entered its fourth day Thursday, is certainly one of these.
A season of unrest
Say what you will about the corruption at the top of the union or the oblivious greed of GM's incumbent corporate leaders: This is a strike that needed to happen, a ritualized reckoning that may or may not have come in time to avert a wider and more unpredictable confrontation between workers and employers.
Those who focus narrowly on the auto industry regard the strike as an unpleasant interruption in a period of sustained cooperation between U.S. automakers and the UAW — an unexpected and unnecessary escalation of hostilities between antagonists who haven't faced off in a national strike since before the 2008 recession.
More: Former UAW Lordstown worker does double picket duty in strike against GM
More: GM strike exposes flaws in U.S. labor laws
But this is only the latest (and potentially the most destructive) storm in a sustained season of labor unrest that began with last year's successful teacher's strike in West Virginia and inspired subsequent strikes in the hotel, grocery store and fast food industries.
The UAW's members, it seems, are not the only workers whose wages have not kept up with inflation, and theirs is not the only industry in which employment and benefits have failed to match the pace of corporate earnings.
According to the Gallup organization, popular support for unions is hovering above 60%, a 50-year high. That's more than half-again the 40% approval rating Donald Trump enjoys on a good day, and helps explain why, when workers strike in 2019, a majority of their neighbors are rooting for them.
[ Following the GM strike? Download our app for the latest news.]
Striking for the middle class
The immediate objectives of GM's striking workers are specific: Persuade their employer to keep jobs in the United States, to revive the domestic factories it plans to shutter — er, that is, un-allocate — in Michigan, Ohio and Maryland, and to diminish its reliance on temporary employees who earn lower wages and enjoy fewer job benefits than their permanent counterparts.
The company says it needs flexibility to navigate the technological and economic headwinds that nearly destroyed it a decade ago. Workers counter that their sacrifices were critical to GM's recovery, and that they are determined to secure a larger share of the $35 billion profit GM has logged in the last three years.
But the laborers my Free Press newsroom colleagues talk to on the picket lines regularly expressed their desire to strike a blow in a broader struggle against income inequality, regressive taxes and anti-labor government policies.
Dominique Birdsong, who builds Chevrolet Silverados at the Flint Assembly Plant, told Free Press auto writer Phoebe Wall Howard she and her colleagues are striking on behalf of neglected workers across America.
"I'm not scared, I'm hopeful. Because we're determined," Birdsong said. "We will rally together for the middle class."
A scarcity of credibility
If the interests at stake transcend those of UAW members, the GM strike is taking place in the context of a federal investigation that has implicated the union's top leaders in promoting a culture of corruption. That probably made it harder for UAW leaders to sell any offer GM made before the strike as the best available.
But it's simplistic to blame the strike on the UAW leadership's diminished credibility at a time when workers have lost confidence in so many others. Chief among them: GM CEO Mary Barra, whose $22-million annual compensation is 281 times that of the median GM worker, and Donald Trump. who promised to penalize companies that move jobs abroad but has delivered only a reckless trade war that has destabilized the entire industry.
Trump surely understands that this strike is a product of employee resentment that reverberates far beyond GM's factories. His own election may be seen, in hindsight, as an earlier (and equally inevitable) consequence of that resentment.
Whether the strike precipitates a quick settlement that defuses labor's anger or a prolonged war of attrition that inflames it depends not just on GM's next moves, but also on whether corporate leaders outside the auto industry recognize that their own gated communities are also under siege.
The UAW's members aren't the only workers looking for signs their employers can read the writing on the wall.
Brian Dickerson is the Editorial Page Editor of the Free Press. Contact him at bdickerson@freepress.com.
https://www.freep.com/story/opinion/columnists/brian-dickerson/2019/09/20/gm-uaw-strike/2363185001/
2019-09-20 11:00:00Z
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