Vol. 79/No. 18      May 18, 2015

Amid rising resistance by fast-food and Walmart workers fighting for $15 an hour and a union and spreading battles by African-Americans and their allies protesting police brutality, delegates to the union bargaining convention met in Detroit in March to debate priorities.

“Delegate after delegate argued against Tier 2 during the first day of the two-day convention,” reported Automotive News March 24. Scott Houldieson, vice president of UAW Local 551 in Chicago, took the floor wearing a T-shirt that read “No More Tiers.”

Efforts by delegates to pass a motion committing the union to eliminate the divisive tiered-wages system were not successful.

During the 2007 financial crisis the bosses demanded and UAW members agreed to two-tier wage schemes at all three companies. Workers hired after the contract made around $14 per hour, about half the wage of workers hired before 2007. In 2011 UAW officials promoted another concession contract in which second-tier workers got small raises. UAW members hired before 2007 haven’t received a wage increase in 10 years.

Meanwhile, the auto bosses are floating the idea of bringing some jobs now outsourced to nonunion parts suppliers back into Big Three plants, and back into the UAW, but as a third tier of even lower-paid workers, Bloomberg Business reported March 23.

“No one wants two tiers,” Akira Montgomery, an assembly worker, told the Militant during the shift change at Ford’s Chicago Assembly Plant April 24. “The same work should get the same pay.” Assembly workers in the first tier make $28 an hour on average, while second-tier workers start at $15.78 and top out at $19.28.

“The tier system is a way to divide and cause animosity between the members,” said Steve Sowell, a forklift driver and Local 551 member for 16 years.

“We need to get rid of the two-tier system,” Curtis Dudley said. “I was hired five years ago in the second tier, I’m in the first tier now. This is for my co-workers.

“The idea of a third tier is no deal,” he added.

At a GM-owned subcompact assembly plant in Lake Orion, Michigan, some workers who do nonassembly jobs, such as “kitting” together parts, are already paid less than the second tier.

As car sales have increased, the Big Three have hired more than 20,000 new workers since 2010. There are 52,000 hourly workers at Ford today compared with 36,000 in 2011.

Ford, GM and Chrysler together have made more than $70 billion in operating profits since the last UAW contract.
 
 
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On the Picket Line
 
 
 
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