The Lansing State Journal
Monday 18 June 2007
Cooperation between the United Auto Workers union and General Motors Corp. has long been a point of pride among many area autoworkers.
That cooperation is being challenged by a worker who transferred last year to GM's parts warehouse in Delta Township. Gregg Shotwell, who came from a Delphi Corp. plant in Coopersville, claims that cooperation between the union and the automaker has harmed, not helped, workers. And he's urging workers to do something about it - a message he hopes will find resonance as the UAW and GM hammer out a new labor contract this summer.
Shotwell is one of the founders of the Soldiers of Solidarity movement, a group of dissident UAW members who feel let down by both their union and their employers. They've picketed auto shows and corporate headquarters, held rank-and-file meetings that challenged union leadership and openly talked about striking.
Some blame Shotwell for scaring Toyota Motor Corp. away from Michigan when it was looking for an engine plant site. But the Grand Rapids man says he only wants unions to return to their historical role of sticking up for workers before conceding to the wishes of the corporation.
"Labor gets unfairly picked on. We're not the cause of (the auto industry's) problems," Shotwell said. "We're not the reason why they're losing market share."
Temp Workers
With labor talks set to begin in earnest next month, Shotwell sees battle lines being drawn. He expects workers to see more money diverted away from cost-of-living allowances to fund health care. He believes automakers want to rely more on temporary workers, who get paid about 30 percent less than permanent workers.
"How we're treating the temp workers - that's the measure of our union right now," he said. "That is how the future will judge us."
The Soldiers of Solidarity, or SOS, was born out of the 2005 Delphi Corp. bankruptcy. Shotwell had worked at GM until the automaker spun off the Delphi parts division in 1999. He took an offer last year to "flow back" to a GM job.
Both Delphi and the UAW declined comment.
UAW President Ron Gettelfinger has at times echoed sentiments voiced by Shotwell.
"We've done more for Delphi than we should have done," Gettelfinger said in March. "We gave them the two-tier agreement in '04. We gave them the attrition program since they've been in bankruptcy, and there's no end to it."
Warren Davis, a retired UAW regional director who lives near Cleveland, said that the SOS is trying to bring the union back to its earlier ideals.
"What they're doing is in the best tradition of the UAW," said Davis, who was a director from 1983 to 2002. "There has to be some tension and opposition. SOS is creating dissent from the current way of doing things. That is absolutely needed."
Shotwell said the biggest issue facing the union now is to protect temporary workers, who have been heavily used in such factories as the new Lansing Delta Township plant.
The plant has had as many as 500 temporary workers on staff at a time, plant spokeswoman Heidi Magyar said. The temps are paid about $19 an hour, compared with the average hourly wage of about $27 an hour for permanent workers, Shotwell said. They pay union dues, he said, but get no benefits.
Rule Suspended
More alarming to Shotwell, GM and UAW suspended a rule at the Delta Township plant that required the automaker to hire a temporary worker after 120 days. The time was extended to a full year.
"That undermines the union by creating a second class of membership," he said. "The temporary workers are afraid to object. Their biggest hope in life is to get a permanent job."
Dissatisfaction among temporary workers and other issues has created an undercurrent of discontent within the ranks that can bubble to the surface at any time, he said. It only takes an organization like SOS to tap into it.
But Shotwell doesn't want to be thought of as the person doing the tapping.
"I don't want to be the leader," insisted the 56-year-old. "I want to empower all the people (to speak up)."
Shotwell said he learned the value of a strong union when he started work at GM in Grand Rapids in 1979: "Work was my education."
Shotwell said he saw the union's strength eroding. Starting in the early 1980s, the union began to move toward a more cooperative arrangement with GM. That doesn't serve the interest of workers, Shotwell argued. GM has lost market share and the union lost membership since that cooperation began.
In 1982, there were about 23,000 people working for GM in Lansing; now, there are about 6,000. In the same time, market share has fallen from 43.2 percent to about 25 percent.
"This relationship is not working," Shotwell said.
His participation in the 1998 UAW national convention spurred him into action. Shotwell was taken aback by what he saw as a lack of democratic participation. Events seemed orchestrated and contrarian viewpoints weren't welcomed.
He began writing the online newsletter "Live Bait and Ammo." His writing criticizes both the union and major corporations in turn.
"I would photocopy them and hand them out at work," said Joe Winans, a GM worker who transferred to the stamping plant in Grand Rapids when the Lansing Metal Center started to shut down last year.
"What he writes is what everyone is thinking. He gets it."
Larger Audience
When Delphi entered bankruptcy in October 2005, Shotwell found a larger audience. Within a month of the bankruptcy filing, he began holding "rank-and-file" meetings in from Wisconsin to New York. SOS grew from those meetings.
SOS has picketed the North American International Auto Show in Detroit and Delphi headquarters. Shotwell has been interviewed on national television, and SOS members talked openly about the possibility of a strike at Delphi.
"We are saving America and saving manufacturing jobs," said Ed Pietrowski, a 49-year-old lineworker at GM's plant in Bowling Green, Ky., who has participated in several SOS events.
"What SOS is doing is keeping the pressure on the International (UAW) and the companies," he said. "Some people may frown at what we're doing, but we're basically the old UAW, standing up for what the union used to stand for."
Toyota Decision
One of those frowning is automotive analyst David Cole, president for the Ann Arbor-based Center for Automotive Research. He told the Detroit Free Press last year that Shotwell was the reason Toyota decided against building an engine plant in West Michigan.
Shotwell recently scoffed at the notion.
"Toyota is a big, international company and they do not base their decisions on what Gregg Shotwell said or wrote," he said.
Shotwell said critics can't make him quiet down.
"I don't feel afraid to speak up," he said. "I believe that peace of mind does not come from avoiding conflict. It comes from right action."
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