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DECEMBER 15, 2022

Meyerson on TAP

Splitting the Strikers at UC

University of California managers divide (and-not clear yet if
they'll-conquer), while General Motors and Microsoft indulge a
modicum of worker power.

One of the slogans that guided the United Auto Workers in winning the
best contracts ever awarded to factory workers during the UAW's glory
years (1950 through 1980) was "Solidarity in the ranks." That wasn't
simply a sentiment; it was a strike and bargaining strategy.

When the postwar UAW members struck one of the Big Three automakers to
win a new contract, there were several commandments that guided them.
One was that the representatives of all the workers-the skilled trades
workers who kept the factory running and the assembly-line workers who
affixed the parts on the chassis as they rolled by-sat together at the
bargaining table and didn't leave until they'd won a contract for
all of them. Even though it was generally easier and quicker for
management to reach an agreement with the skilled trades workers, who
comprised just a small percentage of the overall membership, those
skilled tradesmen (and women, who at the time were few) didn't sign
off on an agreement until the assembly-line workers and the paint shop
workers and the cleaning crews had reached accords as well-all then
bundled into a master contract. All stayed on the picket lines until a
master agreement had been reached. Otherwise, UAW President Walter
Reuther and the other union leaders knew, management could play one
group off against the others.

In their first truly serious go-round with the management of the
University of California, the leaders of the 48,000 striking teaching
and research assistants, postdocs, and academic researchers-all of
them UAW members-didn't hew to this strategy. Each of the four
categories of workers had its own local union, and each of them
bargained separately. As the postdocs and academic researchers receive
much of their funding from the federal government and other sources
outside the UC system, it proved easier for management to agree to the
kind of raises these workers needed to keep up (barely, partially,
almost) with the absurd housing costs in coastal California. As the
funding for the TAs and RAs comes entirely out of the UC treasury,
however, management has thus far offered raises that fail to meet many
of the basic needs-shelter above all-of these grad students.

But once the postdocs and academic researchers ratified their
agreements, they were required to report back to work this week, leaving
the TAs and RAs to walk the lines by themselves-now, during winter
break, when their immediate leverage has plummeted. Their two locals
felt compelled to go into mediation. Fortunately (I think), the mediator
is Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg, a longtime labor-liberal who once
was a staff attorney for SEIU's massive local of state government
employees, and who recently mediated an agreement between Kaiser
Permanente and its striking mental health employees.

We Can't Do This Without You
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Reportedly
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was Gov. Gavin Newsom who suggested that Steinberg be the mediator. On
TAP devotees, if such exist, may recall that on three separate occasions
I've noted Newsom's AWOL-ness during this strike. Bringing in
Steinberg may prove to be his one intervention, but if Steinberg can
bring Newsom and the legislature into the process through a pledge to
better fund the grad students, that's an intervention that may prove
both decisive and beneficial.

Those On TAP devotees may also recall my frequent observations that the
UAW has had far more success in recent decades organizing college
campuses than they've had organizing auto factories. I'm delighted,
therefore, to report their overwhelming success last week at organizing
a new Ohio-based battery factory for electric cars, by a vote of 710 to
16. The factory is a joint venture of General Motors and LG Energy
Solution, a South Korean firm, and the election proceeded without the
companies waging an anti-union campaign.

On the one hand, the vote shows what may be possible when workers can
vote on the question of union representation without being pressured and
intimidated by their employer. Had such an election taken place in the
anti-union South, however, where most of these new battery factories are
set to be located, even a pledge of employer neutrality from the likes
of GM, Ford, or Stellantis may not suffice to keep the workers free from
pressure. Volkswagen, after all, didn't oppose the UAW's attempt to
organize the VW factory in Chattanooga, but the mayor, the governor, and
all the local powers that be told the workers that Tennessee would
instantly become a postapocalyptic wasteland if they opted to go union.
Even in those exceptional instances when corporations go docile, alas,
there remains the goddam South.

And speaking of corporations going docile, the 300 employees at ZeniMax
Media, a Maryland-based developer of video games, are currently voting
on whether to affiliate with the Communications Workers of America
(CWA). ZeniMax is owned by Microsoft, which has pledged not to oppose
any of its workers' efforts to unionize. Some critics suspect that
Microsoft's unicorn status as the one tech giant that doesn't oppose
unionization is largely a function of its campaign to win support for
its purchase of Activision, which the FTC blocked late last week. Those
critics may prove right, but as I noted
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when Microsoft President Brad Smith announced this heretical policy in
early June, the company may have realized that allowing its workers to
unionize may actually give it a competitive advantage over its peers
when it comes to attracting Gen Z and millennial programmers-given the
overwhelming pro-union tilt of the young. After all, the UC pickets of
today may write the Microsoft programs of tomorrow.

~ HAROLD MEYERSON

Follow Harold Meyerson on Twitter <[link removed]>

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What's Wrong at the Times
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Management authorized $150 million for a stock buyback this year but
resists the union's wage proposal, which would yearly come to $15
million more than the paper wants to pay. BY STEVEN GREENHOUSE

Democratic Majority at the FCC Still Blocked
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The nomination of Gigi Sohn for the fifth commissioner's slot has
languished for over a year. Numerous policies affecting telecom
interests are at stake. BY LUKE GOLDSTEIN

Defusing Tensions on Transit
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The Kansas City transit system eliminated fares and fare evasion. The
ensuing challenge? Homeless 'loop riders.' BY GABRIELLE GURLEY

America's Lithium Bonanza?
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David Dayen discusses his reporting on the Salton Sea. BY PROSPECT
STAFF

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