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57 TheWeakest Link in the Struggle* A grim battle is taking place daily inside the shop between the company and the men. With thousands of men and women laid off and no demand for its products, the company is turning the heat on the workmen. Few workers have worked a full forty-hour week since Christmas. No worker knows whether or not he will work next week, nor how many hours he will work each day when he gets work—four or six or eight. In every plant the company is demanding more production from the workforce. Dodge and Chrysler workers have been sent home twenty-three days before completing an eight-hour day. The company says they are not producing up to their new work standards. Over a hundred men have been fired or given days off for not meeting these standards. The only difference from company policy before the union is that in the pre-union days the company would take a man to the window and show him how many people were waiting for his job at the employment gate. Men Pinpoint Blame The union at each of these plants has taken a strike vote, but every worker in the shop knows that the union isn’t going to strike. The company knows that the union isn’t going to strike. Because if the union does strike, the men can’t collect compensation and a strike wouldn’t hurt the company now because the company has no business anyway. The men are discussing what they could have done to avoid this situation. So far they emphasize two things. (1) The union should have never let the company put in automation. Not that they are against automation, but the union should have known how dirty the company would be and how it would use automation against the men. (2) The union should never have let everybody work all that overtime last year. The union should have known what every worker knows: that in the auto industry, working overtime one year means you are working yourself out of a job next year. Out of this chaos there is one definite piece of education that is coming to the workers . That is that the company is only interested in production for production’s sake. On skilled and unskilled the pressure from the company is being exerted day after day. Foremen, lead men, utility men are being cut back and laid off. Men who had always felt that there would be a place for them in the shop are finding out that in the eyes of the company they are no more than the lowest sweeper. The chief stewards who are arguing with the company are finding that the contract is only a contract to work, not to solve any of the workers’ problems and that the weakest link in the struggle is the union. *This column appeared with the dateline: Detroit, Mich., Feb. 15. —Ed. Ward.indb 57 12/21/10 9:27 AM Part I 58 Whenever the steward tries to negotiate a grievance over these high production rates with the company, the company always says that it has the right to run production as it sees fit and this is the way it sees fit. The steward can’t tell the men to resist because he would be penalized by the company for violating the contract and by the union for telling the men not to get the work out. The only policy that the union has is exactly the policy of the company: Stay on the job and get out production. [ March 1958 ] Ward.indb 58 12/21/10 9:27 AM ...

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