Axle strike mirrors pain of 1970 walkout at GM

But instead of fighting for raise, UAW battles cuts

Eric Morath / The Detroit News

The United Auto Workers strike against American Axle, now in its 68th day, has become one of the longest walkouts in the 73-year history of the UAW — surpassing even the union’s momentous national strike against General Motors Corp. in 1970.

Both strikes — lengthy, ideological battles fought against the backdrop of a struggling economy — inflicted deep financial pain on workers and the industry.

The outcomes, however, will be vastly different.

In 1970, the UAW won a 13 percent pay raise; American Axle workers are resisting a pay cut of up to 50 percent.

Negotiations between American Axle & Manufacturing Holdings Inc. and the UAW continued Friday. Both sides reported progress this week, but neither said a deal was at hand. The strike began Feb. 26 when 3,650 workers walked off the job.

The American Axle and GM strikes both represent a fundamental shift in the principles for which the union is willing to fight.

Until last fall, the 1970 walkout was the last national strike against an automaker. That battle netted the union cost-of-living increases for the first time.

Today, the union is resisting significant pay cuts, contending that a profitable company is not entitled to concessions the UAW granted to bankrupt peers.

"These long strikes tend to be ideological rather than quantitative wage and benefits issues," said Bill LeFever, reference archivist at Wayne State University’s Walter P. Reuther Library. Many of the other 10 longest strikes in UAW history have centered on the right to organize or were fought to win significant new benefits.

The landmark issue in this walkout is whether the UAW’s assistance to struggling companies should be extended industrywide, said Harley Shaiken, labor professor at the University of California, Berkeley.

"What’s at stake here is: Who sets prevailing wages? The profitable company or the bankrupt company?" he said, adding that the UAW also needs to know that proposed concessions will preserve union jobs in America.

Strike hasn’t stopped GM

If history is any lesson, it may take more than just hard bargaining to bring an end to the American Axle strike.

"In 1970, the company and the union were pretty evenly matched," LeFever said. "But the UAW was able to halt (GM) and ultimately exhaust the company."

That strike stopped all of GM’s North American manufacturing operations. This current strike at five American Axle plants has shut or partially idled up to 30 GM factories and numerous other supplier facilities.

But American Axle’s other factories in the United States and Mexico are running, which, along with improved manufacturing flexibility, has helped key GM assembly lines running. Production of GM’s large trucks and SUVs has been affected, but the company’s other vehicles are still being built.

Government stays out

Financial peril and government involvement helped resolve some of the UAW’s other historically long strikes, but that hasn’t happened at American Axle.

A 1982-1983 strike against heavy equipment manufacturer Caterpillar Inc. put the company on the brink of collapse and nearly exhausted the UAW’s strike fund.

"It was like two punch drunk boxers," LeFever said. "Both sides ran out of ability to fight any more."

In the 1960s, the right of workers to organize forced Congressional hearings that helped spark progress in a labor dispute against Wisconsin-based home furnishings maker Kohler Co.

Other strikes have also drawn the attention of state and federal officials, which have eventually pushed both sides to compromise. The only public official to visit the American Axle plant in Detroit so far has been Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick.

Dynamics have changed

Compared to the 1970 walkout, a different union and industry are fighting the current strike. Then, some 400,000 GM workers walked off the job, today the entire UAW has less than 500,000 members.

In 1970, GM was the world’s largest employer and controlled about half of the U.S. automotive market. Last month, GM’s market share dipped to 21 percent, according to Autodata.

Those dynamics have shifted the union’s fight in recent years from pushing for more benefits and wages to mitigating losses.

"Union-represented companies no longer produce the majority of the world’s cars," Shaiken said. The strike is reaching a point where its length is moving from being a motivating force to settle, to a reason to keep on fighting, he said.

"A strike is an economic test of wills," he said. "But once they are out two months, in some way, strikes become more reluctant to give up on initial goals."

The prolonged American Axle strike has taken a toll.

Last month, American Axle said its first quarter sales were down $132.6 million as a result of the strike, and blamed the walkout for driving its bottom line into the red. GM said the impact of the strike contributed $800 million toward its $3.3 billion first quarter loss.

For strikers like Steve Conner living on $200 a week in strike pay means paying for $40 worth of gas with change he collected around his Madison Heights home.

"Mac and cheese and hot dogs getting to be a staple," he said for him, and his family of nine. But struggling financially isn’t pushing Conner to call for an end to the strike.

"If we took the cuts they are asking for, I’d eventually be in this position financially anyways," he said. "So we might as well stay out. At least this way I have hope."