This article is from WeChat public account: Economic Observer Observer (ID: eeoobserver)< span class = "text-remarks">, author: Linda, cover: Oriental IC
Looking at the labor-management interaction in the documentary “American Factory”, I feel a little touched. The positive experience and negative lessons of the first-time country can be used for reference. Therefore, I would like to talk about the behind-the-scenes story related to the “American Factory”.
The documentary was taken at the beginning of Fuyao. The plant is still losing money until it stops. That is also the most strenuous running-in period for the Chinese and American personnel in the factory. The documentary presents a long-established industry union UAW(United Automobile Workers) trying to enter Fuyao, but ultimately failed The twists and turns of the process.
Fu Yao and UAW confrontation
According to the law, 30% of employees need to vote “interested” before the union can vote for the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) Application. “Interested” does not mean “authorization to the union”, but this threshold is very low, the union usually can get the authorization card directly: “Agree to authorize UAW to represent me collectively”, this is called “card inspection program(card-checkprocess)“.
In the early days of the factory, Cao Dewang said that Fuyao had no trade union issues because only 10% of the unions were interested. He apparently underestimated the mobilization ability of the union. FuyaoJust built a factory, UAW rented an office in the vicinity, gearing up, ready to enter. This is an action supported by the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA).
UAW gradually strives to get Fuyao employees to meet outside the factory and encourage them to talk about business issues. There are many dissatisfied workers in Fuyao, an inexperienced Chinese-funded enterprise. After several instigations, the number of “signing cards” quickly rose. On October 16, 2017, I finally crossed the 30% voting threshold.
UAW launched a general 46,000 workers strike in September this year
In order to reject UAW, Fuyao began to mobilize fully. The supervisor convened a meeting: First, a salary increase, showing corporate rewards; second, a sentence on the screen of the venue: “Do you know? Fuyao has a good welfare package, you don’t have to The union fee was paid!” The documentary filmed the bulletin board: “Understanding the truth, voting against it”. There are two points in the following: one is to list the employee’s income and benefits; the other is to remind the union to charge. “Does UAW increase its membership by a quarter in 2014, and will it rise again? If it will rise, when?” After a 25% increase in 2014, UAW charges are two and a half hours a month.
Get a starting salary of $14, which is about $400 a year. If the salary is high, it will increase. At first glance, the charges are not high. In the United States, as long as there is a job, there will be basic guarantees, but in addition to paying taxes, workers still have some fixed expenses that cannot be avoided. General American families don’t have any deposits, and they don’t even have the most basic savings. Therefore, the union’s membership fees are expenses that some workers cannot ignore.
The company also allows employees to attend LRI(Laboratory Relations Institute) lectures, an organization that helps companies block unions. theyIt will be emphasized that the collective contract of the trade union may be better treated, or it may be worse than today. The negotiation of the contract by the trade union depends on the specific situation. If the enterprise is still losing money, the negotiation space is small, and the result may not be better. False statements are prohibited by law, and these statements by LRI are also true. It’s just that they won’t mention that unions usually have the ability to push up treatment. Another issue is strikes, and LRI emphasizes that it is legal for employers to find permanent replacements during strikes.
The theme of the lecture is to express that Fuyao’s treatment is higher than the local average. Collective contracts may not reach higher goals. You may lose your job when you strike. If so, how many yuan do you pay each year?
The LRI line has been criticized, so they are usually very cautious. If a worker asks: “Do you mean that I should vote against it?” Their answer is generally: “Vot as you wish.” And if you answer “should vote against it,” it is illegal, and the recording can be used as evidence. Will be prosecuted by the union.
UAW emphasizes that unions are good for workers, and LRI emphasizes the downside. The fact that they choose facts and figures, plus persuasion skills, does make some middle-position workers change their minds.
The law stipulates that before the vote, it is illegal for companies to spy on employees and threaten to dismiss, downgrade, and change jobs for union supporters. Before Fuyao voted, Cao Dewang once said to the management, “If the trade union comes in, I will not do it.” If he said this to the workers, it is also illegal to “use the factory to threaten workers to give up the choice of trade unions.” Fortunately, he is talking to the management privately, but it is another matter.
The documentary mentioned that Fuyao paid more than $1 million for LRI and blocked UAW entry. In order to gain access to Fuyao, UAW also has a lot of investment, such as renting offices, meeting places, paying employees’ salaries, and asking foreign members to support them. The capital investment of both parties is legal. UAW is strong and will not lose money. It costs millions of dollars to enter the company, and it is not new.
Voting in early November 2017, the law is an unregistered election, NLRB supervises and participates in the counting of votes. The result came out, 444 votes in favor, 868 votes against, and the vote was less than half, UAW failed to enter Fuyao. This confrontation has come to an end. According to US law, UAW believes that when conditions are ripe, it can make a comeback.
Trade union membership fees are expenses that some workers cannot ignore
Historical Origins of American Enterprises and Trade Unions
American law guarantees freedom of association, but why is there so much trouble in setting up a trade union that the final result is still not achieved? The reason is that modern unions and free associations in the United States are not the same thing.
Generally speaking, the trade union should be a spontaneous organization of workers, and several times become a major trade union and a national cross-industry trade union. The traditional trade unions were formed in this way, and their existence was much earlier than the emergence of the National Labor Relations Commission. The modern trade unions are different, which is the result of nearly two hundred years of tug-of-war between enterprises and trade unions.
The beginning of the industrial revolution, enterprises are absolutely strong, and workers are forced to organize to protect their rights. After fierce confrontation, in the 1870s, some companies had asked employees to sign a “no union” guarantee when they joined the company. This is the so-called “yellow dog agreement.” Since 1887, 16 states have legislated that the “Yellow Dog Agreement” is illegal.
But in 1917, the Federal Supreme Court succumbed to “whether the state has the power to legislate to intervene in the free contract between employers and employees,” in the case of “HitchmanCoal & CokeCo.vsMitchell”, ruling that employers have the right to ask workers to sign “not to join the union” guarantee . It was not until 1932 that the federal legislation (Norris-LaGuardiaAct) completely banned the “Yellow Dog Agreement.”
At the time, the “closed factory (closeshop) was legal, that is, the union could force the company to hire only union members. “Trade union factory (Unionshop)” is also legal, that is, the employer canEmploying a non-member, but after being hired within the specified period (such as 30 days), must join the union, otherwise dismissal. During the First World War, trade unions developed rapidly, forcing most companies in some cities to become “closed factories” and enterprises lost their freedom of employment. After the war, some companies joined forces to launch the “open factory (openshop) campaign, which requires companies to hire anyone and ask the union not to Receive fees for non-members.
In the 1930s, labor-management conflicts became the norm in American society. Labor struggled to protect their own interests, and it also caused a lot of violent conflicts and social unrest. All of this, after the social changes, the law can not keep up. In 1935, Congress introduced the first National Labor Relations Act (Wagner Act), the first time at the federal level to confirm union rights, collective bargaining and strike rights. Legislators hope that with the concentration of large trade unions, collective bargaining, signing collective contracts, preventing scattered trade unions from getting out of control and reducing social unrest.
Under this wish, the Wagner Act established today’s centralized union: once it enters the enterprise, it has the right to represent all workers, making the big union a full-time negotiation recognized by the NLRB and legally “representable”. mechanism. The trade union movement became the most offensive sport of the time, and the society continued to be turbulent.
Wagner Act for the first time at the federal level to confirm union rights, collective bargaining and strike rights
The judicial branch has since tried a series of precedents. For example, the adoption of new equipment and new technologies by enterprises has been an important cause of labor conflicts. In the case of the Austin v. Paint Union in 1941, the Michigan Supreme Court ruled that: Trade unions cannot refuse new equipment as long as they do not harm the safety and health of workers. In the same year, the Federal Supreme Court ruled that if violence was used during a strike, the right to strike was lost. But violenceAnd strikes, or in a long period of time.
The wartime measures of the Second World War have caused companies to stop paying wages and workers are dissatisfied. After the truce in 1945, a general strike occurred at the end of the year. By the beginning of 1946, there had been 5,000 major industry strikes, which strongly affected the post-war economy. In 1946, Congress amended the Wagner Act, which prohibited the “indirect boycott” of strikes. That is, trade unions could not strike together with unrelated enterprises, and they could not unite all strikes in various industries across the country to avoid unnecessary economic losses.
The Wagner Act is an essential shift in American trade unions, from a voluntary portfolio to an independent external entity. When entering the enterprise, it means all the workers, and the workers who are not willing to be represented must also surrender their representatives. On the contrary, when the trade unions fail to pass the “entry” threshold, the workers who are willing to join the trade unions Negative. This change also caused contradictions at the legal level: it was intended to create a strong organization to protect the weak individuals, but they were forced to surrender important personal rights. Are workers still free to associate and form a small union to negotiate collectively? Actually not. If the UAW has the right to collective bargaining in the statutory automobile industry, the auto workers will not have the legal right to negotiate.
Because modern labor unions have the power to transfer the right of individual negotiating to all employees, the law will have procedural rules for unions to enter the enterprise, and must be “most invited” rather than “representing workers”.
See the contradiction of “how to cut a big cake” from the general strike
The advantage of legislation and law enforcement to resolve labor-management contradictions is that it has become more “public business” and reduced direct conflicts. But can the law solve all the problems? It’s a pity, no. The law has a one-size-fits-all feature, which is more suitable for solving workplace safety, working hours calculations, etc., but more complicated corporate management, the law can not cope.
Inextricable labor relations, usually both parties have reasonable interests, but their respective requirements are fundamentally conflicting.
At present, the core content of collective bargaining is corporate treatment: medical care, hourly wages, and pensions. The contract is generally four years, and within four years, the hourly wage increases at a prescribed rate.
Welfares are mainly pensions or retirement plans, health insurance, and often negotiating. The United States has a social insurance fund (socialsecurity), some old companies continueThe welfare of World War II maintained the corporate pension and the employees had double retirement income. With the increase in medical expenses and the increase in people’s life expectancy, the pressure on social insurance funds has increased, and the invisible burden on enterprises has also increased.
There are two similar companies near my home, one without a union, and one with a union of nearly a hundred years. On the hourly wage, the former is higher; the latter is promoted by the union for a long time, and the pension is very good, but after cutting off the benefits, the company cannot provide a higher hourly wage. There are no trade unions that have the right to reduce welfare and increase hourly wages. When recruiting, the latter is always more difficult to recruit good employees than the former. Young employees only look at hourly wages, cash can solve the current situation, not to mention that they have no plans to work in this business for a lifetime, and no matter how good the pension is.
A strike may occur when unions and companies disagree on “how to cut a big cake.”
The UAW, which did not enter Fuyao, launched the general (GM) 46,000 workers’ strike on September 16 this year. Workers are easily persuaded: in recent years, GM’s profits have increased dramatically, with a total profit of $27.5 billion in four years. Of course, more workers should be shared and salary benefits should be increased. GM retains lower-paid temporary workers and is still closing factories. It should be required to cancel the factory shutdown plan and not allow the factory to be moved overseas. This is the perspective of the UAW.
And many professionals believe that the traditional American auto industry is “wintering.” The old models are quickly eliminated, new technologies are emerging, and electric vehicles and autonomous driving are developing rapidly. Car rookies emerge in an endless stream: Tesla is aggressive, and recently built a large factory in Shanghai Expressway; Google announced an autopilot cooperation program, the new plant is on the side of the GM closed factory. GM needs transformation, but the bigger the company and the longer its history, the more difficult it is to transform. This is a business perspective.
The angles of view between the employer and the employee are different, and the time period for the legitimate interests of both parties is different. At one point in time, it is difficult to give a judgment: Does the enterprise really need funds to develop further, or does it create an excuse to refuse to share benefits with workers? Enterprises are conservatively looking at the situation, causing workers to lose their due benefits, or to meet the demands of trade unions at the moment. In the future market competition, they may be forced to leave overseas or go bankrupt. This kind of big problem is complicated and complicated in the environment of increasing global competition, accelerated technological changes, and changing markets and policies.
Unfortunately, if the negotiations cannot reach a consensus, the last step is still the old way of a hundred years ago – strike. It is unfortunate to say that because the strike is just a fight for money, it has nothing to do with “which side is more reasonable.” Enterprises consume funds that stop production losses, and trade unions consumeThe cost of working for a blonde worker is to see who can’t hold it first. The winner is a more affordable party, and not necessarily the “right party.”
Compared with trade unions, companies seem to have strong capital, but strike companies lose much more, usually as a surrender. As a balance, the law allows employers to find substitutes. But for modern companies, this law does not make any sense. Where can I find 46,000 substitutes and get trained immediately?
There are many unexpected factors that will also influence the decision of both sides of the game. Before the GM strike, I chatted with experienced friends and was told: “You watched, this time you can’t escape the strike.” The reason is that the UAW high-level corruption case is expanding. During the UAW and GM negotiations, Vance Pearson, the top UAW director, was sued for allegedly embezzling the union funds and other six charges, bringing the current chairman and former chairman of the UAW. Some media mentioned that UAW may perform particularly hard to dispel the growing mistrust of members. Regardless of whether the speculation is justified, the general workers not only went on strike, but also the longest strike since 1973.
According to the “Anderson Economics” estimate, GM’s daily strike loss is $90 million. The lowest estimate I have seen is that GM will lose more than $2 billion. According to the law, during the strike, enterprises can stop paying wages and suspend the injection of funds into the medical insurance fund. Workers are paid by UAW for the strike-based blonde living expenses, and the strike fund comes from daily dues. A few years ago, the strike fund was as high as $1 billion, and it was $760 million before the strike.
The strike is always lost. This strike indirectly affects the sales, spare parts, repair, transportation and other industries. GM has 1,000 suppliers in the US and can only reduce its business. The wage losses of those non-struck workers who are indirectly affected increase with time. According to the “Anderson Economics” estimate, the total loss in the third week is about 18 million US dollars per day, and the fourth week is about 25 million dollars per day, which is much higher than the daily total wage loss of strike workers, and it is not compensated. It is estimated that the strike has also resulted in the unemployment of thousands of indirectly affected workers.
The strike of the general workers is also difficult to estimate. The salary increase rate obtained was not obtained in 2015. Other gains, GM, of course, estimate the gains and losses in advance, and the inevitable expenditures in this negotiation are compensated elsewhere for savings. In the end, GM insisted on shutting down several factories, and the workers who were shut down in the factory lost their unemployment benefits, and some of them also benefited from the interests of the strikers.
The trade-offs in legislation
The most important part of a collective contract is usually the hourly salary scale for each type of work in each department. The same salary for the same kind of work is the most basic sign of the trade union. Enterprises can’t adjust employees’ hourly wages according to their ability and performance. It is illegal to “unauthorize” salary increases and bonuses. This is equivalent to canceling the reward and punishment system, which will make the company lose its vitality. It has become one of the most important reasons for the tension between modern trade unions and enterprises, and it is also the reason why many workers oppose trade unions.
People and people are different, and reasonable interests are different: some employees just need to be mixed with retirement; some employees seek stability and value retirement protection; some employees hope to work actively, even work overtime, in exchange for more High income, more work and more, quickly accumulate a fund; some core employees want to show their ability, get high rewards and bonus incentives, and also gain a sense of work accomplishment.
These all reasonable but hugely different interests are smeared by undifferentiated hourly wages. In the long run, there is no competition among employees, and enterprises must lose their vitality. The “threatility” of trade unions also forces union-free enterprises to maintain the benefits of good employees as much as possible in order to prevent unions from entering. Such a beating is justified, of course, not a benign model.
Since both labor and capital conflicts have a reasonable side, legislation must consider balance, but often it is not enough. As the law requires, an employer cannot dismiss an employee because of a strike; however, the employer has the right to find someone to permanently replace the striker. For enterprises that can find a strike for a job, this circumstance can be directly understood as “a strike can be dismissed”; although the law stipulates that the owner cannot threaten the employee before the union vote, “the union will come in, I will shut down the factory”. However, it is legal for the trade unions to come in, and it is legal for the enterprises to close immediately.
The basic legislation is also contradictory. The National Labor Relations Act stipulates that employees have the right to organize and join (or not) unions . However, it has legalized the “exclusive agency union” that the winners have taken, and the former individual rights have been mutated or even lost.
So why not completely repair the law, to restore the traditional trade union organization, willing to participate in the participation, do not want to participate in the non-participation? An important concern is that since the last resort of labor-management is to “scrape money,” only centralized labor unions can accumulate huge sums of money and strike economic wars.
The proportion of American union members has been low, and in the highest 1950s, only 30% and 35% of employees were covered. In 1983, union membership accounted for 20.1% of employees and fell to 10.5% in 2018. Among them, the public sector (publicsector) employees have a high proportion of members, accounting for more than 30%, they are public school teachers, government agencies employees Such as police, postman, etc. In the private sector (privateector), only 6.4% of employees are union members. If the pattern of today is weakened, there will be concerns that the union will accelerate its decline.
There is a lot of labor and bloodshed conflict in history. Looking back, one legislation can avoid many bloody conflicts. But the first time I encountered a problem, it was often unclear. The Federal Supreme Court also struggled for a long time in confusion: Can it “legislatively intervene in the original contract of labor and management”? Should legislation follow legal logic or respond to social needs? To what extent? These problems have not been completely resolved today.
Sometimes, you may get wrong conclusions, or you may have iterations, but careful thinking and entanglement are needed. It puts a brake on the blindness of society.
Progress in Labor Safety
Trade unions should protect labor safety, modern trade unions shrink sharply, and who will protect labor safety?
In the documentary, a manager reported to Cao Dewang: OSHA suggested that the arrangement here is too tight and needs to be rescheduled. This OSHA is the Occupational Safety and Health Administration under the Federal Labor Department. In 1970, Congress passed the Occupational Safety and Health Act, established OSHA as the executive body, and has offices throughout the United States to formulate rules, supervise execution, and have the power to impose penalties.
Fuyao is the first time to build a factory in the United States. There is no experience in recruiting and managing. At the beginning, everything was handed over to the US CEO, but the non-person, they ignored the safety management system.
Pre-OSHA Supervisor, Professor David Michaels of George Washington University said: “Generally, the old factory may have various safety problems, such as the old equipment damage is not repaired in time. The new plant equipment is new, The safety system will be in place at the time of construction. Fuyao actually has no safety management system, which is shocking. We are surprised that a new factory will have such a security problem.”
OSHA has been established for nearly 50 years, and the safety management system has long been a common sense of the company. After that, OSHA issued a $226,000 ticket to Fuyao. Professor David Michaels said: “This is a big fine. OSHA generally does not open a large ticket. More than 200,000 US dollars is very rare. It is based on the risk of violations, indicating the safety of Fuyao at the time. Very serious.”
In March 2016, Fuyao and OSHA reached a settlement, with Fuyao taking out $7 million to improve safety and OSHA reducing the ticket to $100,000. Professor Michaels said: Fuyao promises to “establish a safety management system, let workers have their own voices, meet regularly to listen to workers’ opinions, and make safety improvements. Deal more seriously with safety issues. OSHA encourages factories to establish higher security than legal requirements. Measures. In my opinion, this is a better result.”
Professor Michaels also said: “(high penalty) is a good lesson for Fuyao, but its security problem is impossible There is still a long way to go to solve it right away.” This is really a talk of experience! At the end of July 2019, Fuyao still had a series of security violations, and was again issued a ticket of $724,000. The same history of American factories has gone along the way, from high fines to low fines and zero fines.
In addition, the state also has a strict Labor Compensation Law, which specifies the compensation for the injured in the workplace, specifically the amount of injuries to the fingers and toes, covering medical, rehabilitation, mental injury after injury, long-term physical injury. Influence and so on. If the injury is a corporate responsibility, after the compensation, the employee can file a civil lawsuit, and the lawsuit does not have to pay legal fees. There is evidence that it is illegal to operate, as well as disability compensation and medical care. But in the end, this can be the reason for dismissal, the loss caused by illegal operation, and the life of others and others.
Legislative is easy. It is difficult to have a group of agencies that can perform their duties and strict enforcement in various places, such as the federal OSHA, the state labor committees, the labor compensation management office, and so on. At the same time, there must be clear channels between workers and these institutions. According to the statistics of the Ministry of Labor, among the private companies in the United States, the proportion of employees in the workplace is 5.0% from 1983.It was reduced to 2.8% in 2017. In the same period, the proportion of union members fell by half, covering only 6.4% of private companies.
Conclusion
From the average median, the wages and hourly wages of union members in the United States are generally higher than those of non-members. The non-member salary is only 80% of the members. This is also the result that the union has always been proud of. But this transcript has its special features. Most of the members are government employees. It is easy to push up the treatment and the government will not go bankrupt.
On private enterprise trade unions, such as UAW, the big reason is that the “one-year-old shop” of GM is maintained, and the salary has been pushed down for a long time. However, under globalization, even if UAW enters Fuyao, it is difficult to introduce the same high hourly wages.
The same car, Tesla hit out; German Nissan came in, most of the incoming UAW blocked out of the factory, there is no universal burden and strike threat. GM wants to survive, of course, thinks that Mexico is right next to it, is it not to move out? Really want to move, no one can stop it. Therefore, under globalization, it is unclear whether these enterprises will improve their treatment and whether they will be a curse or a blessing to the long-term interests of enterprises and workers.
In the history of the United States, there are various kinds of legislation and jurisprudence involving labor relations, which are constantly repeated and swaying. It is not accurate to simply describe this swing as a black and white confrontation. A black-and-white way of thinking may also add unnecessary sharp confrontation. Now, more people can understand that labor and management are more interdependent and need to be balanced in addition to opposition.
However, because both employers and employees have their own legitimate but sharply opposite interests, how to balance becomes a problem. It seems that it is not a trade union, it can be solved simply. It is very likely that it is a puzzle without a solution.
This article is from WeChat public account: Economic Observer Observer (ID: eeoobserver)< Span class="text-remarks ">, Author: Linda