Jointness Position

An Analysis Of The Jointness Program At GM

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The Promise Breakers

More than a decade ago, the Jointness Partnership Program was introduced to UAW members with great fanfare. The jointness program was to improve the quality of life on the job; to empower workers at the work place in the decision making process, and to lead to greater job security. It was supposed to replace "adversarial union' and bring about a cooperative partnership between the union and the company. It was touted as a workers empowering movement. The 54 day, 1998 GM strike demonstrates that jointness fails in its stated purpose.

What follows is an analysis of the institutions and vast funds generated by G.M.'s Jointness Memorandum Letters and its enormous appointment structure. Operating elusively outside the internal democracy and membership accountability concepts of the UAW Constitution and driven by the union hierarchy’s acceptance of "corporate competitiveness" as central to the collective bargaining agreement.

Jointness does not just exist as an ideological partnership, it has an elaborate structural component that binds the union ever closer to management. As the same time, it will be shown that the corporation has ultimate control of all of the funds and has veto power over all union appointments at the national and local level.

The reality of the jointness agenda that we have operated under during the last decade is that it does not empower rank and file workers, it creates a non-elected, union-supplied management arm, and fails the most basic promise of its establishment, job security.

Breaking the chains of jointness will not be easy. Reestablishing independent democratic unionism along the lines practiced by our brothers and sisters in the Canadian Auto Workers (CAW) can only come about if there is an informed, mobilized UAW rank and file membership.

Attached are two letters of understanding that were in the last G. M. contract (1993-96.) They deal with the jointness program. The operative lines, guiding and enforcing this program are highlighted. The titles are Memorandum of Understanding Jointness Activities and Joint Program Representatives. The G. M. letters are representative of the Big three program contracts..

The Memorandum of Understanding begins by stating 'There is a mutual recognition that .... challenges .... require a fundamental change to maximize the potential of our human resources." This means that the union and company will cooperate to get the maximum work out of labor. The last sentence in that paragraph promises that 'employees" will get " job security" (page257).

We know that when these programs began, the UAW had Approximately one-million autoworker members, who produced 8.9 million cars per year. We now have about 370,000 members in that sector. They produced 9.1 million cars last year. The company has surely maximized "its" human resources but the union has lost half of its membership. In Flint the UAW membership has been reduced from 78,000 workers to 33,000 workers since the introduction of this jointness 'Job security program’. Meanwhile, the union bureaucracy did find job security for itself. The staff in Solidarity House and the international reps are roughly the same size as they were fifteen years ago.

The organizational structure of the jointness program consists of an executive board with co-directors: 1. Vice President of Industrial Relations- General Motors Corporation. 2. Vice President and Director of the UAW's G. M. department (Page 258). With each party supplying an "equal number of persons from their respective organizations as members of the Executive Board."

The method of funding the Jointness activities is outlined in the Memorandum and constitutes negotiated labor costs set-asides for "jointness" that might have otherwise been given directly to all workers in the form of contractual wages or benefits. What the Jointness Memorandum of Understanding does not describe is how these elaborate efforts to "maximize…human resources" will be carried out and what structures will support them.

This is where the business of jointness becomes very murky and elaborate, non-profit, separate corporate structures have been created to shelter the jointness activities of each of the Big-Three auto company-UAW agreements. At GM, which provides the largest example of the jointness apparatus at work, the main vehicle from 1984 until 1995 was the Human Resource Center (HRC) and now, after its third tax status change, the HRC was renamed the Center for Human Resources (CHR).

The GM Center for Human Resources, as it is now called, is set up as a non-profit foundation. Like all non profit organizations their finances can be found in the public tax records. Most of the institutes appointments, with the exception of technical staff, are workers off the production line. These are full time jobs and highly coveted. Appointment to these well paid, full time jobs at the national centers, or regional satellite centers, or in the plants are made by the union consistent with the loyalty to the union’s Administrative Caucus and are subject to the concurrence of the program’s management counterparts.

This key authority is reaffirmed many times in both the memorandum and the letter on representatives. These two have total control over all money expenditures and all job appointments. GM's director has veto power over any program or appointments that the UAW might want to institute. No program can go forward unless the company thinks that it will "maximize... human resources." In this context, "maximize" is a euphemism for speed-up.

The GM.- UAW Director delegates some of the appointments to the UAW regional director, local union president, and shop committee. The General Motor Company's national director and his subordinates have veto power over the union appointments. This is because all actions of the jointness program must be arrived at by mutual consent.


FUNDING OF THE PROGRAM appears on page 261.

The first sentence says, "It is agreed that the corporation WILL MAKE AVAILABLE FUNDING..."

This odd language is designed to obscure the fact that the vast sums generated for the program comes from the workers wage package. It also conceals the fact that there is no mechanism for accountability to the union members as is required by the UAW constitution.


Jointness Fund

JOINTNESS PROGRAM REPRESENTATIVES. Page 414 re-establishes that all power flows from the corporate and UAW vice presidents. On page 415, the chart shows that for each 1,000 workers there will be four appointees, or one appointee for each 250 workers.

The GM-UAW contract provides for one elected in-plant union committeeperson for every 250 workers. Thus the elected union committeepersons are the same number as the appointees outlined in the memorandum. There are some important differences. The elected committeeperson, is restricted to the zone that they represent. Whereas the International Union appointee can roam the plant and can spend their time in the pleasant surroundings of an air conditioned office.

The elected local union committeeperson has the responsibility of representing conflicting views in their constituency. Whereas the appointees of the UAW international bureaucracy, like all political appointees, have as their first responsibility the reelection of their boss. In affect we now have one International overseer for each local union rank and file elected committeeperson.

It took strike action to gain the ratio of one local union committeeperson for 250 workers. Not so for the jointness appointees. The Joint Memorandum provides the ratio of one to 250. Thus the International Union bureaucracy has an extension of about 800 appointees into the local unions at GM. 800 appointees are more people than the UAW's original staff. There are additionally thousands of jointness appointees generated by the National and Reservoir Funds for the Human Resources Centers. What a pork barrel!

The appointive powers of the Vice-President of the UAW in GM and his counter parts in Ford and Chrysler have virtually tripled the size of the UAW International bureaucracy and added a vast number of local union bureaucrats as well. All of these appointees are subject to veto by the corporate personnel departments.


I. Jointness Fund

How many million dollars will the jointness Funding Formula (page 26 1) produce at G.M.?

Let's assume that there are 200,000 employees at GM. working 40 hours per week for 50 weeks per year or 2,000 hours per year.


200,000 workers

2,000 hours worked per year, 400,000,000 total hours worked

x.05 (.05 cents per hour worked for the National Fund)

$20,000,000.00 This is the National Fund. Doubling this amount, or .10 per hour for the Local and Reservoir Fund equals $40,000,000.00.

Thus at a normal 40 hour week per year the $.05 and $. 10 per hour, taken out of workers wages PRODUCES $60,000, 000 PER YEAR- The above is the minimum income created by the jointness formula at straight time.


II Joint Representatives

Page 414 re-establishes that all appointees are authorized by the two vice presidents. Thus the corporate vice president or his underlings have veto power over all union appointees.

Page 415 states that for each 1,000 workers there will be four fun time appointees.

Indeed, the first cost of the Joint Memorandum is the wages of the 800 appointees referred to earlier. At an average auto worker's wage (20.00 an hour) it costs $40,000.00 per year x 800 appointees equals $32,000,000.00.

The national and local funds provide $60,000,000 when workers work a normal work year. When $32,000,000 subtracted from the $60,000,000 for the appointee wages, $28,000,000 is left to start the program as described in the Jointness Memorandum.


III National and Reservoir Overtime Fund

In recent years overtime has become a way of life for auto workers. The sliding scale formula (page 261) which goes from $1.25 to $5.00 per hour of overtime worked, has been referred to as an overtime penalty. It was supposed to discourage overtime. It appears to have done the opposite.

Let us assume that 200,000 UAW-G.M. workers work two hours of overtime per week and 50 weeks per year ( or 100 hours of overtime per year) at $1.25 per hour, they will generate $25,000,000. If however 200,00 workers average 8 hours overtime for 50 weeks at the rate of $5.00 per hour as the sliding scale provides (or 400 hours overtime per year) they will generate $400,000,000. These figures boggle the mind.

The totality of the .05 and .10 plus overtime funds add many hundreds or even thousands of political appointees to the UAW bureaucratic staff, far outnumbering the democratically elected local union officers. This lends itself to political corruption and greatly endangers the democracy that prevailed in the UAW.

It's ironic that millions of dollars taken from the worker's wage package is being used to expand the union bureaucracy and undermine democratic independent unionism.


Let’s get rid of the Jointness Memorandum Program.

The Jointness Memorandum aims to ideologically destroy independent unionism. The appointment of Jointness Representatives allows for an extension of the International bureaucracy into the heart of each local union. Before this appointive ability, all local officers were democratically elected. The invasion of appointees into each local union is anti-democratic and corrupting in that it encourages sucking up to the local and International leadership to be appointed and provides those leaders with a built in "Praetorian Guard" against election challenges and membership meeting democracy.

To reverse this process New Directions and progressive activists should consider the following outline as a union alternative program


UAW - COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT FUND

The UAW community fund is to replace the " Memorandum of Understanding Joint Activities." The UAW GM contract -1993-96 (p262 section d. agreement expiration) outlines provisions for ending the program and negotiating future and accumulated funds. All funds negotiated for the new UAW-Community Development Fund shall be under strict UAW accountability, as established in the constitution for the local unions and the International.

• All programs under the UAW Community Fund shall be introduced through democratic action of the local union. Any programs in the old formula, which local union members found useful would be reintroduced and continued under democratic control of the local.
  
  
• Local unions should develop outreach committees to engage in community activities; such as, child care centers, improving school systems and environmental improvements, etc.. Bring present unionism into social unionism.
  
  
• The local union should elect all personnel for the UAW -Community Development Fund.
  
  
• If there's a need to extend the UAW- Community Development to a regional or national structure, they should be established by locally elected delegate councils. Any jobs for these programs should be distributed proportionately, through democratic elections in the local unions. Technical staff jobs, if needed, should be hired by the elected delegate councils.
  
  
  

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