From: ronda@ais.org (Ronda Hauben)
Subject: Canadian Auto Workers on Reorganiz
Date: Mon, 21 Dec 92 16:10:13 EST
Organization: UMCC
X-Newsreader: TIN [version 1.1 PL6]

[ Article crossposted from misc.activism.progressive ]
[ Author was New Liberation News Service ]
[ Posted on Mon, 14 Dec 1992 07:21:43 GMT ]

/* Written  8:39 pm  Dec 13, 1992 by theorganizer@igc.apc.org in igc:apc.labor */
/* ---------- "Canadian Auto Workers on Reorganiz" ---------- */
Canadian Auto Workers- Union on the reorganization of work

(Following are excerpts from a statement issued by Robert White, president of 
CAW, and CAW Canada earlier this year. Copies of the full statement can be 
obtained by writing Tom Laney, UAW Local 879........................)

This CAW statement on the reorganization of work came abgout following broad 
consultations with CAW local unions and workplace leadership. They reflected 
the stress and insecurity many workers are feeling about massive changes in 
work organization now taking place. These -innovative- programs promoted by 
management take names like team concept, partnership, quality circles, 
kaizening, etc. 
We [do] not support management attempts to use the team concept or quality 
circles, to manage the workplace by stress, to introduce speed up, or to 
encourage workers to discipline each other. We do not accept the inference 
that we are part of management-s team, while other workers in the same 
company, in different companies or in different geographical areas are our 
enemies who must be defeated in the name of competitiveness.
Workers should not be misled into believing that with these so-called new 
programs, management is offering a partnership.
Many of the same employers who promote -partnership- at work are, outside of 
the workplace, actively opposed to every major legislative and social change 
that would benefit working families. That includes proposed legislation on 
health and safety, pay equity, indexed pensions, training and education, 
workers- compensation. At the same time they endorse deregulation and 
privatization, cutbacks on unemployment insurance and social services.
This -partnership- and its promises are false. The truth is that management is 
not about surrendering its power, but of finding more sophisticated ways to 
extend it.
Nor are these changes about creating a more liveable workplace for working 
people. In spite of the rhetoric, the real aims of these programs is to break 
down worker resistance to the changes management wants to implement.
The new management agenda is a sophisticated dirve to combine ideological 
pressures on working people with new structures in the workplace to 
dramatically change both the way workers think and the ways unions respond. 
More specifically, the objective is to replace worker solidarity with total 
identification with the goals of the company.
What we are saying is no to concessions and to structures that undermine union 
solidarity. We reject managerial efforts, under whatever name, which 
jeopardize workers- rights, undermine workplace conditions and erode the 
independence of the union.
[Moreover] the fight against the management agenda in the workplace does not 
exist apart from the larger fight against the business agenda in our society. 
As we mobilize against regressive taxation, the weakening of UI, or plant 
closure legislation, we are reminding our members that the -team- they are on 
is not the same team as their employer, and that the -adversary- is not the 
other workers but those who are on the other side of these issues.

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