From: au329@cleveland.Freenet.Edu (Ronda Hauben)
Subject: Computers vrs Factory Closures:4 Years of the Amateur Computerist
Followup-To: alt.activism.d
Originator: rich@pencil.cs.missouri.edu
Organization: Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, OH (USA)
Date: Fri, 10 Apr 1992 18:05:19 GMT

   Following is the opening editorial of the Winter/Spring '92
issue of the Amateur Computerist Newsletter. Comments are welcome on
the issue of developing technology vrs closing factories, the 
need for an uncensored press, etc. Send them via email or to address
that follows article. Also, we welcome submissions, letters to 
the editor, etc.
 
WELCOME TO THE WONDERFUL WORLD OF COMPUTERS
             vrs
       PLANT CLOSURES GM STYLE
4 Years of the Amateur Computerist Newsletter
 
(Editor's Note: With this issue the Amateur Computerist begins its
5th year of publication. Also, we are including in this issue, a
complete index of back issues.)
 
   February 11, 1988 was the first issue of the Amateur
Computerist. The issue was "dedicated to the Flint Sit Down
pioneers on the victory of their battle to win industrial unionism
51 years ago." ("Dedication", vol I, no 1)
   In our first issue, we wrote: "There was an effort by
administrators of the UAW-Ford program at the Dearborn Engine Plant
to kill interest in computers and computer programming. We want to
keep interest alive because computers are the future."
("Introduction", vol I,no 1)
   One UAW pioneer, Jack Palmer, in summing up the heritage the
sitdowners were passing on, wrote: "Each generation has to solve
its own problems. The sit-down generation solved the problem of organiz-
ation. The postwar (W.W.II-ed) generation solved the problem of pensions
and inflation. Not entirely, but a good start was begun. The present
generation is faced with the greatest problems of all. They are
Automation, Peace and Politics." (from the Searchlight, newspaper
of UAW Local 659, Flint, MI, April 21, 1960, p.2, quoted in
"Dedication", vol. I, no. 1). The Amateur Computerist is an effort
to carry forward the torch  passed on by the sitdowners - the need
to solve the problem of automation.
   The welcoming of this newsletter by Floyd Hoke-Miller, a pioneer
of the Flint Sitdown Strike, demonstrated that there was a
continuum between the Sitdown generation and the current genera-
tion. In his article, "Dawn of A New Era," Floyd wrote, "From the
Great Wall to the Great Pyramid, from the hieroglyphics to the
screen of the computer, mankind is still progressing. So make the
new born science, that has given us the computer for the amateur
and not as a prerogative of the professional to be shrouded in se-
crecy from humanity, the choice of the individual, not an election
of a minority. (vol I,no. 1)
   But what has happened in the past 4 years? Has automation in the
auto industry made any headway? Has the use of computers and
computer education gone forward?
   In February, 1992, GM announced plans for massive layoffs and
plant closings in North America. The high price of automobiles in
the U.S. shows that the problem of automation in the auto industry
has not been solved. Instead there have been disincentives to the
introduction of new technology in the U. S. auto industry similar
to those that led to the unraveling of the Soviet Union's so called
"command economy." A recent article in Fortune Magazine (vol. 125,
no. 1 January 13, 1992 "Can GM Remodel Itself?" by Alex Taylor III)
describes GM's inability to utilize new technology. "For example,"
Taylor writes, "GM put $77 billion into new plants and equipment to
reduce labor costs....Some robots it acquired in the mid-1980s
stand unused today. The highly automated equipment never delivered
the promised savings because GM did not train workers properly to
use it, and... failed to design new models for easy robot
assembly."(pg 34)
   As articles in previous issues of the Amateur Computerist have
shown, investment in the U.S. auto industry in the 1980's was not
in automation that would result in less labor being needed to
produce an automobile. No effort was made to reduce the price of a
car so more people could afford to buy cars.
   Instead, U.S. autos were downsized and redesigned, and some of
auto company profits were used to set up so called "joint"
labor-management labor relations programs or to invest in other
companies or abroad. (See for example, "Labor Relations Hoax", vol
2, no. 4) U.S. auto companies instituted a plethora of cost cutting
initiatives which removed the incentive for investment in new
technology. For a company to invest in modern technology, labor
saving devices must cost less than the labor they are replacing.
(See "Shorter Hours Are Needed....", vol 2, no. 3) 
   Record profits had been reported in the industry in the 1980s.
Yet Wall Street analysts like Maryann Keller sharply criticized new
technology being introduced into companies like GM. Instead GM
adopted the model of Japanese labor relations introduced into
Toyota in the 1950s. This model had been developed based on
research that GM conducted during a 1947 labor relations experiment
which they called the "My Jobs Contest." (See "When Will Their
Walls Come Tumbling Down," vol 3 no. 1) Once again in the 1980s and
now in the 1990s such labor relations schemes are being heralded as
the savior of a "failing General Motors" and as a model for the
rest of U.S. industry. For example, the design for GM's new Saturn
plant was premised on GM's commitment to making labor more intense
rather than introducing labor saving technology. As a description
of Saturn explains:
   "In Saturn, we believe that to automate... does not make good
business sense. When you consider the capital investment required
for robots or other automated systems, you have to look at the
variable labor cost as an alternative. Automated equipment is
limited! On the other hand, people, if properly trained, can and
have taken costs out of an operation when given the opportunity."
(Joseph F. Malotke, Labor Law Journal, Aug. 1985,p. 568)
   GM's Saturn model is a reversal of lessons learned over the past
50 years about the social benefits of new machinery. As Howard
Foster, a UAW pioneer in Flint, describing the benefits of modern
machinery, explained: "When mass production methods were introduced
in the automobile industry, the price of cars went down. This was
because the labor time on each car was greatly reduced. Yet we auto
workers got higher wages through our union." (See "Technology: To
Develop or Stagnate," vol 1, no 2)
  In opposition to similar labor relations experiments, G.M. auto
workers in Flint, MI, in 1947-48, successfully campaigned for wage
increases that would match inflation. Their battle against GM
management and the UAW International Union officialdom who opposed
such wage increases, was victorious. Thus pattern setting wage
increases known as C.O.L.A. (Cost of Living Adjustment) and A.I.F.
(Annual Improvement Factor) were introduced into the UAW-GM con-
tract in 1948. These wage increases made it profitable for GM to
introduce new machinery and update production methods in GM
plants.(See "Technology, to Develop or Stagnate" vol I,no 2)
   By 1950, contract language describing the A.I.F. affirmed the
social desirability of using new technology to decrease the labor
needed to produce an auto. The 1950 GM-UAW contract granted workers
a wage increase based "on technological progress, better tools,
methods, processes and equipment and a cooperative attitude on the
part of all parties in such progress. It further recognizes the
principle that to produce more with the same amount of human effort
is a sound and economic and social objective." (See "Upcoming
Elections and Computers," vol. I, no.3)
   Union-management jointness experiments of the 1980s are a
violation of the principle "that to produce more is a sound and
economical objective." The UAW-Ford National Development and
Training Center founded in 1982, and similar experiments at GM and
Chrysler, are labor relations experiments. Their aim is to "promote
training, retraining and development activities," instead of
"technological progress, better tools, processes and equipment,"
(See "Labor Relations Hoax," vol. 2, no. 4) 
   Because their aim is not education in high technology, there was
a battle at the Dearborn Engine Plant over the cancellation of
computer programming classes. UAW members wrote: "How can UAW
members be trained in high technology by cutting computer classes
out...we sent letters everywhere. We are tired of being denied
benefits we're entitled to. We are tired of being shuffled from one
person to another to cover up who we're fighting...we can't sit
back and let happen at the Rouge what has happened at GM - the
wholesale closing of plants...WE NEED AN INVESTIGATION INTO WHAT IS
GOING ON IN THE UAW FORD PROGRAM at the Dearborn Engine Plant. (See
"When Will Their Walls Come Down, vol. 3, no. 1)
   In a subsequent issue of the Amateur Computerist, Floyd
Hoke-Miller contributed articles explaining why there is more
thinking needed among those who do the work of the society. "We, as
the working class," he wrote, "are the `low men on the totem pole'
or like Atlas `bearing the world on our shoulders'." (See "Pass the
Profits, Please," vol. 1, no. 2) He championed the need for fewer
hours of work to have any benefit from new technology and reminded
workers that they are still working at least the same 8 hour day
"gained by a hard struggle of the transportation unions prior to
W.W.I." (Ibid., See also "Shorter Hours are Needed for Computers to
Benefit Labor", vol 2, no. 3)
   The problem of the 1990s is similar to the problem of the early
post W.W.II years - how to utilize significant new technological
developments to make life better for the people of the society.
Large scale industry needs to be under some form of social control
and strict regulation for technological progress to serve the
society.
   The birth of the personal computer in 1974 and its development
and evolution into the 1990s has put the promise of a better world
on the horizon for people in the U.S. and around the world. At the
computer classes at the Ford Rouge Plant, before the programming
classes were cancelled to make way for the labor relations
experiments that replaced them, one auto worker wrote: "Welcome to
the Wonderful World of the Computer." The cancelling of those
classes in 1987 has made clear that that wonderful world cannot be
gained by going backward to ever more labor intensive production,
(i.e. speed up), less and less manufacturing capacity (shortages),
and ever increasing prices. This is the economic program that U.S.
corporations and the U.S. government are promoting in Eastern
Europe and the result is massive human hardship and economic
dislocation. This economic program will result in the same economic
dislocations in the U.S. economy as are currently plaguing Eastern
Europe.
   Thus once again, as in the immediate post W.W.II period, there
are serious economic problems in the U.S. and the world. There is
a need to have auto workers and others, particularly those who work
in large scale industry, consider and debate the economic problems
of our times. History has shown that this is the only way that
solutions which lead the society forward can be found. Prohibitions
against workers writing in their local union newspapers to prevent
public criticisms of trade union officials or policies, as exist in
the UAW, need to be overturned. (See for example Convention Pro-
ceedings of 1951 UAW Convention and UAW Public Review decisions
like No. 888, Bier vrs. Local Union 2500 Executive Board, UAW, and
No. 238, Plyer vrs. Local 599 (1961)) 
   As Carl Johnson, a UAW pioneer explained, auto workers are
capable of solving the problems facing them if they have access to
organs of free discussion. Johnson wrote: "If local union publi-
cations...provide the ranks with a freer discussion which alone can
prepare the ranks for the fight which is sure to be plenty tough,
then we need not worry too much, for American labor proved in '36
and '37 that it can move fast and furiously when it knows where to
go."(Carl Johnson, "Only More Democracy Can Save Democracy," Feb.
1, 1945, The Searchlight, UAW Local 659, Flint)
   Describing the important role to be filled by an uncensored
labor press, he wrote,"If the Labor press does not try to give
Labor the whole truth, where will Labor get it? This, of course,
raises the question: Who is right about Labor's destiny? Certainly
we can't rely on the capitalist press to tell us, for it is obvious
that their interest is the opposite of Labor's interest. But who,
from the ranks of Labor? Let them all speak -- that's what Free
Speech was intended for! Let them all present their view in a
forum. From that the reader will have a fair chance to decide."
(Ibid., Oct. 29, 1949)
   Once again, in 1992, there is the need for access to the uncen-
sored local union newspaper. This tradition was pioneered by auto
workers in Flint in the 1940's to carry on the militant Spirit of
the Sit Down Strike, the  "Spirit of '37." This press made it
possible for those who do the work of the society to be able to
analyze the current problems and debate the way forward. This
uncensored labor press no longer exists, but computer bulletin
boards across the U.S. and the world are providing access to uncen-
sored discussion so the momentous problems of our times can be
debated and analyzed.  On computer bulletin boards like Usenet
News, MNET (Ann Arbor, MI), etc., such discussion is now taking
place. (We plan to include articles describing this important
development in future issues.) Also, there is a need for education,
independent of large corporate employers like GM or Ford, and for
a press to express a working class voice, independent, as well, of
any censorship from union officials. To this end the Amateur Comp-
uterist is dedicated and we need and welcome your participation in
helping to create this independent voice so as to be able to gain
the fruits of the computer revolution for those who do the work of
this society.
   Floyd Hoke-Miller, a pioneer of the Flint Sitdown Strike wrote
the following poem as part of his commitment to the need for an
uncensored press:
 
 Voice of the Chevrolet Worker
It matters not what bossman say,
How much they rant and rave
Their Sunday suit and higher pay,
Do not exclude the grave.
***
The wage-slaves toil at their behest,
Producing only by their word
There's no denying one request,
Their voices must be heard.
***
They know quite well that bankermen, men,
And owners of the tools 
Connive with pie cards when they can,can,
To treat the laborers as fools.
***
Their language may not stand all 
  tests,
But let them have their say
For on their backs the burden rests,
They MAKE the Chevrolet.
     by Floyd Hoke-Milleerr
 
 
-- 
Ronda Hauben  Amateur Computerist Newsletter
P.O. Box 4344   other email addr:ae547@yfn.ysu.edu
Dearborn, MI 48126

Newsgroups: misc.activism.progressive