After much grassroots online organizing, workers rejected a new contract deal agreed to by their leaders. When the current one expires midnight on Wednesday, they may strike.
There's a strike looming in Detroit, with the United Auto Workers union warning Fiat Chrysler Automobiles its workers may walk off the job late Wednesday night when their current four-year contract expires.
It wasn't meant to be this way. The UAW leadership had reached a tentative agreement on a new contract with Fiat Chrysler, one its boss said included "tremendous gains." But UAW members voted down the deal, saying it did not go far enough in raising pay and improving working conditions. It was the first time in three decades that the union rank-and-file shot down such a deal agreed to by their leaders.
The "No" voted was powered in part by online organizing, largely via Facebook groups, though face-to-face efforts also played their part. After the proposed agreement was rejected, the UAW President tried to assure workers — aptly, via Facebook — their issues with the deal will be addressed.
"You have spoken and we heard you," Williams wrote in a post Monday morning, his first message to the membership since the vote. "We have been listening to your issues and concerns through your local union leadership."
The UAW represents 40,000 employees at 37 Fiat Chrysler plants. Last Thursday, 65% of those voted against the tentative four-year agreement, with some local union chapters posting information for strike preparations afterwards. In his message, Williams urged members not to strike against the company, the third-largest auto maker in Detroit.
"You, our members need to make decisions based on what's best for you and your families," Williams wrote. "No one else has to pay the price of a strike. No one else will lose a paycheck or a home."
The vote marks another instance of what Coworker.org's Jess Kutch describes as an increasing pattern of workers leveraging technology to change their workplaces directly, whether unionized or grouped in informal networks. Tech and online platforms help workers circumvent hierarchies imposed by employers or unions, to speak to one another without layers of mediation or bureaucracy impeding exchange. You could say, borrowing from one well-known advocate of the labor movement, the workers have seized control of the means of communication.
Kutch said the trend includes workers using Reddit as a space for whistle-blowing, or private Facebook groups as spaces to swap shifts for workplaces with lousy scheduling practices. For the UAW's Fiat Chrysler members, local Facebook pages made room for union members to advocate for themselves, against the leadership-negotiated contract.
Members rallied one another to turn out the vote at their locals, with many uploading photos of stamps and ballot tallies to their local pages as the tide turned against the leadership-approved pact. The New York Times noted the vote's "populist tone." No national union-bargained contract has been rejected by the membership since 1982, according to the Detroit Free Press.
Coworker.org is mainly a platform for petitions and pressure campaigns around labor conditions at different companies. The White House will recognize the site Wednesday, as a tool used by unions, workers' centers, and unorganized workers alike, by co-hosting a Summit on Worker Voice with them in D.C.
For the UAW's Fiat Chrysler workers, digital organizing is attached to existing union structures — local union chapters, leaders, and formal collective bargaining processes. Chris Owens, the Executive Director of the National Employment Law Project, said that while the "No" vote — reached largely because of this online, hyper-local work — is out of the ordinary, it demonstrates the union is operating as intended.
"Unions are democratic institutions, and this was a democratic process," she said. "They submitted the contract to their members, who sent it back."
With Auto Strike Looming, Union Leaders Face Rebellion Among Members http://ift.tt/1KYuDNr
No comments:
Post a Comment