CAW fires back about the Magna deal: where is the truth?
Well now we’ve got a battle. Or a cat fight. Or something. I don’t know what. Thanks to Rabble, I found this CAW rejoinder on the recent salvo launched by the heads of several Ontario Federation of Labour affiliates. Herein I try to figure out who’s telling the truth about the FFA.
Hemi Mitic, or whoever is writing for his signature, talks about the Framework for Fairness Agreement (caw.ca PDF) in quite different terms. No surprise that the CAW is defending itself, but… uh who’s telling the truth here?
How come all these people think it’s a sell-out if all this business about employer-chosen worker representatives isn’t true, as Mitic argues?
Someone here is grinding down their facts to get that rhetorical edge. But the question is who?
Here’s what Mitic says:
Company managers play no role whatsoever in the selection of worker representatives (either the secret-ballot election of worker reps from each area and shift of the factory, or the selection and secret-ballot confirmation of full-time �Employee Advocates� who service the whole plant.
Hold on. But Ed Broadbent says: “Management would play a key role in selecting these “advocates.”
And the leaders of the OFL’s biggest affiliates say the FFA “takes away the right of workers to elect their own representatives without the boss’s participation.”
Here’s what I’ve been able to determine. I’m not a labour lawyer, and of course, this whole FFA thing may indeed be open to interpretation and like any collective agreement its true meaning will develop over time as arbitrators set down jurisprudence while interpreting it.
That is, of course, if any “employee concerns” are ever arbitrated. But more on that later.
The worker representatives on the “Fairness Committee” in a each division of a CAW-organized Magna plant are indeed chosen just by the employees.
But a Fairness Committee is composed of employee-chosen and management chosen representatives. The employee chosen representatives are to have 50 per cent plus one of the votes on a Fairness Committee.
That’s more than a bit of a wrinkle, but so far it’s sounding like the workers still pick their own people but they’re in for some really headachey meetings.
However it gets creepier.
The Employee Advocate, who seems to be sort of like the full time staff rep, or local president or whoever, is also either an employee stooge or a good union sibling, depending on who you talk to.
The EA is picked by the CAW National – the executive assistant to the national president no less – from a short list supplied by a subcommittee of the plant’s Fairness Committee.
The FFA doesn’t say who gets to be on this sub-committee that picks the candidates, or who has the majority.
So Buzz’s Executive Assistant could have some pretty slim pickings.
The other secret ballot that Mitic refers to is a vote on removing an EA that the CAW National Executive Assistant deems to be in breach of ethics, confidentiality or in dereliction of duties.
But this is a far cry from your standard election campaign for local president where every few years you go before your people and answer to them. There’s no campaigning, there’s no opposition, no debate, nothing. Just a meeting among a few select people – some pro-management, some pro-union – to pick “qualified applicants”.
And when you’re in, you’re in until Hemi Mitic (or whoever at Placer Court) says so. Now that might sound great if you’ve got unswerving faith in the national union, but keep in mind that they have a huge interest in making the FFA work.
So much for that. There’s another committee, though, that needs a look, the Employee Relations Review Committee (EERC). This too is a joint, union and management, committee. It’s composed of three people from each side.
The union side is the CAW National President’s EA, the CAW National Representative assigned to service the Magna local, and the President of the Magna Local.
As an aside, this is the only mention in the FFA that I can find of the CAW Magna local president. It seems to me like they’re completely sidestepped in the whole “Concern” resolution process.
The ERRC has the power, I note, to remove members of any Fairness Committee member who violate committee guidelines. Yikes. That’s not giving management total control over who works for workers, but it’s pretty close.
The two committees and the Employee Advocate play a role in resolving “Concerns” (which is FFA-speak for “grievance”). But they’re not the only people.
If you have a “concern” – assuming it doesn’t deal with you being fired – your first move is to go see a manager of some kind. Or a Fairness Committee member. This is the “Open Door Process”.
If you’ve been fired, you go directly to stage three.
Second stage is to either go to your manager’s manager or request a formal hearing of the Fairness Committee.
Assuming you haven’t given up, and are still not happy, you go to the “Hotline”, which is stage three. Yup. A phone number. I think this is what Mitic refers to as something that’s “reflecting Magna�s existing practices.”
The Hotline is “operated by individuals employed by the company.” The FFA says they’re “independent.” It says they’re there to promote resolution of employee “concerns”. It doesn’t outline what they have the power to do – say, reinstate someone who was unfairly terminated – or whatever.
It says they maintain confidentiality where practical, but given that they seem to have no power to order restitution, you have to imagine that that confidentiality is meaningless.
If by some quirk of fate, calling the Hotline doesn’t solve your problem, you’re off to at least two more committee meetings: a sub committee of the ERRC (two union, two management, no union rep from the plant), and if not, then you go to the “whole committee”. This is one more person from each side.
And then it goes to some form of “neutral” arbitrator.
Which brings me to my earlier speculation that these “concerns” will never be arbitrated.
Why? Well, put yourself in the shoes of an employee who has a “concern.” Say they’re “concerned” that their supervisor is sexually harassing them.
For their first step, they go through the “open door” to an employee-chosen rep on the Fairness Committee, who, on pain of removal has to be objective, fair and balanced in their assessment of their co-worker’s concern.
Maybe “fair” means going to get the alleged harasser’s side of the story. Our concerned employee is now exposed, vulnerable and has no one on her side.
Will she really pick up the phone to call the hotline? Who on earth is that on the other end of the phone?
Let’s be wildly optimistic and say she gets someone who wants to recommend some sort of adjustment in response to her concern.
They then recommend to the ERRC that action be taken against this supervisor. We now get to a room where union and management hold equal votes on whether or not this “concerned” employee gets redress.
You’ve got two union types from head office who have a huge stake in making this FFA thing work, and two management types who also want to make the FFA thing work but are under intense pressure to close ranks around one of their own.
How do you think that meeting’s gonna go?
Lost in this process is the notion that our “concerned” employee should have someone on her side. She doesn’t.
So this sounds pretty grim to me.
But then, the manufacturing industry is in pretty grim shape, and the CAW had a shot at increasing union density in the auto parts sector. Who can blame them for taking it.
After all, their line goes, “it’s better than nothing.”
To end this over-long post, let us explore that assertion. I’m going to assume that the CAW wants for their Magna members what they want for the rest of their members: good representation, and that they realize that the FFA is not that.
So what then are the prospects for change or at least getting something that’s even more better than nothing?
Here’s where lacking the right to strike is a real killer. Arbitrators rarely break new ground. The whole profession is about splitting differences.
Which arbitrator is going to take the CAW’s representation calling for the union’s right to unilaterally appoint Fairness Committee members, for example, and write it into the FFA? Maybe if some other union out there won it on a picket line, or if someone proved to the supreme court that these sorts of joint committees deny individuals their charter right of association.
But on their own?
Never.
And what if some local leader at a Magna plant gets it in her or his head to make the change herself? She’ll have bought herself a mess of trouble. No activist base in the plant, no involvement contract administration, only a tangential role in bargaining she’ll be utterly alone on the ERRC, railing against her employer who will demand labour peace and lean on her union to get them to deliver it.
Mitic’s last point about some OFL affiliates also surrendering the right to strike is a fair one, as far as it goes. Some unions sign very lengthy agreements. Some sign away the right to strike. Some agree to joint committees.
But I don’t think any of them has done all of that at the same time while giving over the very basis of worker representation to “jointness” as CAW has.
The OFL leaders say that the FFA’s silver lining is the galvanizing effect it will have on the other unions out there. I really hope they’re right.
January 17th, 2008 at 7:28 am
Good post. Let’s hope the CAW doesn’t use Magna style deals as a new organizing strategy.
The Teamsters often cut voluntary recognition deals with employers to undercut organizing drives of real unions. I wish the CAW would make a committment that it will not do the same.
GB
January 17th, 2008 at 10:03 am
Well, if that SEIU news release has any truth to it, it may already be too late. (Thanks for the forward, BTW)
Mind you it’s SEIU talking and they have a hate-on for CAW that predates all this FFA stuff by about a decade. The CAW is loaning the CCWU the $5 million as SEIU alleges, and the OLRB did decide that the CCWU is a union (though it was close).
Where are we going and why are we in this handbasket?