
          Labor Gives to Make Saturn Work
          By Garber, CarterCarter Garber and Fausey,  Verna Verna Fausey
          Vol. 8, No. 4, 1986, p. 19
          
          The Saturn Agreement has set a new pattern for UAW bargaining in
the automobile industry and is affecting many negotiations carried out
by other unions.  Despite an early GM promise to the UAW insistence
that Saturn not be a precedent, GM's Chairman Roger Smith talks of the
need to "Saturnize" industry and UAW Vice President Donald Ephlin now
declares "We need a lot more Saturns."
          From the beginning, the Saturn Project was a joint effort of GM and
the UAW.  The 1985 accord has its genesis with the establishment of a
joint study center in the spring of 1983 to map out "a new approach to
union-management relations and the more effective use of human
resources if assembly of small cars was to be feasible in the United
States."
          The unusual union contract has created controversy within UAW and a
debate within the nation's union movement.  Some charge that the UAW
has sold out under what Saturn calls its new "philosophy of total
cooperation."  UAW leaders are defensive; perhaps because "no party to
Saturn has risked more with this experiment than the UAW," according
to labor writer Anthony Border.  GM's William Hoglund stresses that
the UAW is a partner and "a stakeholder in Saturn and participates in
decisions.  A UAW advisor is on the Saturn management staff and is a
part of all enterprises."
          The contract reflects the concessions typical of the Reagan era as
well as autoworkers' desire for job security.  Saturn employees,
called members, will take a twenty percent pay cut in straight-time GM
wages in return for profit-sharing and additional income based on
meeting production, quality and productivity goals.  Production will
be carried out by small work units of five to twenty-five people
rather than by assembly line.  "Our work teams are going to do it
all-seek resources, keep records, communicate and work with supplier
partners and insure quality," according to GM's Hoglund.
          In order to get a commitment of relatively secure employment for
eighty percent of the workers, the union gave up normal grievance
procedures, seniority rights, fixed work rules and practices, and
traditional job descriptions.  The Agreement reads "Saturn will not
lay off Saturn members except in situations rising from unforeseen or
catastrophic events or severe economic conditions."  This sounds like
a weak guarantee in a country whose economy has be in an official
recession for half of the past one hundred and twenty years.  Yet the
Chr8ysler company to give workers a sixty-day layoff notice "when
practicable."  The UAW was willing to agree to this because of
numerous layoffs and the rapid loss of members in an industry which
has seen forty-seven facilities shut down since 1980.  However, the
deep concessions make it clear Saturn was designed to compete with
domestic as well as foreign autoworkers.
          Once the agreement was complete, GM picked a right-to-work state to
test it.  Saturn was to be kept away from GM's other plants where
there are strong anti-management sentiments and more traditional labor
contracts.  GM's labor relations chief, Alfred S. Warren Jr., said
that the UAW fought the Spring Hill location "up until the last
moment" as the ninty-nine member union/management team debated
sites.
          While Tennessee governor Alexander has made his peace with the UAW
in order to get the plant, Republican gubernatorial candidate Winfield
Dunn is not bound by this peace treaty.  Dunn, who was governor from
1971-1975, feels the Saturn agreement "violates the spirit of
Tennessee's right-to-work law."
        