This week, the New York Times reports that the UAW members at Lordstown, Ohio have developed a new collaborative stance with General Motors. The Lordstown UAW Local’s collaboration with GM today comes after the workers have lost almost everything, despite a long, militant history.

According to Ben Strickland, shop chairman for UAW Local 1112, “When General Motors had such a big percentage of the market, our fears weren’t there, there wasn’t a trump card we didn’t pull. Now, you’ve got to be careful about pulling those trump cards out because it could be your last. We want GM to be successful. We want the UAW to be successful.  Making that happen on both sides, which creates security.”

It will be interesting to watch what the workers and GM make of this nascent collaboration.

It wasn’t always this way

Flash back to Lordstown, Ohio in 1970. At that time GM, by far the largest automaker in the world, was speeding up the Lordstown assembly line to produce the popular small car, the Chevy Vega. In response to the dangerous and dehumanizing speed up of the assembly line, the UAW members who worked in the plant filed 15,000 grievances a year, held protests, and ultimately went on strike in what is remembered as one of the most significant “wildcat” strikes of the last 50 years. (A “wildcat” strike is a walkout that is not sanctioned by the union leadership.)

The strike was born out of the social and cultural dynamics of the day, including deep tensions between union members and their leadership over job security vs. job quality. It was the height of the Vietnam War and many the workers had either just returned from the armed services, (think 1945-1970, which included World War II, Korea, and Vietnam), or were headed for the battlefields of Vietnam. Working conditions in the plant inspired many workers to identify with the slogan: “I don’t mind working, but I do mind dying”.

The fact that workers and their union leadership were at odds over whether to fight GM over working conditions is a significant example of how the labor movement has struggled with its relationship to production, and the role of labor in the creation of wealth. Indeed, the Lordstown experience is a crucible of learning that goes far beyond the events themselves. (When you get a chance, rent Paul Schrader’s great film, Blue Collar, starring Richard Pryor, to get a glimpse of the day-to-day experience inside an auto plant.)

Production for use

Labor Historian Jeremy Brecher, who wrote about Lordstown back in the 1970s, today talks about what he calls “production for use.” Brecher writes and lectures about the boom and bust nature of capitalism: that every few years we have a downturn followed by an upturn. He then reminds us that some of the downturns (like today’s Great Recession) are cataclysmic failures in the economy. He suggests that we must find a more sustainable system that channels the wealth created by capital investment and labor into what we might call “social assets”, as opposed to profiteering and trickle-down economics.

“It is often pointed out that it took mobilization for World War II to end the Depression,” says Brecher. “Today we need, in William James' magnificent phrase, a "moral equivalent to war."

Indeed.

I think of Kaiser Permanente as a “social asset.” Founding physician Dr. Sidney Garfield and Longshore Workers’ leader Harry Bridges, who fought for KP coverage for his members, understood that in the early days of Kaiser Permanente. KP had been built as a mission driven organization. It has been completely different from the rest of the health care industry since the beginning. It continues to define itself differently as a not-for-profit model based on prevention.

Many of the struggles of the union movement in the first half of the 20^th century were motivated by a deep understanding that difficult and dangerous work should not just be rewarded with good wages and benefits, but should also aid society as a whole. That’s why the labor movement is a social movement that benefits more than just union workers. It brought us unemployment compensation, workers’ comp, the minimum wage, Social Security, Medicare, paid holidays, paid vacation and health and pension benefits as part of a broader social agenda.

Protecting KP, our social asset

We have a tremendous imperative to continue to view KP as a social asset as market competition, the decline in the ability of individuals and employers to afford health care and other sure-to-come changes through “health care reform” put pressure on us all. In addition, as new generations of leaders in the organization and in the unions emerge, we must find and sustain common language and understanding to be able to protect our collective social asset of preventive and affordable health care delivered by the best paid workers in the industry. 

We can, and we must, perfect our already deeply embedded “production for use.”  The best place to work can only be sustained if we place the patient/member at the center of our efforts to create value.

There is much to learn and appreciate from the story of Lordstown.  Struggles in the workplace will always exist. The struggle of the 1970 wildcat strike was over the quality of life at work (best place to work). It was a necessary and important struggle.

What was missing throughout GM was how the best place to work needed to fit into an overall strategy at GM to sustain its market share, quality, and affordability.  I suspect that many workers and managers in GM could have developed a collaborative relationship had they recognized and then changed their behavior to act upon the understanding that a safe and humane workplace is a foundational necessity for innovation and collaboration.

GM and its employees finally got to these questions…but only after hundreds of thousands lost their livelihoods. It will remain a great tragedy in our nation’s history.

We must maintain a line of sight to the goals of best quality, best service, most affordable care, and best place to work through a unified sense of production for use. If we do not, we could lose everything. If we do, we will change the world.