Until recently, Buzz Hargrove and I were something of a mutual admiration society. The Canadian Auto Workers president, leader of Canada's biggest private-sector union, once followed a presentation of mine to a Toronto business group by opening his own remarks with a bemused compliment that we appeared to share the same views. I returned the favour by inviting him to share his caustic appraisal of Canada's corporate leadership in the pages of the business magazine I then edited.
But on Saturday, an aggrieved Hargrove took issue in the Star's letters page with my day-after published critique of his kick-off comments last Tuesday at the CAW's annual policy convention. From my suggestion that Hargrove spent too much time talking about peripheral issues of global current affairs and too little on the crucial bargaining talks between the CAW and the Big Three that begin this week, Hargrove concluded that I was ignorant of the CAW's tradition of identifying "the links between world politics and Canadian workplaces. If he knew even the basics about our union, he would know that as a social union, `the business at hand' for us is the world." There were some other critical omissions on my part, Hargrove found, including the CAW's position that the 41,000 auto workers he represents are behind the eight-ball, toiling in the world's only unprotected market. Japan, Korea, China and European countries use tariff walls and other devices to keep home markets largely closed to North American imports. Which means Japanese and German motorists effectively subsidize the incursions of Toyota Motor Corp. and Mercedes-Benz in the lucrative Canadian and United States markets.
All true. For reasons of space and a desire to focus on the upcoming contract negotiations ("the business at hand"), I chose not to appraise the CAW's longstanding and ambitious social-justice agenda. Or to laud Hargrove for the CAW's persistent and ultimately successful effort to extract tens of millions of dollars in government assistance for the Big Three auto makers, resulting in multibillion-dollar investments by those firms in the southern Ontario economy after a decade in which most auto-industry investment dollars were channelled into the U.S. South and other low-wage jurisdictions.
For that alone, negotiators for General Motors of Canada Ltd. should approach the bargaining table in a properly grateful frame of mind. The CAW might also anticipate that GM will be swayed by Hargrove's restraint, in contrast with Richard Shoemaker, the United Auto Workers' chief GM negotiator, who vowed last month that, "If GM does anything unilaterally, they'll have a very hard time making automobiles in this country."That was a reference to a desperate GM's rumoured flirtation with a so-called "nuclear option" of arbitrarily slashing health benefits for 340,000 retired employees, benefits not guaranteed by labour contracts. Shoemaker was invoking memories of a disastrous late-1990s strike that cost GM market share the company has yet to recover.
But the fact remains that Hargrove's bargaining team confronts GM, Ford Motor Co. of Canada Ltd. and DaimlerChrysler Canada Inc. at a time when the weakened Big Three — an outmoded term that belies the increasing role of Toyota, Honda Motor Co. and even Hyundai Motor Co. in setting the industry pace in design and innovation — are simply not in a position to reward the CAW for its constructive initiatives. If only to strong-arm the much larger UAW membership into concessions, notably on soaring health-care costs now calculated at $5.6 billion (U.S.) per year, Detroit is compelled to play hardball in Canadian talks. Either that or lose all hope, in GM's case, of preventing an encore in 2006 of this year's expected $4 billion (U.S.) loss on core North American operations.
It comes down to this: After 13 years at the CAW helm, repeatedly extracting improbable gains for his members with finely honed tactics of defiance, Hargrove's job is not on the line. The same can't be said for GM's Rick Wagoner, who is under the most pressure among the Big Three chief executives to cut costs.
Neither Wagoner's plight nor the cruel realities of distorted global trade policies are the CAW's fault, even if the gold-plated benefits won by the UAW and the CAW over the past two decades have contributed to the Big Three pricing themselves out of the market. All to say that Buzz will probably budge if the alternative is threatened plant closings in his Ontario bailiwick.
As Robert Milton, Hargrove's adversary at Air Canada, concluded after tough bargaining with the CAW chief during the airline's harrowing ordeal in bankruptcy reorganization, "For all his bluster, Hargrove is a practical and serious guy who knows how to get things done."
