How is it that successful executives become so unsuccessful as soon as they move to Detroit? Also, how can we explain that whenever GM, Ford and Chrysler leave our shores, they compete well in Europe, South America and China? What makes them viable competitors as soon as they cross the border?The most striking difference appears to be that the Detroit Three are unionized, and the foreign transplants are, overwhelmingly, not. Yet the issue can't just be about wage rates. The foreign transplants pay well, and the UAW has given significant concessions in recent bargaining.
It is perhaps the mode of doing business in a unionized company that remains a crippling disadvantage. The UAW is arguably the most successful industrial union of all time. But its very strength has allowed it to permeate into every aspect of manufacturing in the Detroit Three.
The collective bargaining agreement with the UAW is a heavily negotiated document the size of a small telephone book (see the Ford-UAW 2007 contract pictured above). It is virtually identical for each of the Detroit Three, but it doesn't exist at all in their U.S. competition, the nonunionized transplants.
Not only work rules, but fundamental business decisions to sell, close or spin-off plants are forbidden without permission. That permission may come, but only at a price, since everything that affects the workplace must be negotiated. Both the UAW and the Detroit Three maintain large staffs of lawyers, contract administrators, and financial and human-resources representatives whose principal job is to negotiate with the other side. These staffs are at all levels, from the factory floor to corporate headquarters and the UAW's "Solidarity House" in downtown Detroit.
The collective bargaining agreements are now renegotiated every four years; in each negotiation the power and penetration of the union grows. If the company asks to change the flow of work for any reason, from cost-savings to vehicle improvements, the local union president will listen politely, and then say something like, "We can help you with this, but what's in it for my guys?"
Typically, he will have a list of things he wants, some understandable (better cafeterias) some questionable (hire my nephew), but there is always a quid pro quo. These mutually sustaining bureaucracies exist to negotiate with each other.
In an environment of downsizing, the problem is exacerbated, as the entrenched bargaining structure causes innumerable inefficiencies. Typically each plant or warehouse is a "bargaining unit" and has a union president, who has a staff. If the company consolidates facilities, there will be no need for two presidents and two staffs. Since neither president wants to play musical chairs, they will both point to the bargaining agreement and resist consolidation. As a result, unnecessary facilities are not sold, but kept open, lit and heated, just to preserve a redundant bargaining-unit president and his team.
As the Obama administration takes the helm, the key political question is whether the Democratic Party, which has so benefited from union support, will have the courage to push the UAW into a more reasonable relationship with the Detroit Three. Namely, a relationship in which employee relations and entitlements approximate those found in the "financially viable" sector of the U.S. automotive industry -- i.e., the foreign transplants. If the Obama administration does not force the UAW to make further concessions, it will not be able to save the Detroit Three.
~Logan Robinson in today's Wall Street Journal
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