GM Workers’ Hard Choice in Van Nuys

Workers at General Motors’ Van Nuys plant were angry and confused as they prepared to vote Saturday on a unique proposal intended to avoid full-time layoffs.

More than 2,000 of GM’s 3,800 workers in Van Nuys gathered at Robert Fulton Junior High School to decide whether they would accept a 50% cut in work hours starting Feb. 1 in order to avert a major layoff.

GM, beset by plunging car sales nationally, has said if the proposal does not pass, it will indefinitely lay off 1,900 workers.

But the plan has pitted older workers, whose seniority rights guarantee them full-time work, against younger workers, who see the plan as the only way to save their jobs.

This is the first time in the United States that GM employees have voted on such a proposal.

Scuffles Break Out

The mood in the voting area and inside the auditorium where leaders of United Auto Workers Local 645 were explaining the proposal was often tense. Several scuffles broke out between workers, and union officials routinely were booed.

“We have to choose between our family and the brother or sister who stands next to us on the line,” Mike Gomez, a GM worker, told his fellow workers. “This is pitting us against each other. We’re putting a razor to each other’s throats.”

Outside the polling area, workers held placards asking other employees to vote against the proposal. Former union local President Paul Goldener handed out a leaflet against the plan and accused union leaders of “pimping and prostituting your union rights.”

The Van Nuys plant usually operates on a day shift and a night shift. Under the plan voted on Saturday, the plant would staff only one shift at a time and employ workers on an alternating schedule.

Day-shift employees would work for two weeks while night-shift employees were off. Then night-shift employees would work for two weeks, and day employees would be off. The alternating schedule would continue until May 2. If the company was not prepared to reinstitute both shifts at that time, the union membership would have to vote again to extend the plan.

The plan was negotiated by union leaders and GM officials before Christmas.

Sales Fall

Sales of the cars built at the Van Nuys plant--Pontiac Firebirds and Chevrolet Camaros--have fallen in recent years. Last year, GM sold 117,000 Camaros and 73,000 Firebirds. Two years before, the company sold 200,000 Camaros and 94,000 Firebirds. There is a 150-day supply of Camaros and a 95-day supply of Firebirds waiting to be sold.

For workers with little seniority at the Van Nuys plant, the plan would keep them on the payroll and scale down the unemployment benefits they would have to collect from a supplemental unemployment benefit fund created by GM and the union in the late 1960s.

Younger workers are worried their unemployment benefits would quickly run out during a regular layoff because the supplemental fund is strained from layoffs at other GM plants throughout the country. Of the 68,839 hourly auto workers on indefinite layoff, more than 55,000 are GM workers.

GM’s fund has been reduced to 2.6% of the maximum funding level compared to 42.9% at Ford Motor Co. In November, GM had to borrow against a special line of credit to keep paying out supplemental unemployment benefits.

So if there is a layoff at the Van Nuys plant, supplemental benefits would run out in a matter of weeks for younger employees.

‘I’m for It’

“I’m worried about having a job,” said Nadine Medina, a six-year veteran of the Van Nuys plant. “This plan is going to let me keep my job. I’m for it.”

But many older workers said Saturday they had a right to work because of the years they have served.

“I’ve lost my job. I’ve gone on layoff. I’ve lived on the street,” said Lucky Johnson, a 30-year veteran of the Van Nuys plant. “But now it’s my turn, because I have earned it, to be able to work. Other people are voting on my seniority rights. It’s not fair.”

But a couple of older workers tried to emphasize union solidarity. “Don’t force your brother out onto the street,” Dennis Dalyrmple, an electrician, told the crowd.

Union local President Jerry Shrieves said he expected the proposal to pass despite all the opposition expressed Saturday.