Auto bosses, UAW press ahead with “pay-for-performance” scheme [View All]

[Hannah Bell]

The top management of Detroit’s carmakers and the United Auto Workers union are pressing ahead with their campaign to introduce a “pay-for-performance” scheme in the new labor agreement being negotiated this year for 120,000 workers at General Motors (GM), Ford and Chrysler.

(Akerson, a former Carlyle Group hedge fund manager slotted into top management by the White House Auto Task Force, has stressed wages should not add to the company’s fixed costs. Workers should receive “performance” bonuses only if the company profits.

The UAW has already indicated a willingness to consider the idea, which it has palmed off as workers getting a “piece of the profits” after giving up tens of thousands in wage and benefit concessions.

The implementation of the proposal, however, would mean a return to conditions not seen since the 1920s, when auto workers were paid according to output and wages fell precipitously if production slowed because of falling demand. One of the most basic principles fought for by the UAW during the mass struggles that established the union in the 1930s was the abolition of the hated piecework system and its replacement with standardized hourly wages, protected by a union contract.

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2011/feb2011/wage-f04.shtml