Reshaping the North American Automobile Industry by Tuman John P.;

Author:Tuman, John P.;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Taylor & Francis Group

Responses to Restructuring in the Authoritarian Corporatist Unions

General Motors-Toluca

In contrast to the tense atmosphere in General Motors’ Mexico City plant, labor-management relations in the company's Toluca plant were largely cooperative throughout the 1980s and the 1990s. As noted previously, democratization movements in the plant were preempted successfully by the local and national leaders of SINTIMS, the CTM union in Toluca. Connected through a dense network of family ties, the national and local general secretaries of SINTIMS and sección 9 have been in power continuously since 1966. Union leaders maintained their power by removing dissident workers while also seeking good wages. The politics of the union remained unchanged between 1982 and 2000. Elections for the posts of the general secretary and the executive committee have not been competitive. Although workers are invited to make suggestions for improvement during work team meetings, they have lacked the opportunity to participate in collective bargaining or in the political life of their union.73 A fairly centralized, authoritarian union, SINTIMS has allowed General Motors to have complete freedom over the labor process.

Plant managers have expressed their satisfaction with their relationship with the union.74 Since the early 1980s, General Motors has been able to adjust employment levels and introduce new production technologies (e.g., Statistical Process Control, multi-use programmable machinery) in Toluca without interference from the union. In fact, workers who have been laid off because of new technologies are entitled only to the minimum degree of compensation established by Federal Labor Law.75 Plant managers have also created 159 work teams throughout the plant. Known as the Integral Operation Process (Prindo), this program extends from management to the shop floor. The plant's team structure integrates workers, union delegates, supervisors, managers, and distributors (González López and Villa Méndez 1998: 352–4). The goal of Prindo has been to achieve ‘total quality’ in the plant. In addition, since 1994, the union leadership has cooperated with management to implement a complex evaluation system that emphasizes productivity, continuous training, and quality. The organization of labor in Toluca is therefore similar to the structure in the Ramos Arizpe engine and vehicle assembly plants. Company officials also enjoy the power to establish unilaterally plant production rhythms.

From the point of view of management, the performance of the plant has been extremely favorable. Shaiken (1993) noted that the Toluca plant had a zero defect level for V-8 engines after 33 consecutive audits. The plant also made an important improvement between 1994 and 1995 by reducing the number of workers per engine by 12 percent (Harbour and Associates, 1996). Company records suggest that the quality of L-4, L-6 and V-8 engines and Kodiak trucks remained high in the late 1990s. Given the acquiescence of the union leadership and the high quality of production, the transition to exports has been relatively successful.

Chrysler-Toluca and Ramos Arizpe

As noted in previous chapters, Chrysler's national enterprise union (SINIASC) has been authoritarian for many years now. The union has remained part of the CTM and the PRI-affiliated Labor Congress (CT). After defeating the workers’

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