BY FRANK FORRESTAL
CHICAGO, IL - Crimping GM's effort to regain lost market share - its lowest level in decades - about 3,500 members of Local 1999 of the United Auto Workers (UAW) in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, walked off their jobs April 5, halting production of two of the auto maker's most popular cars.

The Oklahoma City strike is the second within a month to hit the auto giant. Recently the union settled a two-week strike at GM's Fort Wayne Truck Assembly plant with the company agreeing to add 276 jobs. The issues in the Oklahoma City dispute are strikingly similar to the Fort Wayne walkout.

The UAW and GM signed a national contract last December, but Local 1999 has been without a local contract since September. This is the UAW's first strike at this plant.

GM workers in Oklahoma City joined the UAW in 1978 as part of a rise in working-class militancy in the South, which led to the successful organizing drive of the United Steelworkers of America Local 8888 at the giant shipyard in Newport News, Virginia. Both these victories, as well as others, were a blow to the employers, who thought the South was their turf.

The main issues in strike, as in the Fort Wayne strike, are jobs and health and safety. The union is demanding the company hire hundreds of additional workers. GM claims the union broke an agreement that said 900 of 4,500 jobs would be eliminated when production of the new car models began last fall. The union denies this claim. Most of the jobs on the company chopping block are filled by temporary workers. According to the union, the workforce has fallen from 4,200 to about 3,600.

As in the Fort Wayne strike, UAW workers are also rebelling against unacceptable working conditions on the job: job combinations (overloaded jobs), forced overtime, rejection of personal time off and vacation time, and a qualitative increase of on the job injuries, which have tripled in the past year. The union is also demanding that outsourced work be returned to the plant.

Oklahoma City workers make the 1997 Chevrolet Malibu and the Oldsmobile Cutlass. The strike takes place just as the auto maker launched a $1 billion national advertising campaign and when sales for the new Malibu model shot up 230 percent in March.

Under these conditions, one would think that the strike should be settled in the short term. But the Wall Street Journal reported, "People close to the situation say GM is determined to show as much resolve in Oklahoma City as during a 17-day strike in March 1996 at two brake plants in Dayton, Ohio, which shut down practically all of GM's North American production."

Whether Oklahoma City becomes a showdown fight with the world's largest auto maker or not, it is clear that GM's drive to improve "productivity" and raise profits is running into resistance from the UAW and International Union of Electrical Workers (IUE). Slashing 50,000 to 70,000 jobs is GM's stated goal.

According to the Oakland Press, a Detroit-regional daily, UAW local 594 in Pontiac, Michigan and Local 5960 in Orion Township, Michigan, have asked for strike authorization from the International in Detroit. Last month, workers from Local 5960 organized a slow-down of the newly popular 1997 Park Avenue car. Authorization requests have also come from UAW members at a GM transmission plant in Warren, Michigan and from a foundry in Saginaw, Michigan.

Frank Forrestal is a member of UAW Local 551 at Ford Motor in Chicago.  
 
 
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