A few days ago, BMW's British factory was really not very careful. Their distress is not like the public is caught in some kind of scandal, nor is it like Porsche personnel turmoil. BMW's dilemma this time is a bit of a "backyard fire" taste - workers plan to strike!
Tong Jiren Auto Review Editor 丨意之
Just on April 7, Automotive News Europe reported that BMW intends to mediate two pension plans and hopes to implement the new plan for a long time and steadily, but the specific content of the pension is still debatable. Dissatisfied with BMW's policy of cutting pension benefits, BMW's British factory workers plan to hold eight strikes in the next few weeks to defend their rights.
Unite, Britain's largest union, said on Wednesday that as of last week, 93 percent of the members of the union at BMW's Uk factories supported the strike, and more than 3,500 employees at four factories would participate in the strike by passively slacking off and refusing to work overtime. The first strike will take place on April 19 at BMW's engine plant in Hams Hall, its Mini plant in Oxford and its parts die-casting plant in Swindon.
Such a move is bound to greatly affect normal production, mainly the MINI model. The Oxford plant produces about 210,000 MINI units a year, the Hams Hall plant produces more than 250,000 engines, and the Swindon plant produces doors, covers, and other products for the Mini. At present, the company is also trying to negotiate with employees, after all, the strike is a "bad thing" for both sides to harm others and harm themselves.
Throughout the development of the entire automotive industry, at least abroad, strikes and protests have never stopped. The cause of the strike is usually one word: profit. Employees are dissatisfied with the salary or welfare package given by the company, or have strong resistance to recent policies, and the company cannot provide a good communication platform, or the two sides cannot reach an effective consensus after negotiations, in this case, as a relatively weak party, workers will protest in a more extreme way because of the lack of choice, in the hope of "threatening" the company.
There are not many "strike waves" in history, and several of them are also worth mentioning and sharing with the officials.
▎ Ford Strike: A great wave of 120,000 was first proposed with "equal pay for men and women"
The Ford strike is a well-known example. The number of participants and the breadth of influence are enough to be recorded in the thick ink of history. On October 3, 1961, Ford workers, led by the American Automobile Workers Union (UAW), began a nationwide general strike covering 26 continents and 88 factories in the United States, with 120,000 participants!
UAW's demands include: raising the hourly wage by 7 cents to $2.85 per hour (a price that nearly sixty years ago now appears to be even higher than most factory production lines in the country); annual pensions, cost-of-living allowances; and full health insurance funds. In addition, there are some requirements that do not directly involve money, mainly control performance requirements, assembly line speed, and the proportion of non-union workers.
Such a large-scale strike also made Ford panic. On October 11, Ford reached a nationwide agreement with the UAW; on October 20, an agreement was reached with local unions, at which point the workers returned to their jobs, and the vigorous strike ended with workers getting a more satisfactory result.
Coincidentally, in 1968, there was a general strike against Ford in the United Kingdom, but this time the protagonists were factory women, and it had a more far-reaching impact, even affecting women in every workplace today.
At that time, more than 50,000 workers were employed at the Ford D'Agnum plant in Essex, England. Of these, 187 women work sewing car seats. Their working conditions were extremely harsh, almost the most dilapidated part of the factory; not only was the environment unbearable, but there was also serious exploitation of working hours and wages. Most chilling is the extremely unjust treatment of women workers because of their gender. They work semi-skilled (with limited training) like male workers, but are paid only 85 percent, and are classified as "unskilled", and Ford refuses to raise their ranks.
So the women workers began a three-week strike. During this period, 195 female workers were also added to Ford's Halewood plant in Merseyside. The wave even attracted the attention of Barbara Castle, the minister of employment at the time, to meet with the striking women workers. At this meeting, for the first time, the striking workers demanded "equal pay for men and women." The incident was also reported in the People's Daily on July 16 of that year, which wrote a report entitled "The British Workers' Strike Struggle Strikes Hard at the Monopoly Bourgeoisie and Forcefully Counters the Labor Government's Conspiracy to Pass on Financial Difficulties to workers"; this experience of Ford women workers fighting for their rights was later adapted into a film, "Made in Dagnan".
▎ Modern strike: trillions of losses, modern and even Korean industry hurt bones
Far from mentioning, let's just say that recently, there has also been a huge wave of strikes in South Korea's hyundai. On September 26 last year, South Korea's Hyundai Motor Union announced that union members had entered a full-scale strike, demanding that the company come up with a plan to improve its treatment, including salary increases. Hyundai Motor's production lines at its Ulsan, Jeonju and Asan plants were completely shut down. The union plans to strike for 6 hours a day from September 27 to September 30, while on the day of negotiations between labor and management for 4 hours.
The strike reached 50,000 people, close to 75 percent of the total number of modern workers in South Korea. Employees of its kia motors also said they would go on a three-day partial strike during the week to demand higher wages.
On September 23, before the strike broke out, the 26th salary negotiation between the labor and management of South Korea's Hyundai Motor, but the workers were not satisfied with the company's salary increase standards, and the negotiations did not end. As of September 23, the previous sporadic strikes had led to a 101,400-unit cut in Hyundai Motor production and economic losses of 2.23 trillion won (13.4 billion yuan). The one-day strike on the 26th caused economic losses of 160 billion won (7,200 fewer cars produced).
This makes the already promising Hyundai car even worse. South Korea has been stripped of the status of the world's fifth-largest automaker by India, and such stalemate labor relations and the high wages expected by workers are bound to drag hyundai's development and seriously affect South Korea's foreign trade recovery plans.
▎ Summary and reflection
Strike is a double-edged sword that hurts others and hurts oneself. For workers, fighting for their legitimate interests is a legitimate right, as a weak party if there is no way to appeal, only a huge strike can make them have an equal right to negotiate with the company giants. But the strained labor relationship will not help the future career development; one struggle is successful, but the next time? You can't strike as soon as there's a problem, can you? Although this method has a quick effect, it does not cure the symptoms and the root cause, and it is difficult to completely solve the demands of workers.
As far as the company is concerned, it is not willing to communicate openly with the union and the workers on weekdays, and is unwilling to listen to their opinions, and once it reaches the point of strike and production stagnates, do not these losses still have to be borne by the company?
But objectively speaking, not all requirements are reasonable. In the United States, for example, their unions are very powerful, and with the blessing and protection of trade union forces, workers' wages, benefits, and working conditions can always increase rapidly and steadily. But high pay and benefits place a heavy burden on the company, and these benefits and compensation are eventually translated to the cost of each vehicle. In the 1960s, burdened with much heavier human resource costs than Honda and Toyota, the market share of the three major automobile companies in the United States declined sharply, and GM's share of the US market fell from more than 50% to about 20%, while the market share of Toyota and Honda climbed to 19% and 11% respectively.
How to balance employee satisfaction with salary and company costs is something that every business manager must consider. If there are more two-way exchanges in peacetime, the leadership cares about listening to the voices of employees, and employees do their best to create value for the company, trust and love their positions and occupations, perhaps it will not escalate the conflict to the point of strike, which is not pleasing to both sides.
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