Autoworkers cling to middle class

— -- As United Auto Workers union members endure a drawn-out contract-negotiation process, workers say they are fighting for more than just wages and health care benefits. They say they're fighting to protect their membership in the middle class.

Just two weeks after his 18th birthday, Randy Horter started his first factory job, helping make clutches and air conditioning systems at an auto parts plant.

Since then, the 49-year-old Chrysler line worker has cobbled together a career working at various manufacturing plants, and made a nice, middle-class life with his wife, Candace, who works at the same Chrysler plant in Belvidere, Ill. The couple earn about $75,000 a year, unless one or the other is laid off. They own two used cars and their home. Between them, they raised five children, now grown, and were hoping to start preparing for retirement.

Horter's goals as a young man, he says, were simple: "To be a man, and raise a family."

"I come from a hardworking family — my parents worked, both my grandparents worked," Horter says. When he went into the job market in the 1970s, "There were jobs where you can work for 30 years and retire and get a pension. This is a thing of the past now. Those kinds of jobs don't exist for my children. I have a grandson — I can't imagine what having a job and making a living will mean for him."

UAW members finished ratifying a new four-year contract with Chrysler over the weekend. A new contract with General Motors gm was ratified Oct. 10.

For the most part, the contracts hammered out at GM and Chrysler help maintain that standard of living. There are no base pay increases, but the automakers are doling out $3,000 signing bonuses and a couple of other annual bonuses instead. Health care plans are changing, reducing coverage, restricting doctor's office visits and increasing co-pays, and retiree health care will be funded from an independent trust set up by the automakers.

With contracts ratified at Chrysler and GM, the union is moving on to negotiate with Ford Motor f, which is in the worst financial shape. The UAW could give Ford even more concessions in an attempt to help it get back in solid financial shape.

The new contracts have a very different impact on workers such as Horter, who are temporary employees. Horter and his wife are worried they'll lose their jobs in a few weeks at Chrysler if their shift is eliminated. They are worried now about how they'll make the mortgage and car payments.

The automakers also won the right to hire in a whole class of workers at lower pay. Workers who don't contribute directly to the making of a vehicle — like those who ferry parts around the plant — will be making $14 an hour, half of what other workers in the plants will make.

Henry Ford's legacy

The auto industry is often credited with creating a broad middle class, starting with Henry Ford's promise in 1914 to pay workers $5 for an eight-hour day. As the auto industry grew more prosperous, unions pressured the companies to share their wealth with workers by offering no-cost health care, generous pensions and retirement after 30 years.

"When the UAW lifted wages in Detroit, it lifted them for everybody — for nurses and teachers and typists," says Ross Eisenbrey, vice president of the Economic Policy Institute. "And when their wages fall, others are going to fall with them."

Dana Johnson, chief economist at Comerica Bank, says that as the Detroit automakers have lost money and market share — it's now below 50% — they can no longer afford high wages and big benefits.

"They can't share anymore," Johnson says. "They literally can't afford to pay their workers the way they used to. Times have changed. It's hard for the auto industry to adjust, and it's hard for their workers to adjust to that new reality."

Workers around the country have already adjusted to a new reality, where high-paying jobs go to those with specific training and skills, Johnson says.

As UAW workers attempt to preserve their standard of living, they're seeing backlash. After a two-day strike at General Motors and a 5½-hour strike at Chrysler, critics on the Internet have been name-calling and blaming UAW workers for the downfall of the auto industry.

Dave Green, president of UAW Local 1714 in Lordstown, Ohio, says he's seen plenty of criticism of the UAW and of workers branded unfairly, in his view, as lazy and greedy.

"I don't feel personally insulted, but I do believe people are misinformed," he says. "I don't think they understand the hard work that people do out there now. Those are perceptions of UAW workers from 20 years ago. They're just not true anymore."

The criticism has left many UAW members a tad bewildered, seeing their fight as part of a broader battle to keep manufacturing and other labor-intensive jobs earning enough to keep workers in the middle class.

"I think it partly comes from resentment," Eisenbrey says, noting that non-unionized workers may be doing the same kind of jobs for 20% or 30% less. "UAW people from all over the country say they feel resentment from even family members."

Many older workers entered the industry in the 1970s and 1980s, when Detroit began losing its grip on the U.S. market. Change has come slowly. Jobs haven't declined steadily because periods of prosperity, like the late 1990s SUV boom, kept job levels stable. Workers have also taken up contributing to health care — although their contributions are far smaller than what the average U.S. worker pays. And pensions are a thing of the past.

Givebacks' toll

"We gave lots of stuff back, but the public doesn't know that," says Frank Pena, a worker at one of GM's plants in Flint, Mich. "I understand people don't like unions, but they don't know what it's like."

"There comes a time when you say, 'We've given enough,' " says Tim Thompson, who also works for GM in Flint. Green, the president of the local UAW in Lordstown, says workers are attracted to assembly line jobs not because of the work, but because of the pay and benefits. Losing those benefits makes the jobs less attractive, which is why many workers are willing to fight to keep what they've got.

"Most people don't work on the assembly line because they really like it, they do it because they like the money," he says. "The jobs aren't very good, and they tear up your body. … Your body wears out."

"People are just jealous because folks are making $29 an hour without a college degree, and they think you shouldn't be able to do that anywhere in the world," Green says. "The UAW has held on to that, and to me, that's pretty big."

Still, UAW members don't believe these jobs at these wages will survive forever.

"I tell my kids, the world's changing," Pena says. "They're going to have to get an education and fight for their jobs in the future."