(The following story by Greg Keenan appeared on the Globe and Mail website on May 19.)
TORONTO — Buzz Hargrove has been in precisely this position before — backed up against the wall by an embattled airline demanding that his members agree to wage and other cuts.
That other time was in 1996 when Canadian International Airlines Inc., which was later taken over by Air Canada, wanted the members of Mr. Hargrove’s Canadian Auto Workers union to give up 10 per cent of their wages and benefits.
He and the 3,700 members fought hard, Mr. Hargrove recounts in his 1998 book, Labour of Love, and fended off most of what was being demanded by the airline and its ally, the federal government.
“The other important victory our union achieved was a growing recognition that wage concessions are like a form of cancer,” Mr. Hargrove said of the outcome of that crisis. “Too many unions have succumbed to the demand of wage cuts or loss of jobs.”
That line-in-the-sand stance is evident during the current marathon talks at Air Canada. But the crisis this time is deeper, and with the CAW once again the only union holding firm against deeper concessions, its president runs the risk of being fingered as the cause of the airline’s demise, should it fail.
“There’s probably more pressure today with this bargaining than Buzz has experienced perhaps in his lifetime,” said long-time friend Jim O’Neil.
Mr. O’Neil started work within a few days of Mr. Hargrove at Chrysler Canada Ltd. in Windsor, Ont., in 1964 and is now the CAW’s national secretary-treasurer.
“He’s faced with that pressure,” Mr. O’Neil said of Mr. Hargrove, a 60-year-old grandfather of three who sometimes slips away from the cut and thrust of bargaining to shoot a round of golf.
“He’s been involved in collective bargaining for the last 35 years at one stage or another. This is probably at the highest level he’s ever been. It’s a situation where you just have to be able to use your gut instincts.”
Another long-time union leader trusts those instincts, which have been honed since the Canadian Airlines battle by two rounds of bargaining with the Big Three auto makers and strikes at Canadian National Railway Co., Falconbridge Inc. and even one by office and support staff at the CAW head office in Toronto.
“He’s got great instincts,” said Ken Lewenza, who is president of CAW local 444 in Windsor, the local Mr. Hargrove joined as a 20-year-old when the union was part of the United Auto Workers. “He knows when to push. He accepts the controversy.”
In fact, he seems to welcome the controversy.
Bargaining sessions led by Mr. Hargrove typically are tumultuous affairs, marked by loud arguments with company negotiators, with the media, and even behind closed doors with his lieutenants and members.
“Buzz and I and others all around us get into shouting matches and people just shake their heads,” Mr. O’Neil said. “Sometimes people open the door and say ‘You guys okay?’ ”
Donald Carty, former chief executive officer of American Airlines’ parent AMR Corp., described Mr. Hargrove as a pragmatist.
“Buzz is a very professional labour leader,” Mr. Carty said yesterday from Dallas.
“This is not a guy that’s new to the table. I doubt he’s at the table with any management member at any company that has as much experience at doing this stuff as he does.”
Mr. Carty said the CAW is also well served by national transportation director Gary Fane.
“If Buzz and Gary see the facts, understand the facts, they’ll make the right and pragmatic decision for their membership,” Mr. Carty said.
Mr. Hargrove took the helm of Canada’s largest private sector union in 1992. During his time, membership has expanded to more than 200,000 and now ranges from the classic assembly line workers at the Canadian units of the Big Three auto makers to retail workers, nursing home employees, miners and taxi drivers.
He’s a high-school dropout who was born in Bath, N.B., in 1944, and grew up in a family of 10 children in stark rural poverty that he credits with helping to shape his social conscience.
As a former Chrysler employee, he drives a Chrysler Concorde and has a new Chrysler 300C on order. He recently moved out of his long-time downtown Toronto condominium to a suburb.
Although he decries strikes as situations where neither side wins, he has no fear of putting his members on the street.
They shut down General Motors of Canada Ltd. for three weeks in 1996. Just a few days ago, 3,500 CAW members went back to work at Ontario government-owned Casino Windsor after a six-week strike.
He is not universally loved, even within the labour movement. Relations between the CAW and the Canadian Labour Congress deteriorated dramatically in the 1990s and Mr. Hargrove got into a public spat with the union movement’s traditional political ally, the New Democratic Party, whose leadership he briefly considered seeking.
Mr. Hargrove has had his battles within the CAW as well, with many members vilifying him in 1999 when he backed an eventually unsuccessful bid by Onex Corp. president Gerald Schwartz to merge Canadian and Air Canada.
“I think he’s at the top of his game when he’s being challenged,” said Mr. Lewenza, a veteran of several Hargrove-led negotiations with Chrysler and later DaimlerChrysler Canada.
There’s a big difference between the Air Canada talks and the typical auto negotiations, Mr. Lewenza said.
“You cannot come out a winner in the Air Canada talks. You can only come out a survivor,” he said. “Our members are not going to come out with a warm and fuzzy feeling.”