Seniority on the Spot

Over the years, unions have treated worker seniority as gospel. The idea is that employees with the longest service have first crack at available jobs -- and the last man hired is the first to lose his job in case of layoffs. Now the United Auto Workers has put before Ford Motor Co. proposals for a radical change in seniority arrangements.

Both Ford and the U.A.W. are concerned about the fact that recent lay offs have hit hardest at low-seniority Negroes. To protect their jobs, the union proposed a system of "inverted senior ity" by which veterans could voluntarily take layoffs before newcomers.

In raising the prospect that predominantly white oldtimers might willingly relinquish jobs to black newcomers, the U.A.W. is neither so naive nor so self less as it might sound. Thanks to sup plemental unemployment benefits and the guaranteed annual income that Walter Reuther's union has won in recent years, veteran workers would hardly suf fer at all. A man with a year or more on the job would still draw nearly 95% of his weekly wage for 31 weeks. A man on the job for seven or more years could get similar benefits for a full year. Under ordinary economic conditions, workers eligible for the longest period of benefits could rarely expect to be laid off. Under Reuther's scheme, older workers could volunteer for what amounts to paid vacations.

The U.A.W. originally brought up inverted seniority during contract talks in both 1964 and 1967 but got nowhere. The auto companies, which pay most of the bill for unemployment benefits (Ford's fund totals $80 million), fear that the idea would make production cut-lacks so costly as to be self-defeating. In effect, they complain, inverted seniority could force the industry indirectly to pay two men for one job. They also worry that the scheme might destroy incentive and strip plants of experienced workers.

Although the next round of auto-industry contract negotiations is not scheduled until 1970, the U.A.W. chose its time and target skillfully. Under Chairman Henry Ford II, a leader in efforts to hire the hard-core unemployed, Ford has increasingly reached into the ghettos to recruit and train workers. Through this program, Ford has hired 7,700 of its present nationwide work force of 175,000. When production cutbacks brought the layoff of some 3,200 workers by the end of February, however, most of those affected were recently hired ghetto dwellers.

In asking Ford to overhaul seniority practices, the U.A.W. has clearly put the company on the spot. Inverted seniority, said Ken Bannon, Erector of the union's Ford department, would "sustain not only the personal but the community benefits of the hiring program you initiated." If for no other reason than to avoid charges of undermining that program, Ford has agreed at least to consider the plan.

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