Auto Workers Can Start The Ball Rolling

After handing over $17 billion of working people's tax money to the Big Three auto companies on condition that they cut worker's wages and benefits even further, Bush had this to say:

"If we were to allow the free market to take its course now, it would certainly lead to disorderly bankruptcy and liquidation for the automakers."

There's a lesson here for us. Education, housing and healthcare are denied us because the market takes "its course". The millions dying in Africa of curable diseases are dying because the market takes "its course" The millions in the slums of Mumbai and other massive urban centers who live in abject squalor with open sewage running down their streets live that way because the market takes "its course."

The so-called "free" market doesn't work. A society in which Labor is a commodity is, as Engels pointed out, a "brotherhood of thieves" (a sisterhood also as Maggie Thatcher, one of the worst of the 20th century thieves confirms.)

Ron Gettlefinger, President of the UAW has responded with such militancy his dangerous words could be the spark that ignites a social movement, He said that Bush had added "unfair conditions" to the bailout "singling out workers".

Hold your horses, Ron, we don't want a riot here. But Ron won't hold back the militant and threatening rhetoric, "We will work with the Obama administration and the new Congress to ensure that these unfair conditions are removed."

So after introducing a two tier wage system that cut pay in half destroying solidarity at the same time, the UAW leadership, in league with the Obama administration, will savage auto workers further. This spells increased danger for all of us as this section of our class has been the benchmark for a better life and has its roots in the great upheaval and plant occupations of the 1930's.

It is the methods of the 1930's that auto should return to in response to this bailout of capital.

No reliance on the courts or big business politicians

Occupy the plants, keep them working and call for the public ownership of the auto industry and the commanding heights of the economy under workers control and management.

Call on workers throughout auto to occupy their workplaces

Appeal to workers in all industries and our communities to join auto workers in the struggle to break the grip of capital over our jobs and our lives.

Appeal to workers in auto internationally to take similar action, workers throughout the world are under attack

A move in this direction would inspire millions of American workers and workers throughout the world and would open up the road to a fightback blocked by the treachery of the likes of Gettlfinger and the heads of organized Labor.

The Iraqi shoe thrower is an example of the courage and heroism that we can display. American workers are not hated by the rest of the world, American capitalists are hated by the workers of the world.

Gettlefinger won't do it, Obama won't do it, it's up to us.

There are opposition or reform groupings within the UAW. Organizing on a direct action fight to win program like that suggested above would have a tremendous appeal to workers terrified of losing their livelihoods at Christmas and being faced with two choices, poverty or more poverty.

There's no better remedy for the doldrums than fighting back.

Let's not be victims of history, lets make it.