And that's exactly what they're doing. Chrysler announced earlier this year that it will be investing $550 million re-tooling its factory in Toluca Mexico. In fact, Business Week points out that "Mexico's share of North American auto production will rise to 19% over the next decade, from an average of 12% from 2000 to 2009." *
The reason is obvious, wages and benefit costs of GM's Mexican workers is $26 .40 an hour on average. Meanwhile , GM and Ford workers in the US earn about $55 an hour with benefits, according to BW. GM has savaged its workers in the US with the support of the top leadership of the UAW. Thousands have been laid of or forced in to retirement while wages have been slashed and workplace protection weakened.
What a deal for the auto bosses. The great free market at work, this is what they call "sharing the pain". The system freezes up, public money, (much of it borrowed at great expense to the taxpayer as the moneylender has to be paid his pound of flesh) comes to the rescue, and the capitalists that receive this cash invest it in more profitable locales where human labor power ** can be bought far more cheaply than in the US. And the auto bosses got plenty of support from the Union leadership, "They need to act, now, today," said UAW President Ron Gettelfinger back in November 2008, "at the very least allow these companies to continue to operate to allow [President elect] Obama to come up with a long-term solution." Well, they're operating alright. This is not good for US workers.
But it is not good for Mexican or Chinese workers either. US capitalists don't invest in Mexico in order to provide the "American Dream" (What's left of it) for the Mexican workers. They seek to maximize profits and in the course of this venture they destroy the lives of US workers while robbing our Mexican, Chinese, or Vietnamese comrades. They want no impediment to profit taking; no Unions, no regulation, complete freedom for capital is their motto.
The Labor leaders and the Democrats call for keeping the jobs at home. They pretend to be the friend of the worker, that they have our best interests at heart for they want the money to be invested here at home. But they have all cooperated in driving down the wages and destroying the benefits and gains that US workers have won over the years. This group recognizes that they can't go too far though; that there is a limit to how far the US working class will be pushed backwards.
This group claims not to oppose workers in other countries getting jobs. They love all workers, especially those they don't have to face in times of turmoil. "But, damn it, we have to take care of our own first.", they say. But working people must oppose the right of capitalists to shift production to wherever they can find the cheapest human being. This means we must not fall in to the trap of competing with workers in other countries, seeing them as our adversaries. The employers will always set us against one another, women against men, black against white, Mexican workers against US workers.
Workers and the Labor movement must develop our own response to these issues rather than allowing big business, through the two political parties that it controls, set the ground rules. We must support immigrant rights domestically and not fall in to the skape-goating trap while at the same time assisting the growth and development of Labor organizations in other counties where poverty is rife. Most people emigrate because they can’t feed their families.
But, for the US workers, even if workers and peasants don't come here to the US, staying in their home countries will have basically the same effect. It will increase the supply of Labor, further driving down wages (Labor’s price) and increasing the rate at which capital invests since there as there would be even greater profits to be made and that is exactly what is happening. As we can see, this would mean further job losses here in the U.S. Thus, we cannot escape the effects of the conditions of those workers and peasants, no matter if they come here or stay in their home countries. The only real difference is that if they come here, the effects of this forced competition are more visible to us. We can bury our heads in the sand and ignore the conditions in such countries as El Salvador, Mexico, etc., but that in no way means that those conditions don't affect us just as much. Therefore, our only choice is to join with them, wherever they are, in a united struggle to improve wages and conditions, as well as democratic rights, whether they be here or there.
While we want to maintain our own jobs, our own means of subsistence, we cannot repel this offensive of capital without international working class solidarity and cooperation. And as we can see, they take our money and run with it. We bail out their system in order for them to continue to maximize profits at our expense. This capital is the creation of Labor and it is collective Labor that should own it and determine its allocation.
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