Afscme Local 444, retired
President Trump
believes he can command markets like King Canute thought he could the tides.
But General Motors has again exposed the inability of any politician
to arrest the changes in technology and consumer tastes roiling the auto industry.
The quote above is the WSJ editorial board’s response to the
US Predator in Chief, Donald Trump’s tweet after GM’s management announced that
it will close plants and layoff workers. We’re “Very disappointed with General Motors and their CEO, Mary Barra….We are
now looking at cutting all @GM subsidies, including for electric cars.”, Trump
wrote.. The subsidy in question is the $7500 income tax credit that GM and
Tesla receive making electric cars more affordable. That subsidy has already
expired for Tesla and is about to expire at GM in the coming months. It’s just
Trump spouting off again.
Trump’s phony disappointment and threats are not taken
seriously by the GM management or its investors who, “….cheered by bidding up GM’s stock.” Like the GM CEO, Trump understands market
reality and they know it. Trump’s comments are part of his strategy to convince
his supporters and anyone else that will fall for it, that he is the renegade
they are looking for and is above markets and supports jobs. He is well aware
that a company in a capitalist economy cannot function in this way. As for bringing jobs back onshore, the Wall
Street Journal editorial points out today, “GM
has little choice but to make cars in China. All the more so after Beijing
raised tariffs on U.S.-made cars to 40% from 15% in retaliation for Mr. Trump’s
tariffs.” GM claims the tariffs
could increase costs by as much as $700 million this year.
This is a lesson that should remind us that both free trade
and protectionism are capitalist solutions to capitalist (so-called free market)
crisis and neither benefit workers domestically or internationally. And it’s
important to recall that, thanks to the United Auto Workers (UAW) top
leadership and their friendly relationship with the auto-bosses, the last two
contracts that they recommended contained provisions that made it much easier
for GM to lay workers off. Why wouldn’t the bosses take advantage of that?
Trump has also been good to the auto industry by relaxing fuel economy standards
helping GM’s third quarter profit jump 37%.
This reminds me that the taxpayer bailed the auto bosses out
and dragged capitalism from the abyss back in 2008. They actually “nationalized” industries only they
didn’t feel comfortable with the other “N”
word preferring the safer “conservatorship”
instead. No problem with “big” government then, but the
capitalist class had to do it. And we should not forget they also “nationalized” made the US taxpayer pay
the debt of, the S&L industry back in the 1980’s and 90’s.
GM is also preparing for next years contract talks. That’s
what this decision is related to as well, a Shock and Awe prelude. It is
economic terrorism.
“I’m crushed and I’m
foreseeing a bunch of hardship in the next couple of weeks with the rest of my
co-workers” says a worker at the Lordstown plant whose father worked in it for
46 years. Plant
closure Dims Hopes inn Ohio Town
“An economy doesn’t
run on nostalgia”
The Wall Street Journal is right in stating the above; it’s
the naked truth that we find when we read their serious jourrnals. Markets are
ruthless. And as far as human needs are concerned capitalism and markets are inefficient;
it cannot be regulated in to decency. “We’re
right-sizing our capacity for the realities of the marketplace and the
transformation that’s occurring,” says GM CEO Mary Barra. The continued
decline in the living standards of US workers. The increased hardship, the
pricing out of reach education, health care, and housing is all a result of the
market and the rapacious quest for profits that drives the system to assault
humanity and the earth. The competition for profits is what drives the system
to war, and unless it is stopped, eventual nuclear war. The US wants to spend another $1.2 trillion
on nuclear upgrades-----we are going backwards. And while they would rather not
venture there, they don’t make all these nuclear weapons never to use them and
if they do it will end life as we know it if climate catastrophe doesn’t get us
first.
The plant closings and social disruption and misery that will
accompany it is not Russia’s doing or the work of Iranian Mullah’s or Jihadists
we are supposed to fear so much. This is good old-fashioned apple pie US
capitalism. It is inconceivable that there will not be a recession or even a
deep slump before the end of 2019. GM’s and the auto industry’s capacity
utilization* at 82% has been declining since its 2015. Production had already
been cut by one third at Lordstown and one half at the Oshawa Ontario plant,
capitalist’s don’t set production in motion for egalitarian reasons. “It’s highly likely we’re going to see more
cuts,” said Jeff Schuster, an analyst at LMC Automotive.
The UAW and the
Crisis of Leadership
We are deep in to a long depression as the Marxist economist Michael Roberts
describes the weak upswing following the 2008 crash. And as capacity
utilization declines further, homes will be lost, and so will jobs. With these layoffs it is not just auto but all
the industries connected to it that will be affected,
The UAW leadership has bent over backwards to accommodate
the auto industry investors helping to render a harmless shell an industrial
union that was one the entry in to the middle class for hundreds of thousands
of US workers. Workers braved the police, Pinkerton thugs, tear gas and
violence occupying their workplaces to form a union and free themselves from
the terror and violence that GM inflicted on them and their families. The great
44-day Flint occupation in 1936-37 was part of that process and here we are
today where this historic working class community cannot get decent water in
the richest economy on earth. Working
Class History: Sit Downs, Ready to Die in a Flint Factory.
To date, the UAW leadership has stated in general terms they
will “challenge” the GM decision but
it’s the same old pathetic story. There
is nothing that inspires on the UAW website:
“This should be a
tipping point for all of us. It’s time to tell General Motors they need to
build product where they sell product.” , UAW VP Terry Dittes writes to his
members and adds threateningly, “We need
to tell them, we need to tell them clearly that we want our products made here
because this is where you sell them. And we call on GM today just as they
called on all of us over a decade ago." Message
from VP Terry Dittes
What nonsense this UAW official’s comments are. It is no
wonder we are in such a disastrous state. Is he telling us that GM doesn’t
export anything? GM has sells and has exported cars all over the world as Ford
has for decades. So it appears they took this VP’s advice and shifted plant abroad
to build product where they sell product.
Just ponder over this statement from a top UAW official for a while to get a
sense oh how stupid it is.
If that doesn’t work, the UAW leadership has the heavy
artillery waiting in the wings. I will quote this in full so the reader
understands fully the intent of the UAW leadership to pull out all the stops to
save the workers jobs and communities. This is also a message to GM on the UAW
website from Michigan
Congressman Daniel Kildee:
The American people and the federal government have supported General Motors through difficult times and the industry should have the back of American workers. In a time of huge corporate tax cuts and back-to-back years of record operating profits, General Motors should be investing in American workers, not shipping jobs overseas. Auto workers made sacrifices during the Great Recession and it is wrong to lay off thousands of American manufacturing jobs now.
I ask that General Motors reconsider its plan to close these plants and lay off thousands of American workers. America has the best workers in the world.
If US workers are the best in the world why have the Democrats participated in slashing wages and benefits and why have the heads of organized labor cooperated with it. This pathetic response from a trade union leader and his capitalist
politician ally is what we have been hearing for years and its why labor’s rank
and file are demoralized, have lost hope, can’t be bothered going to union
meetings, and believe we cannot win. It is also a reason for the rise of Trump and why many union
members in Michigan voted for him. Desperate people more often than not will
make wrong decisions.
A Message to
Organized Labor’s Rank and File
The response from the UAW leadership is nothing new. The
power that can force GM’s hand is the UAW rank and file membership. There is no
alternative but to fight to change the present leadership of the UAW and
organized labor as a whole. The hardest fight of all is the internal struggle
against our own leadership and to replace them but it cannot be avoided. This
scenario with GM and the pathetic stance of the UAW leadership is nothing new
and occurs throughout organized labor as the labor hierarchy bends over
backwards to appease the bosses and their representatives in the Democratic
Party.
Like the entire leadership of organized labor, the UAW
bureaucracy sees no alternative to capitalism and the market so cannot in
anyway see mobilizing the power of labor in the UAW and the AFL-CIO as an
option. The power that exists in the
factories and workplaces of the US is frightening to them, it must be
contained, rendered passive as a conscious, active membership threatens their
view of the world of labor peace and their comfortable positions and perks.
Unable to appeal to the power of their own members as well as workers in the
community and throughout the state, the trade union leadership looks elsewhere
for help. Local UAW officials in Lordstown started a campaign called Drive it
Home that is a collaboration between the UAW leadership, both political parties
(Republican and Democrats) and the goal is to, get this, persuade GM invest in
the city. It’s a bit like a children’s story were the results of such tragic
failure not so dire.
The Example of the
Teachers/Educators Strikes
We are not weak, we have a leadership problem. We cannot win
with the present leadership and their policies. The call for buying American is
flawed as it is not simply offshoring that has cost jobs but innovation and new
technology and such a stance ties us to the bosses and pits workers in
different countries against one another and we can’t win without international
unity and action.
The teachers and educators struggles were rank and file led
and generated. They bypassed their established leadership and along with that
struck in states where strikes were illegal. They included any worker in
education that wanted to join. They had major victories. The UAW and the trade
union movement were built along similar lines by direct action, occupations and
violating the bosses’ laws. Things will
not change without a revolt from below and that’s what will move GM and the
bosses and topple the present collaborators at the top.
The Wall Street Journal is right, Trump can’t move markets, but workers’ power can. It can force concessions on them but that is not enough. Workers have to own and control major industries that are a necessity of life for society. We must broaden our horizons. No contract dispute should be limited to a local’s membership but our communities, non-union and workers internationally have to be brought together. We are fighting global capitalism; the present leadership of organized labor is not fighting it at all, they are cooperating with it.
The Wall Street Journal is right, Trump can’t move markets, but workers’ power can. It can force concessions on them but that is not enough. Workers have to own and control major industries that are a necessity of life for society. We must broaden our horizons. No contract dispute should be limited to a local’s membership but our communities, non-union and workers internationally have to be brought together. We are fighting global capitalism; the present leadership of organized labor is not fighting it at all, they are cooperating with it.
We have no other
alternative but to fight.
Auto is an international industry and is heavily unionized.
Linking with auto workers internationally is crucial and we can’t do that by helping
or own bosses profits by driving their competitors from the market forcing them
to lay off their workers and blaming us for it. International working class
solidary cannot be built that way. Taking control of such an important industry
as transportation we can develop new and efficient methods of transportation
based on human needs and in an environmentally safe way.
As far as technological advances, the productive power of
labor is incredible. But workers do not benefit from innovation and labor saving
technology bosses do. We don’t own the technology, we don’t develop it although
public money funds most research and development in industry is some way. Technology in our hands is a means to
increased leisure time and influence in the way work is conducted. A 25-hour workweek is easily possible with
the level of labor productivity today.
For the bosses, technology is simply a means to increase the
power of capital over labor and increased exploitation and despair.
* A measure of how
much production capacity a plant uses based on a 16-hour workday
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