American workers shut down General Motors

American workers shut down General Motors

September 16, 2019

Forty-six thousand General Motors workers left at midnight Sunday night. The closure of 35 manufacturing plants in the states of Michigan, Ohio, Indiana, Kentucky, Missouri, Tennessee and New York will cost GM up to $ 400 million worth of lost production each day .

Despite his frantic efforts to avoid a strike, the leaders of United Auto Workers (UAW) – who were exposed as corrupt criminal agents of the automakers – concluded that they were not in a position to strike. able to prevent a massive departure.

The announcement of the strike was made at a press conference by the vice president of the UAW, Terry Dittes. Demoralized and scared, Dittes spoke as he attended a funeral.

The day before, the UAW had ordered its members to cross the picket lines of housekeeping employees belonging to the same union. The UAW has refused to call the workers employed by Ford and Fiat-Chrysler, striving at best to avoid mobilizing the full force of the auto-worker.

The closure of General Motors is a major escalation of the class struggle in the United States and around the world. The powerful social movement that began last year with teachers extends to the industrial working class. The repression of the decades-long class struggle – ruthlessly imposed by an alliance of unions, business and government – is collapsing.

When workers start this fight, they must monitor the battlefield and develop a strategy based on understanding who their allies and enemies are.

The workers are confronted with General Motors, symbol of the power of American capitalism, with a market capitalization of 55 billion dollars. But GM itself is part of an integrated global auto sector, which employs millions of workers worldwide.

Every labor struggle has a political dimension, but in this case the policy is particularly clear. The automotive industry has been the target for 40 years of the efforts of the Democratic and Republican administrations to increase corporate profits at the expense of the working class.

Forty years ago, in 1979, the Democratic administration of Jimmy Carter and a congress controlled by the Democratic Party insisted that the so-called Chrysler rescue plan required massive concessions on the part of the workers and closure. d & # 39; plants. The Republican Reagan administration immediately fired PATCO's air traffic controllers, who launched a massive assault on the entire working class.

In 2008, the Obama administration insisted that the salaries of new employees be halved as part of the restructuring of the auto industry. Mass layoffs, factory closures and Obama-mandated wage cuts have allowed builders to make record profits.

In four decades of social counter-revolution, GM, Ford and Chrysler have cut 600,000 jobs in the auto sector, of which only 158,000 remain. The compensation of a newly hired auto worker has been reduced by half.

The expansion of corporate profits by the impoverishment of the workers is the fundamental law of the capitalist system. Profit does not fall like the manna of heaven: it is extracted at the moment of production by the working class. The value created by the workers through the work process is distributed to the capitalists who exploit them.

The unjust and exploitative nature of this system is demonstrated by the salaries of the leaders of the auto sector and the billions of dollars paid to investors in the form of profit.

GM's President and CEO, Mary Barra, with her annual salary of $ 21.87 million, earns in one day twice as much as a new self-employed worker earns a year. GM made a profit of $ 11.8 billion last year. Since 2015, he has spent more than $ 10 billion on stock repurchases.

The claim that GM does not have the money to meet workers' demands for restoring their wages and benefits should be dismissed with contempt.

Even if workers fight against corporations, the government and the capitalist system as a whole, their most determined enemy is the organization that claims to represent them – the corrupt and corrupt United Auto Workers.

The UAW's endless betrayal of workers' interests led to the abandonment of the corruption that engulfed all the leaders, bribed to the tune of millions of dollars by management.

All the workers are struggling now, from factory closures to starvation wages to the multi-level wage and benefits system, is the product of the concessions imposed by the UAW. To believe that this will now change, is to indulge in the most dangerous illusions.

It has been shown that UAW officials have spent millions of dollars in workers' money on golf games, cigars, whiskey and prostitutes. week of strike.

GM workers face many enemies, but they also have powerful allies.

Workers in the auto industry are receiving unprecedented support and sympathy from the American workforce. The operating conditions faced by auto workers are those felt by millions of workers across the country, whose wage and benefit cuts have been removed, and which are treated worse. than their machines.

GM workers must ask their brothers and sisters in Ford and Fiat Chrysler to join the strike to end the entire US auto industry and put maximum economic and political pressure on employers' bosses. the automobile.

Just as importantly, workers need the support of workers and youth from across the country and around the world, whom they will easily receive.

GM's walkout is the last step of a wave of global strike. The strike of the American auto workers takes place in the context of an international movement of the working class. Just last week, 8,000 GM workers went on strike in Korea, and French transit workers shut down the Paris metro. Over the past year, auto industry workers in India and Mexico have been carrying out powerful strikes. In France, Puerto Rico and Hong Kong, workers and young people have been involved in mass demonstrations in defense of their social and democratic rights.

The fight can only succeed if it is removed from the control of the traitors of the UAW. Workers must elect basic committees to organize and develop the strike.

These committees must require:

● A salary increase of 40% start recovering decades of lost wages because of illegitimate concessions from the corrupt UWW and the companies that corrupted them.

● Complete the level system! Equality at the workplace! All workers, including contract and part-time workers, must be paid immediately at the best wage.

● Restore the work! Reopen Lordstown and other closed factories and re-hire all laid-off workers and victims. Stop all factory closures and layoffs!

● Honor retirees! Reverse all cuts in health care and retirement pensions.

● Democracy at the factory! For worker control over production, line speed and safety.

● $ 750 per week in strike pay! The UAW and the AFL-CIO control multi-billion dollar assets that they use to finance junkets and pay six-figure salaries to thousands of leaders. These resources, deducted from contributions and pension plans, must now be paid!

In this struggle, the Party of Socialist Equality, which produces the Autoworker Newsletter and helps to publish the World Socialist Website, pledges its full support to the workers.

The Socialist Equality Party will do everything in its power to build a new militant socialist leadership in the working class. It will provide workers with the information they need to help them organize their struggle, to mobilize their support across the country and at the international level.

We call on workers to attend our next online forum, which brought together more than 300 workers last week, to discuss the strategic issues that auto industry workers are facing in the conduct of this crucial and crucial struggle.

The WSWS Editorial Board

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