GM workers go on strike to keep Trump's broken promise

At a rally in Youngstown, Ohio, in July 2017, President Donald Trump told his supporters not to sell their homes, as jobs in the factory "come back." They all come back. "

A few kilometers away, a General Motors plant has since closed down and no longer produces the Chevrolet Cruze. Two other GM plants in Michigan and Maryland have also stopped production.

It goes without saying that jobs in the manufacturing sector have not returned since Trump took office. The president's tariff war has made imports more expensive for US manufacturers and the sector is now shrinking. Last year, GM announced the elimination of 14,000 jobs in North America and the implementation of the Chevrolet Blazer construction project in Mexico.

Nearly 50,000 GM auto workers are on strike for the second consecutive day in an attempt to accomplish what the president could not. From Georgia to Michigan, apart from more than 50 US factories, they are demonstrating 24 hours a day to express their anger at the recent decisions of the company. They demand, among other things, that GM keep jobs in the United States and reopen its idle factories.

"The company just started making decisions unilaterally, and things did not go well," said Art Wheaton, professor of labor relations at Cornell University.

GM employees with the United Auto Workers union were negotiating another four-year deal when the talks broke down this weekend as the previous contract expired. The agreement they reach will also serve as a model for the union's new contracts with Ford and Chrysler. That's why the strike is so important: what GM workers will get at the end of their strike will determine what hundreds of thousands of auto workers need to live with.

But national politics complicated the discussions. Trump keeps trying to get involved and it does not help. So the employees do it themselves.

GM workers want what they've lost

General Motors caused an uproar in November when he announced plans to close up to five plants in the United States and Canada and cut more than 14,000 jobs over the next two years.

The automaker said consumers were not buying enough cars, like the Chevrolet Cruze, and this overhaul would save the company $ 6 billion. GM has also accused President Donald Trump, whose tariffs on imported steel cost the company $ 1 billion.

GM's decision to cut jobs and close factories sparked negative reactions from Canadian and US lawmakers. Senator Sherrod Brown (D-OH) called him "Corporate greed at its worst," pointing out that GM had received millions of dollars in corporate tax cuts but had not used the money to invest in its workers. Instead, the company recently announced plans to build his new Chevy Blazer in Mexico, a decision that has frustrated American unions who want these jobs to be entrusted to American workers.

Trump was also reportedly furious. GM produces electric cars and US buyers can get a federal tax break to buy one. So Trump threatened to cut those subsidies for GM vehicles if the company removes US jobs – a decision it can not do without Congress.

But Trump's intimidation tactic did not work. Nor did they work when Harley-Davidson announced job cuts and a new factory in Thailand. The companies said Trump's tariffs on imported steel cost them billions of dollars. It is no wonder that the manufacturing industry shrinks two years after Trump's presidency.

The Institute for Supply Management's manufacturing purchasing index fell to 49.1 in August, its lowest level in seven years. Figures below 50 suggest that the manufacturing economy is shrinking. But this trend did not stop GM employees from demanding what they once had.

Negotiations, explained

When GM and the other major automakers in Detroit went bankrupt during the Great Recession, employees gave up a lot to keep businesses afloat.

The union and its members have agreed to let new employees earn less than half of base salaries and have allowed GM to hire temporary workers for even lower wages and benefits. But four years and an economic rebound later, employees no longer agree with that.

The automaker has made decent profits: GM has generated $ 35 billion in North America over the past three years, while closing factories in the United States. While temporary workers earned just $ 15 an hour, GM CEO Mary Barra had earned nearly $ 22 million last year. That's 281 times the average GM worker.

Representatives from GM and UAW have been meeting since July to negotiate contracts to accurately define wages, health care, benefits, profit sharing and job security for temporary workers and permanent workers. The union also urged GM to reconsider the proposed closures of four facilities.

As Vox's Anya van Wagtendonk explained, GM workers' contracts expired Saturday at midnight without an agreement. At a press conference in Detroit on Sunday morning, Terry Dittes, a vice president of the UAW who leads the union's efforts with the chief executive, said that a strike was "our last appeal. "

GM is not in agreement. Late in the morning of Sunday morning, the company issued its own statement, claiming that she offered the union more than $ 7 billion in investments in four states, including the creation of 5,400 jobs and the increase in base salaries and benefits. The company also proposed to halt the planned closure of an assembly plant and build a new one in Ohio.

Cornell's Wheaton has been following contract negotiations between UAW and Detroit's three major automakers for years. He said the last round of contract negotiations had a simple dynamic at stake.

"The UAW said," Look at all the money you've won, it's time to give it a fair share. We've given up all of this in the past, you owe it to us, "said Wheaton.

Meanwhile, the company is impatient. "The economy is in danger of sinking into a recession," Weaton said, "so they really do not want to promise all that."

On top of that, Trump has "stepped up" the negotiations, he added.

The president needs the support of workers from Ohio and Michigan who voted for him. It is therefore in his interest that GM reopen its factories there.

On Monday, Trump told reporters outside the White House that "federal mediation is still possible" between GM and the UAW. "I hope that they can quickly settle the GM strike," he added. "We do not want General Motors to build factories outside of this country … we are very good at it."

For the moment, GM workers and executives do not accept it for its mediation offer. Instead, employees hope that the $ 50 million that their strike costs the company each day will allow the president to achieve what the president did not do.