GM fires Flint workers over social media posts during strike
In the aftermath of the United Auto Workers’ shutdown of the General Motors strike, the company has conducted retaliatory firings of workers for their social media posts during the 40-day walkout.
While the number of victimized workers is still unclear, at least three were workers at the Flint Truck Assembly Plant, one of GM’s largest and most profitable factories. One of the workers is Juan Gonzales, a 19-year veteran of General Motors, who was confronted by GM Global Security when he arrived at work on Monday morning and taken to labor relations where he was shown pictures from his Facebook page. Gonzales was then summarily fired.
In a post on his Facebook page Monday morning, Gonzales wrote: “In labor terminated! Do not post on any social media sites they, GM security out of Detroit are on them and everything I posted during the whole strike was in a [m]anila envelope, everything. Stay off them!”
GM workers picket at Flint Assembly during strike
Gonzales is an outspoken worker who posts comments on several Facebook pages where autoworkers speak out, including against the collusion of the UAW with the corporation. He was also interviewed on the picket line in front of the Flint Assembly plant several times by local media. On the very first day of the strike, September 16, he denounced GM for making record profits and giving workers nothing, telling an NBC 25 reporter that the company “continues to make all the gains and we remain where we’re at.”
In an effort to justify this outrageous violation of free speech, the Detroit Free Press and other corporate media have reported unsubstantiated claims that the workers were fired for posting threatening messages on social media or allegedly participating in violent incidents on the picket line. The Free Press quotes an unnamed “person familiar with the terminations” saying, "It ties to bomb threats and threats of actual violence made on the line.”
The workers have refuted this slanderous lie. One of the victimized workers, who did not want his named used, told the local ABC-TV affiliate that he was fired for posting comments that he was “going to crack some eggs” out of frustration but he was not threatening any violence.
Gonzales and other workers are clearly being targeted for exercising their First Amendment rights and criticizing the giant corporation, which is shutting plants and destroying the livelihoods and communities of thousands of workers and condemning a whole generation to the status of low-paid temporary laborers. Workers have told the WSWS Autoworker Newsletter that GM Global Security agents are using fake profiles to troll private social media pages and monitor workers’ comments, and also must have scanned the local media coverage of the strike.
“Evidently GM Global Security has people on every union and UAW page,” a worker at the FCA Jeep Assembly Plant in Toledo, Ohio told the WSWS Autoworker Newsletter. “They confronted Juan with a folder filled with posts he made on 10 different pages.”
Another Toledo Jeep worker said, “I didn't find anything nefarious when I researched Juan’s posts. The Detroit Free Press is reporting that all those being fired were inciting violence (calling for others to bring weapons to the strike line to stop scabs, etc). I personally have not seen one post or comment by anyone regarding anything of the sort.”
In its official statement, GM made it clear that it is meting out punishment to intimidate workers who dare resist the dictatorial regime inside the factories that will be enforced by the UAW under the terms of the new contract.
GM told Detroit’s 7 Action News, “We can confirm the employees have been dismissed from Flint Assembly due to violations of company policy. Our team members play a critical role in our success, and the new four-year labor agreement recognizes those important contributions with an industry-leading wage and benefit package. As we restart operations, we are moving forward as one team and staying focused on our priorities of safety and building high quality vehicles for our customers.”
The firing of the Flint workers follows GM’s decision to fire nine militant workers at its Silao, Mexico plant who voted to defy company and union demands to increase production during the US strike. The Silao workers make the same Silverado and Sierra trucks that US workers build at the Flint Assembly and Ft. Wayne, Indiana plants.
Ford and Fiat Chrysler workers who have opposed the UAW sellout at GM and want to fight concession demands are also being victimized. A Fiat Chrysler worker told the WSWS Autoworker Newsletter, “We were told we will be fired if we post anything on social media or talk with other workers about the upcoming contract. At a plant meeting they said we legacy workers are plotting against the company and the union and put us on notice to be terminated for talking to the younger generation of workers about contractual language and language agreements.
“We have nobody to turn to help us because the union is letting the company do whatever they want to do to the workers regardless of contractual agreements. The harassment is out of control. We are also being forced to work through every break and told not to report injuries.”
The UAW International and Local 598 officials in Flint have acknowledged that the firings have taken place and made it clear they will do nothing to seriously fight this blatant attempt to intimidate workers. "All issues will be addressed through our Local Unions and our contracts’ grievance process which applied during the work stoppage," the UAW International said in a statement to the local news media.
The fact is the UAW supports the company making examples of militant workers. During the strike, the UAW deliberately isolated the GM workers, keeping more than 100,000 Ford and Fiat Chrysler workers on the job despite GM’s use of scabs, including in Flint. Well aware that it would face widespread opposition, local union officials in Spring Hill, Tennessee called the police on workers campaigning against the sellout contract. Running roughshod over the democratic rights of workers, the UAW rushed through a series of ratification votes before workers had sufficient time to study and discuss the tentative agreement, and then announced that the deal had passed by 56 to 44 percent, based on large “yes” votes at plants like Flint Assembly, which workers charged were manipulated.
Workers have every right to speak their minds and use social media to organize opposition, free from the spying of the corporations and the UAW. That right is guaranteed by the First Amendment of the US Constitution. It is also part of the 1935 National Labor Relations Act clause of “Protected Concerted Activity,” which guarantees the right of workers “to act together to try to improve their pay and working conditions, with or without a union.”
After receiving many protests from workers complaining that their rights were being violated, in 2012 the NLRB found that several employers, including General Motors, had unlawfully violated federal labor law through their restrictive social media policy. GM said that despite the NLRB’s recommendations, the company was not changing its policy, maintaining that it “complies with applicable laws.”
Instead, the UAW has upheld GM’s undemocratic social media rules, which “includes posting or forwarding posts containing rumors, malicious statements, or negative comments toward GM or any of its employees as found in our Local Agreement Shop Rule 30,” one local union writes.
Workers must demand the reinstatement of all victimized workers, from Flint Assembly to Silao, Mexico. The fight against the firing and disciplining of militant workers and to defend the right to free expression and collective resistance will not be guaranteed by the UAW. It can only be fought for through the building of rank-and-file factory committees, independent of the corrupt UAW, to mobilize all workers in opposition to the union-management dictatorship in the factories.
GM refuses to rehire victimized Mexican workers who supported US strike
Production at General Motors plants in Mexico resumed Monday after several plants were shut down by the 40-day strike of 48,000 GM workers in the United States, which was shut down by the United Auto Workers union last Friday.
The GM Complex at Silao, Mexico, has been fully shut down since October 1. The transmission and engine areas at the Ramos Arizpe Complex were closed on October 7, followed by the assembly area for the Chevrolet Blazer on October 18. GM’s other two plants in Mexico, San Luis Potosí and Toluca, remained open during the US strike.
The economic impact in Mexico highlights the international character of the production process and the working class. In September, El Financiero reports, “manufacturing auto exports fell 2.8 percent, which was related to the effects of the General Motors strike in the US.” This contributed to Mexico’s worst monthly fall in exports in almost four years.
As workers in Mexico and Canada return to work, however, GM is continuing its vendetta against nine courageous workers at the Silao plant who were fired for resisting the company’s demands to increase production and undermine the impact of the US strike.
The nine Silao workers were fired between August 28 and October 1. Three were singled out as GM sought to weed out rank-and-file leaders ahead of a potential strike in the US. Then, on September 15, the workers’ independent group, called Generating Movement, voted to actively oppose GM’s demands for forced overtime and speedup to increase output of its most profitable vehicles, the Silverado and Sierra pickup trucks. After Silao workers communicated this decision during the September 19 international online call organized and appealed to US strikers for a joint struggle, GM summarily fired six of those helping the US strike. Several others in the group had been fired earlier this year due to injuries.
On Friday, GM announced, “During the last week of October, all General Motors manufacturing complexes in Mexico will operate normally and the entirety of employees will recover their work shifts.” This lie was echoed by corporate news outlets, including EFE, which had previously reported the harassment and firing of workers at Silao “as a consequence of backing US strikers.” In its latest report, the news agency stressed, “while some employees only received part of their salary and others lost vacation days, General Motors assured through its Communication and Public Relations area that there were no firings.”
The company, however, has not reinstated any of the victimized workers at Silao. Moreover, workers in the plant have reported that, while “working at 100 percent,” the factory is far from operating “normally,” given increased harassment by management.
Israel Cervantes, one of the fired workers, added: “In order to increase production after the strike, the company is not allowing workers to go to the bathroom or to take their vacation time. One worker on medical leave told me he fears he will be fired given these pressures. Harassment and overtime have escalated. One injured worker told me that beyond 6 pm [end of her shift], they kept her inside until 8 pm.”
He noted that those workers in the militant group that were fired were blacklisted. “No one wants to hire me. I’ve looked and they say no. I’ve had to sell the few possessions I have and take out loans.”
Israel said that many of the victimized workers were discouraged by the end of the strike because they had looked to striking US workers to get their jobs back. Some workers, he said, “think the US workers won signing bonuses while we won more work and getting treated like slaves.”
Mexican workers learned that there was widespread support among striking GM workers for their reinstatement. On the picket lines, workers denounced the firings and demanded their rehiring. As one GM worker at the Detroit-Hamtramck plant said, “To all my brothers and sisters in Mexico, we’re all fighting for the same thing. Us American workers are fighting for you to get your jobs back and we’re in solidarity with you.”
The UAW, however, was adamantly opposed to raising the demand for the reinstatement of the Silao workers. On the contrary, it removed references to the Silao workers from UAW Facebook pages in Ft. Wayne and other locations and did everything to frame the strike in nationalist terms, demanding the closure of Mexican plants and the shifting of production to the US.
In opposition to the chauvinism of the US and Mexican unions, Israel Cervantes appealed to US workers at Fiat Chrysler and Ford, whose contracts are being renewed next, to demand the reinstallation of all victimized autoworkers and the end of blacklisting in Mexico. “We should have a social media page for workers here to contact workers in the US and worldwide because this is not a struggle in one country or continent. It’s a struggle that we must wage globally.”
In addition to the Silao workers, GM is also victimizing US workers for posting critical statements on Facebook and other social media platforms. Over the weekend and on Monday, at least three workers at the Flint Truck Assembly Plant, including 19-year veteran Juan Gonzales, were fired as a result of their social media posts. The UAW is doing nothing to seriously oppose the victimizations and in fact welcomes them as a means of suppressing opposition to the pro-company contract it just imposed on behalf of GM.
The deal ratified the closing of the Lordstown, Ohio assembly plants, two transmission factories and one parts distribution center in the US, opens the door for a massive expansion of low-paid temporary labor at plants like Flint assembly, where nearly a third of the workers building Silverados and Sierras are temps. US workers have also expressed doubts on the legitimacy of the vote conducted by the UAW, with one arguing “in my past 24 years whenever membership votes no it still passes!”
When it comes to representing workers’ interests, the UAW is no different than the Confederation of Mexican Workers (CTM). The CTM has not even acknowledged the firings at Silao, while it openly supported the cut in pay and vacations during the shutdown.
The workers at Silao have continued fighting to organize outside of the CTM and develop the links with workers internationally. After the UAW sellout, Mauricio Negrete Pérez, who was fired after 21 years at the Silao Complex for opposing overtime during the strike. “Everywhere in the world, there are unions that only seek their own good even though those of us busting our asses are the workers, those making the employers millionaires are the workers. In this moment, we declare an international war against all sold-out unions.”
The GM strike and the courageous stance of Silao workers are part of the growing counteroffensive of the international working class and the objective striving of workers to unify their struggles on a world scale. From the wildcat strikes of sweatshop workers in Matamoros, Mexico and the yellow-vest protests in France, to the mass protests in Puerto Rico, Hong Kong, Chile and Lebanon, the working class is revolting against the crushing levels of social inequality produced by the world capitalist system.
In opposition to the corporate-controlled trade unions, workers need new organizations, rank-and-file factory and workplace committees, which are independent of all nationalist and pro-capitalist trade unions, political parties, including the Morena government, and their pseudo-left apologists. The committees, drawing in the widest sections of the working class and youth, must reject the profit demands of the global corporations and capitalist governments and advance the demands that workers and their families need.
That is why the reemergence of mass working-class struggles must be guided by a new international socialist perspective and strategy. This means ending capitalist exploitation in every country, establishing the collective and democratic ownership of the giant industries and banks by the international working class and reorganizing the global economy to meet human need, not private profit.
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