The GM strike is a
fight against the
entire ruling class
8 October 2019
General Motors’ decision to double down on demands to expand temporary work, quintuple workers’ health care costs and keep wages growing below the rate of inflation marks a major offensive not only by GM against 48,000 striking autoworkers, but by all of corporate America against the US and international working class.
The ruthlessness of the corporation shows that if the strike is to succeed, workers must take control out of the hands of the UAW and expand the strike. The UAW has isolated workers and weakened their position, paying them $250 in strike pay and keeping Ford and Fiat-Chrysler workers on the job to help the auto industry withstand the impact of a continued strike.
The strike is causing significant disruptions in international supply chains. Yesterday, GM furloughed 415 of 2,100 workers at its Mexican V-8 engine and transmissions plant in Ramos Arizpe in the northern state of Coahuila. The 6,000-worker Silao, Guanajuato plant remains shut down. Over 10,000 non-UAW members have been laid off at parts and other related facilities in the US as a result of the strike.
The outcome of the strike will determine conditions of life for millions of workers across not just the auto industry, but all workplaces for years to come.
What is involved is not just a dispute with one powerful company. Through this contract, the ruling class is conspiring to dramatically alter class relations and transfer trillions of dollars more from the working class to the financial aristocracy. Autoworkers are taking a stand for the entire working class.
What GM is trying to force upon its workforce is corporate America’s dream vision of the future: an army of temporary workers with no rights who can be thrown onto the street at will; factories that can be shuttered by the company as it wishes; the elimination of employer-provided healthcare; rising productivity through speedup with lower wages and higher injury rates.
GM’s demands are an effort by Wall Street to “uberize” and “Amazonify” the international workforce, ensuring the highest possible level of exploitation to increase profits and inflate the stock market. Just yesterday, General Electric announced an end to pensions for 10,000 workers. It is a plan for mass poverty. If successful, the ruling class’s strategy will push millions of workers past the brink of physical and mental exhaustion for generations to come.
GM’s ruthlessness is not merely the product of corporate “greed,” although there is plenty of that to go around. The greed flows from the demands of the capitalist system and the material interests of GM’s powerful shareholders.
Seventy-nine percent of GM shares are owned by institutional shareholders, including 7.8 percent by Capital Research and Management, 7.0 percent by Vanguard, 5.0 percent by Berkshire Hathaway and 4.3 percent by BlackRock.
According to a 2017 study published in the journal Business and Politics, the world’s top three institutional investors—Vanguard, State Street and BlackRock—“are the largest shareholder of 1,662 of the 3,900 publicly traded US corporations accounting for… 78 percent of the total market capitalization of US firms,” including GM. These companies have “a current market capitalization of more than $17 trillion, possess assets worth almost $23.9 trillion, and employ more than 23.5 million people.”
The study concluded that the three most powerful institutional investors “occupy a position of unrivaled potential power over corporate America,” and that there is “a concentration of corporate ownership not seen since the days of JP Morgan and JD Rockefeller.” The top three “have the potential to cause significant changes to the political economy of the United States.”
That is exactly what Wall Street is seeking to accomplish through the GM contract.
Workers must draw strategic conclusions from these facts.
The immediate first step must be to form rank-and-file factory committees to expand the strike to Ford and Fiat-Chrysler. Workers are at war with the corporations and must therefore prepare reinforcements to do battle against them.
The strike pay must be tripled to $750 per week. This is necessary to sustain a real fight. This can be paid for with the $800 million strike fund and by forcing a pay freeze on all UAW officials, especially the over 450 officials who make over $100,000 per year and are receiving full pay during the strike.
Workers must then set their own demands. For decades, workers have been told they must subordinate their demands to “market realities.” On this basis, hundreds of factories have been closed, millions of jobs have been lost, and wages have been brought down to levels that preceded the historic auto strikes of the 1930s.
The World Socialist Web Site Autoworker Newsletter calls on workers to demand the following:
• A 40 percent pay raise, the restoration of COLA for current and retired workers, the abolition of the two-tier wage and benefit system and the immediate conversion of all temps into full-time workers with full wages and benefits.
• The reopening of the Lordstown, Warren and Baltimore plants, a halt to all plant closings and the rehiring of all laid-off workers.
• The reinstatement of all the fired and victimized workers at GM’s Silao, Mexico plant and the payment of all back pay. These heroic workers were fired for refusing to increase production of GM’s highly profitable pickup trucks during the US strike. Their defense is the greatest way to forge the unity of US, Canadian and Mexican workers and undermine the corporations’ strategy of pitting workers against each other in a race to the bottom.
The UAW will not and cannot put forward any of these demands because doing so would undermine their criminal and corrupt relationship with the corporations.
Workers must disabuse themselves of the notion that the UAW will be forced to fight under pressure from workers. The opposite is true: the greater the workers’ anger and resolve, the harder the UAW will work with the companies behind their backs to end the strike and defend the interests of the corporations.
Carrying forward workers’ demands therefore requires new, rank-and-file organizations. These organizations will facilitate workers’ sharing information with one another, allow them to reach decisions democratically and to act in unison in carrying those decisions out.
They will function as synapses in a political nervous system, spreading into all workplaces and schools and connecting workers across national boundaries, allowing the working class to think and act as a powerful united social force against the companies and the capitalist system.
The fate of the GM strike and of the lives of hundreds of millions of workers depends on GM workers establishing committees and taking control of their struggle.
FCA workers at Sterling Heights plant
“We should all be out”
Growing call for industrywide strike to back GM workers
Support among Ford and Fiat Chrysler workers for an industrywide strike is growing after the United Auto Workers said that General Motors has not budged from its demands even as the walkout by 48,000 GM workers enters its fourth week.
The announcement from the UAW followed public statements by Wall Street analysts insisting that the company was willing to absorb the short-term losses of a prolonged strike in order to attain its longer-term, strategic aims. This includes gutting health care benefits and tripling the number of low-paid temporary workers. The latter is key to the goal of creating a “more flexible manufacturing workforce” to edge out international competitors for the emerging market of electric and self-driving vehicles and components.
In the face of this historic attack, the UAW has isolated the GM workers and called out less than one-third of the 158,000 workers at Detroit’s Big Three automakers. It has also enforced speedup and forced overtime on the factory floor, helping Ford and Fiat Chrysler stockpile vehicles to offset the impact of any potential strike.
Detroit area Fiat Chrysler workers want to walk out to back GM strikers
The WSWS Autoworker Newsletter spoke with Fiat Chrysler workers at the Sterling Heights Assembly Plant (SHAP) in suburban Detroit during their shift change on Monday afternoon. Many workers expressed their support for an industrywide strike in the brief comments they were able to give before punching in.
“We should all walk,” said one worker on her way to work. “That’s the only way to make them listen. What happens at GM is going to be the template for Fiat Chrysler and Ford.”
Another young worker said, “All of us should be out. It’s the perfect time. The UAW is being hit by the corruption exposure and is in cahoots with the company. It’s time for us to stand up for ourselves,” he said.
A young temporary part-time employee said, “The GM workers are striking for us. It takes a lot of time for us to get a position in the company and a lot of other things. It’s great that they are fighting for us. I think we should all be out.”
Chris, a legacy worker, said he agreed with a united fight by Ford, GM and FCA workers. “I am worried about the strike going on so long. We are all in this together. We should all go out together, everyone. It makes no sense to be separate."
He said he and other workers at the plant had been closely following developments in the UAW corruption scandal. "People can see through the BS," he said referring to UAW claims that the corruption involved only a few "bad apples."
"FCA funneled money through the training centers to the UAW. They are living great lives at our expense." About the secret negotiations, he said, "Why did the UAW start with GM?
"What do they know? We have no idea what is going on."
Chris said that he was particularly concerned about eliminating the tier system and stopping the abuse of temporary part-time workers. "It is hard when they divide us so much with the two-tier wages. They are doing the same work, working side by side for less money.
"I want pensions for everyone, not just for me. I want these jobs to be around; it’s important for the future of our children. We work hard. These CEOs are making millions when they could be paying the workers."
Two workers discussing the situation with each other in the parking lot called supporters of the WSWS Autoworker Newsletter over to one of their cars, saying, “We always look for the newsletter because it is the only thing that gives us any information. The UAW doesn’t tell us anything.”
Her fellow worker said, “We voted by 96 percent to strike, but the UAW said we’re on an indefinite contract extension. We asked the local union officials, ‘Why did we vote to strike if you were going to do what you want to do anyway?’ The vote was just to pacify us,” she said.
Her coworker added, “There is power in numbers, and we all should be out to back the GM workers. Right now, we’re being forced to work and to help the company stockpile vehicles in case there is a strike.
“Why should we pay union dues when the UAW is in bed with the company?
“We all talk to each other in the plant. We know we’re being screwed, and we know who is screwing us. What we want to know is how do we fight? How do we call out all the Fiat Chrysler and Ford workers?”
The supporter of the WSWS Autoworker Newsletter explained that workers had to take the conduct of the struggle into their own hands because the corrupt and bought-off UAW officials were leading the GM strike to defeat. This meant forming rank-and-file committees in the plant, issuing calls to action to other Ford and Chrysler workers and preparing an industrywide strike to break the isolation of the GM workers and fight to win the strike. At the same time, he said, strike pay had to be tripled to $750 a week.
The workers said the UAW was helping Fiat Chrysler by allowing it to run its factories virtually around the clock and build up its inventory for a potential strike. “That’s what I’ve been telling everybody, the UAW is helping them stockpile vehicles.”
The two workers expressed admiration for and solidarity with the nine Mexican workers at GM’s Silao factory who were framed up and fired because they were leading the fight against GM’s demands to increase production of the company’s highly profitable pickup trucks to undermine the impact of the US strike. The action of the Mexican workers, they noted, had done far more to defend the striking GM workers than the UAW.
The Newsletter supporters also informed SHAP workers about the strike that took place at an Italian Fiat Chrysler plant last week after a 40-year-old worker, Fabrizio Greco, was crushed to death while moving a heavy mold near a stamping press. The unions at the factory in the central Italian city of Cassino, which produces several Alfa Romeo models, were forced to call an eight-hour strike after worker anger exploded over the unsafe conditions, which the unions have helped to enforce.
“Wow,” said a worker with seven years at SHAP after hearing about the strike by fellow Fiat Chrysler workers in Italy. “The UAW doesn’t tell us anything. The GM workers are saying the UAW doesn’t even tell them what their demands are.”
FCA workers at Sterling Heights plant
Far from uniting autoworkers across borders, the UAW and its counterpart in Canada, the Unifor union and its predecessor the Canadian Auto Workers, have spent decades promoting national chauvinism and blaming workers in Mexico, China and other countries for “stealing” their jobs.
In one such filthy comment, Unifor President Jerry Dias sought to define the GM strike as a fight against Mexican workers. "Ultimately GM's going to have to step out of its comfort zone,” Dias said, “because people are frankly sick and tired of watching our plants being shuttered and our jobs moving to Mexico."
Speaking about the courageous solidarity of the Mexican workers and efforts to divide US and Canadian workers from their brothers and sisters in Mexico, one SHAP worker said, “Our enemies are inside this country, not somewhere else. I’m going to talk to other workers about what the Mexican workers have done for us.”
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