WALL STREET,
GLOBALIST, BILLIONAIRES and the OPEN BORDERS ADVOCATES FINISH OFF
MIDDLE-AMERICA.
Ryan asked how much
longer will the working-class not matter “because it’s becoming impossible for
them to keep their nose above water.”
“Where’s the social compact that we used to have between
corporations and their workers? Where’s the social contract between the
government and our workers?” asked Ryan. “I mean,
it’s like the worker — there’s always an excuse that the worker is going to get
hammered, that they’re going to lose their pensions, they’re going to lose
their jobs, they’re going to have to move. Meanwhile, corporations, in this instance,
General Motors got $157 million in tax cut just last year. I mean how much
longer are we going to do this to where the worker doesn’t matter? And I hope
this is a real wake-up call for us to say, workers, white, brown, black, gay,
straight, working-class people have got to come together because it’s becoming
impossible for them to keep their nose above water anymore.” REP. TIM RYAN
GENERAL MOTORS DUMPS
THOUSANDS OF WORKERS AND CLOSES PLANTS
- Stockholders celebrate!
"It
identifies socialism with proposals for mild social reform such as
“Medicare for all,” raised and increasingly abandoned by a section of the
Democratic Party. It cites Milton Friedman and Margaret Thatcher to
promote the virtues of “economic freedom,” i.e., the unrestrained
operation of the capitalist market, and to denounce all social reforms,
business regulations, tax increases or anything else that impinges on
the oligarchy’s self-enrichment."
“The
yearly income of a typical US household dropped by a massive 12 percent,
or $6,400, in the six years between 2007 and 2013. This is just one of the
findings of the 2013 Federal Reserve Survey of Consumer Finances released
Thursday, which documentsa sharp decline in working class living standards and
a further concentration of wealth in the hands of the rich and the super-rich.”
"The American phenomenon of record stock values fueling
an ever greater concentration of wealth at the very top of
society, while the economy is starved of productive investment,
the social infrastructure crumbles, and working class
living standards are driven down by entrenched
unemployment, wage-cutting and government austerity policies, is part of
a broader global process."
"A
defining expression of this crisis is the dominance of financial speculation
and parasitism, to the point where a narrow international financial aristocracy
plunders society’s resources in order to further enrich itself."
GM to lay off 4,250 salaried workers in North America starting Monday
General Motors will begin laying off 4,250 North American salaried workers Monday morning as part of a sweeping restructuring announced in November that includes the closure of five plants and the elimination of 15,000 jobs. The plan includes the destruction of 15 percent of the company’s 54,000 North American salaried jobs.
According to one press report, the jobs massacre will take the form of “rolling layoffs” that will continue until the end of the month. Three assembly plants—Lordstown, Ohio; Detroit-Hamtramck; and Oshawa, Ontario—along with Warren Transmission in Michigan and a propulsion plant in Maryland—are slated to close by the end of the year, devastating entire towns and cities.
One report said that GM management was determined to begin the layoffs before the company releases its fourth quarter 2018 and full year 2018 earnings reports on Wednesday, which are expected to show a drop in profits. This underscores the fact that Wall Street is cracking the whip on GM and the rest of the auto giants to press ahead with cost-cutting and stepped up attacks on the workers in order to drive up stock prices and the speculative profits of the banks, hedge funds and big investors. GM has said the job cuts and plant closings will free up $6 billion in cash, but the automaker has spent $10.6 billion since 2015 buying back its own shares in order to fatten the portfolios of the financial oligarchs.
The cuts have generated enormous anger and opposition among autoworkers in the US and Canada, who have never recovered from job cuts and concessions imposed with the collaboration of the auto unions as part of the Obama administration’s 2009 forced bankruptcy and restructuring of GM. The cuts will further impoverish regions in both the US and Canada that have been ravaged by decades of deindustrialization.
Last month, workers at the Oshawa assembly plant staged a five-hour sit down protest after GM CEO Mary Barra announced that she would not reconsider the decision to close the factory. Workers took the action independently of Unifor, terrifying the union officials and sending them scrambling to quash the rebellion.
February 9 demonstration in Detroit against GM plant closures
The World Socialist Web Site Autoworker Newsletter and the Steering Committee of the Coalition of Rank-and-File Committees have called a demonstration for February 9 outside GM headquarters in Detroit in opposition to the plant closings. It has called on workers to mobilize independently of the UAW and Unifor to defend their jobs and living standards and link up with the struggle of 70,000 Mexican autoworkers in Matamoros, across the border from Brownsville, Texas, who have been carrying out a wildcat strike for nearly three weeks.
The demonstration is not an appeal to GM and the corporate bosses, but rather a call for workers to mobilize their strength and fighting determination through the formation of rank-and-file committees independent of the pro-corporate unions and the corporate-controlled politicians and parties. (See: “February 9 demonstration against auto plant closures in Detroit: The program and strategy to defend jobs”).
The call has garnered widespread interest and support. A central theme of this action is the unity of US, Mexican and Canadian workers against job cuts and concessions and against all attempts to divide workers along national lines.
This means an implacable struggle against the economic nationalism promoted by the unions. The response of the United Auto Workers and Unifor in Canada to the plant closures is to spew nationalist poison. This week, the United Auto Workers announced that is joining a boycott of GM vehicles assembled in Mexico previously initiated by Unifor.
These same organizations oppose any industrial action by GM workers to fight the layoffs. They plan to use the threat of plant closings to blackmail workers into accepting new concessions that will be demanded by the auto companies in contract negotiations later this year.
The call for a boycott targeting the jobs of Mexican workers is an attempt to divert workers from a struggle against the real enemy—the transnational auto companies and the profit system as a whole—and instead channel their anger against their fellow workers south of the Rio Grande. In this way, the unions line up behind the Trump administration’s fascistic attacks on immigrant workers from Mexico and Central America.
The announcement of the GM closures takes place against a background of growing worker militancy around the word, including strikes by autoworkers in Hungary, yellow vest protests in France, a general strike in India and a walkout by 30,000 teachers in Los Angeles.
Of particular concern to the UAW and Unifor is the strike by the maquiladora workers in Matamoros against sweatshop conditions at auto parts manufacturers and other industries. To this date, the UAW has not said a word about the heroic actions of the Matamoros workers, who launched their strikes independently of and in opposition to the official unions.
A worker at the Ford Sterling Axle plant outside of Detroit told the WSWS in response to the UAW’s call for an anti-Mexican boycott, “It is not the fault of Mexican workers. It is corporate greed. They just want more profits.
“We haven’t heard a word from [UAW President] Gary Jones since he got elected. He doesn’t want to piss off the car companies because he is afraid of losing perks. They are invested in GM through the retiree health care fund.”
Referring to the blackout of reports about the strikes in Matamoros, he said, “They don’t want us to get any ideas. What the Mexican workers are doing is sticking together and saying enough is enough. They don’t want us to find out because they don’t want us raising our own demands.”
A General Motors worker at the Delta Township assembly plant near Lansing, Michigan said he planned to attend the Feb 9 demonstration. “It is not the Mexican workers’ fault. They are trying to provide for their families.
“GM is closing five plants, but they are making record profits. They are trying to force the older workforce to retire by placing them in other plants and making them drive long distances. It leaves them little time for their families. They can’t just relocate and buy new homes. It forces them to retire.
“You haven’t heard anything from the UAW about Canadian plants being closed. We should work on how you hurt them by sticking together. You should have Mexican, Canadian, US workers all united together.”
In another demonstration of the UAW’s lineup with the Trump administration, on Thursday UAW President Gary Jones announced his support for Trump’s executive order titled “Strengthening Buy-American Preferences for Infrastructure Projects.” In a brief statement Jones declared, “Companies like General Motors have an obligation to build where they sell and stop exporting jobs abroad.”
Meanwhile, Unifor says it plans to run ads promoting its anti-Mexican boycott during this Sunday’s Super Bowl football game. These ads are extremely costly, reportedly $5.25 million for a 30 second spot, or roughly the equivalent of the monthly dues contribution of 100,000 workers.
The nationalist “Buy American” and “Made in Canada” campaigns of the UAW and Unifor are both reactionary and absurd. They ignore the global character of production, which makes it impossible to determine the “nationality” of any given vehicle.
After ignoring the strikes in Matamoros for weeks, Unifor President Jerry Dias announced his “support” for striking Mexican autoworkers in a perfunctory statement this week. This followed determined attempts by the establishment media, pseudo-left groups, Unifor and the UAW to black out all news of the strike by Mexican workers.
Black Monday: GM to Layoff 4K American White-Collar Workers
3:53
Executives at General Motors (GM) announced Friday that about 4,250 white-collar workers would be laid off, the vast majority of whom are in the United States, as the multinational corporation continues shifting production overseas and to Mexico.
GM executives are set to start the layoffs on Monday of next week, with an investment strategist declaring the day “Black Monday” as thousands of workers in the U.S. and Canada will be terminated from their positions.
“Black Monday at General Motors,” David Kudla wrote online. “To those who are about to separate, we salute you.”
The Monday layoffs of thousands of GM’s white-collar American workers in Michigan and Ohio is just the latest component of the corporation’s laying off of 14,700 workers in North America — including at least 3,300 American factory workers
In 2019, GM expects to stop production at four American plants, including Detroit-Hamtramck and Warren Transmission in Michigan, Lordstown Assembly in Ohio, and Baltimore Operations in Maryland. This comes after GM laid off about 1,500 American workers in Lordstown in 2018, while their Mexico production remained unaffected.
Though GM promised to hire recently laid off American workers for jobs at its Fort Wayne, Indiana manufacturing plant, the company has continued employing temporary workers. The United Auto Workers (UAW) is now suing.
Despite the layoffs, GM’s CEO Mary Barra has continued raking in about $22 million a year.
Breitbart News has learned from insiders that layoffs of American workers are to occur at the Warren Tech Center in Warren, Michigan, the GM plant in Pontiac, Michigan, corporate workers at GM’s Austin, Texas office, as well as layoffs at GM’s Detroit, Michigan Renaissance Center.
In message boards, American GM workers raged online, posting in real time their experiences with the mass layoffs.
“Signs on most of the conference rooms in my building already,” one GM worker in Pontiac, Michigan posted. “The signs all say ‘conference room not available, do not enter’ … looks like [layoffs are] happening Monday.”
Another worker wrote that the layoffs will occur “over in the next 2 weeks.”
“Probably not breaking news, but told by a very reliable source it is going to take place over the next 2 weeks, not on just a single day,” the worker wrote.
At GM’s Austin, Texas, offices, a worker wrote on the message board that rumors inside the company indicate about “400+ people will be let go in Austin.”
An American worker not being impacted by GM’s mass layoffs wrote a heartfelt note to those who would soon be laid off by the corporation:
We’ve been aware that this was happening, but on Monday it becomes reality. The company will be a very different place after this, at least in my eyes. Just want to say that my heart goes to the ones that are affected, and my hopes are that you all find new jobs, better jobs. It’s been a privilege and a pleasure working with you, and let us hope that no other company will disappoint you the way GM did.
While GM lays off thousands of American workers, its production in Mexico and China is ramping up. Specifically, GM is looking to manufacture an electric Cadillac in China and continue manufacturing its Envision compact vehicle in China.
“2019 will be a pivotal year for GM — one in which we will see how a 100-year-old auto company takes drastic steps to convert from (internal combustion) to electric,” Kudla wrote. “It’s a huge bet.”
Offshoring production from the U.S. to Mexico and China has proven cheaper for GM executives. For example, American workers earn $30 an hour, while Mexican workers earn about $3 an hour, a 90 percent cut to wages that widens the corporation’s profit margins.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder.
GM Sought to Outsource 2.8K U.S. Jobs to Foreigners While Laying Off Americans
4:15
Multinational corporation General Motors (GM) sought to import nearly 2,800 foreign workers in the last three years to take U.S. jobs while laying off American workers.
GM will be laying off at least 4,250 of its white-collar workers in Canada and America — with the vast majority in the U.S. — starting next week.
The layoffs are just a small component of the corporation’s mass layoff scheme of 14,700 workers in North America — including at least 3,300 American factory workers. Meanwhile, GM is ramping up production of electric cars in China.
In 2019, GM expects to stop production at four American plants, including Detroit-Hamtramck and Warren Transmission in Michigan, Lordstown Assembly in Ohio, and Baltimore Operations in Maryland. This comes after GM laid off about 1,500 American workers in Lordstown in 2018, while their Mexico production remained unaffected.
At the same time GM has been laying off American workers, the corporation has been importing foreign workers from countries like India, China, Brazil, and South Korea.
Between 2016 and 2018, GM attempted to outsource nearly 700 American jobs in Warren, Michigan, to foreign workers brought in on the H-1B visa. The corporation also tried to outsource 167 U.S. jobs to H-1B foreign workers in Detroit, Michigan, another 154 U.S. jobs in Milford, Michigan, an additional 82 U.S. jobs in Pontiac, Michigan, and about 20 U.S. jobs in Roswell, Georgia.
Every year, more than 100,000 foreign workers are brought to the U.S. on the H-1B visa and are allowed to stay for up to six years. There are about 650,000 H-1B visa foreign workers in the U.S. at any given moment. Americans are often laid off in the process and forced to train their foreign replacements, as highlighted by Breitbart News. More than 85,000 Americans annually potentially lose their jobs to foreign labor through the H-1B visa program.
Last year, alone, U.S. businesses attempted to outsource nearly 420,000 American jobs to foreign workers, a population that exceeds the total population of Tampa, Florida.
The U.S. high-paying jobs GM outsourced to foreign workers while laying off American workers over the last three years include nearly 320 electrical engineering jobs, nearly 320 mechanical engineering jobs, more than 220 software developer jobs, and about 66 commercial and industrial designer jobs.
GM even outsourced nearly 150 U.S. jobs at its financial services wing in Arlington, Fort Worth, and Irving, Texas, as well as financial jobs in Detroit, Michigan, and Charlotte, North Carolina. The vast majority of these foreign workers imported to take these jobs were from India.
The United Auto Workers (UAW) union has launched a campaign urging consumers to boycott GM for their offshoring and outsourcing business practices that is leaving thousands of American workers laid off just years after the corporation was bailed out by U.S. taxpayers and received a massive tax cut.
“Companies like General Motors have an obligation to build where they sell and stop exporting jobs abroad,” UAW President Gary Jones said in a statement. “After all, we invested in General Motors in their darkest days. Now they need to invest in us.”
As Breitbart News previously reported, more than 2.7 million H-1B foreign workers have been approved to come to the U.S. to take American jobs between 2007 and 2017. During that same period, businesses tried to outsource almost 3.5 million American jobs to foreign workers instead of hiring Americans.
About four million young Americans enter the workforce each year, many looking for white-collar jobs in the STEM fields. Those Americans’ prospects of finding work are crippled by the country’s legal immigration process, which admits more than 1.5 million immigrants and hundreds of thousands of foreign visa workers annually.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder.
No comments:
Post a Comment