Monday, September 23, 2019

FUCKING OVER THE AMERICAN WORKER - GENERAL MOTORS CUTS OFF HEALTHCARE

VISUALIZE REVOLUTION!

VISUALIZE REVOLUTION!
VISUALIZE REVOLUTION!
VISUALIZE REVOLUTION!
VISUALIZE REVOLUTION!
VISUALIZE REVOLUTION!


GM Cuts Off U.S. Workers’ Healthcare amid Strike: ‘This Isn’t a Company That Cares About People’

The Associated Press
Jake May/The Flint Journal via AP
3:50

Automaker General Motors (GM) prematurely cut off American union workers’ healthcare benefits amid strikes against the multinational corporation.

In total, about 46,000 United Auto Workers (UAW) members are on strike against GM to ensure new hires are paid higher wages and provided with better healthcare benefits after accepting concessions on these fronts a decade ago.
Last week, union workers were notified that their healthcare payments had been halted by GM because of the strike. Though GM executives have claimed that cutting off healthcare payments for union workers during a strike is standard practice, typically union workers’ healthcare plans continue but the UAW pays the costs.
This time around, though, GM’s cutting off of healthcare payments means union workers will have to re-enroll in their healthcare plans once the strike is over. In the meantime, vision and dental healthcare payments will not be covered during the strike.
In an interview with Payday Report, UAW Local 1005 Chairman Al Tiller explained how GM’s cutting off of healthcare payments for union workers led to one worker’s child going without cancer treatment.
“We’re supposed to have our benefits until the end of the month,” Tiller said. “The company decided they were going to cut them yesterday before the union was ready to take over with our strike fund. We had a couple members sick that couldn’t get treated. We got a member with … kid has cancer, went to get his treatment and couldn’t get it. So we don’t have $10,000 to put down and get reimbursed for it. We’re on strike.”
“They cut our benefits and its affecting our families, our kids,” Tiller continued. “This isn’t a company that cares about people. This is a company that cares about the dollar. And there’s another example right there. They don’t care about this kid with cancer and his treatment, they just want us to pay for it.”


A UAW members kid had their cancer treatment cancelled today because GM cancelled workers healthcare as a retaliatory move.

Im hearing from multiple union leaders that uaw members with serious health issues are living in fear
WATCH: UAW Local 1005 Chairman Al Tiller on a union member's kid whose cancer treatment was cancelled cuz GM cut off their healthcare in retaliation for striking


In an op-ed published last week, Patrick Anderson, a 25-year GM employee, said he and his fellow American workers are striking because “we’re done sacrificing.”
Anderson wrote:
[Mary Barra] probably never experienced what my child experienced in my 25 years in the auto industry with GM. Because I have had to work in six plants in three states, my family has moved twice, and my child has changed schools and watched her father worry about what uncertainty was going to come next thanks to GM. I can’t help but think that maybe if her family had to experience what my family has gone through, then maybe she would be handling the workforce decisions differently. [Emphasis added]
The fact is that when GM was down, we sacrificed. Now that GM is thriving, the company is trying to hurt us with reduced wages, cuts to health care and fewer benefits. [Emphasis added]
The strike comes as GM CEO Mary Barra idled the 78-year-old Warren Transmission plant, leaving about 335 American workers laid off from their jobs. In the long-run, analysts predict that the plant’s closure will leave 16,000 American workers laid off from their jobs in the region.
The Warren, Michigan layoffs came after 1,600 American workers were laid off in Lordstown, Ohio, where GM idled their assembly plant. That plant’s closure, alone, could leave more than 8,000 Americans in supporting industries in the area laid off.
Meanwhile, Barra continues earning about $22 million a year — a less than half a percent pay cut despite mass layoffs in the U.S. GM made more than $8 billion in profits last year after taxes.
As Breitbart News’ John Carney noted, the UAW strike against GM is just one component of growing signs that economic power is increasingly in the hands of employees rather than employers in President Trump’s “Buy American, Hire American” economy.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder.


Jeff Pietrzyk, former aide to UAW vice president Joe Ashton, charged with criminal conspiracy

Federal officials have charged an eleventh person in the ongoing corruption probe into the United Auto Workers union. Jeff “Paycheck” Pietrzyk of Grand Island, New York was charged late Friday with conspiracy to carry out money laundering and wire fraud.
Pietrzyk’s charging is significant to the widening probe because he was an administrative assistant to former UAW Vice President Joe Ashton, now known to be the anonymous “Union Official 1” named in federal investigative reports. Pietrzyk is charged with accepting at least $70,000 in kickbacks from Ashton’s chiropractor who was paid millions of dollars by the UAW to make General Motors-branded watches.
Investigative reports show that he also acted as a middleman who passed cash on to Ashton, who reportedly took $550,000 in kickbacks from a scheme that involved the jointly operated UAW-GM Human Resources Center in Detroit, Michigan.
Pietrzyk is charged with the same financial crimes as Michael Grimes, the UAW official and top aide to Ashton and later Cindy Estrada who recently pleaded guilty to working with several unnamed union officials to take $1.99 million in kickbacks from the same scheme involving vendors contracted by the UAW GM-Training Center to make watches, jackets, and other merchandise.
Pietrzyk was named as one of the union officials accused in the federal criminal probe on August 19, after Grimes’ indictment was announced earlier on August 14. With the addition of Pietrzyk, the UAW officials implicated in or convicted of financial crimes include:
• Vance Pearson, top lieutenant to UAW President Gary Jones
• Joe Ashton, former UAW Vice President for General Motors
• Michael Grimes, former administrative assistant to Joe Ashton and Cindy Estrada
• Former UAW Vice President for Fiat-Chrysler and member of the 2015 Fiat Chrysler-UAW National Negotiating Committee Norwood Jewell
• Gary Jones, current president of the International UAW and Dennis Williams, former International UAW President
• Amy Loasching, former administrative assistant to Williams and member of the 2015 Fiat Chrysler-UAW National Negotiating Committee
• Nancy Adams-Johnson, former top administrative assistant to Jewell and member of the 2015 Fiat Chrysler-UAW National Negotiating Committee
• Troy Davis, assistant director of the UAW Chrysler Department and member of the 2015 Fiat Chrysler-UAW National Negotiating Committee
• Virdell King, assistant director of the UAW Chrysler Department and member of the 2015 Fiat Chrysler-UAW National Negotiating Committee
• Fiat Chrysler’s Director for Employee Relations at the UAW-Chrysler National Training Center from 2009 to 2016 Michael Brown
• Keith Mickens, Brown’s co-director at the UAW-Chrysler National Training Center
• Monica Morgan, widow of deceased UAW Vice President for Fiat Chrysler General Holifield
The official criminal charges against Pietrzyk were announced as the historic strike of General Motors workers, the longest strike against an American Big Three automaker in decades, entered into its fifth day. Workers are fighting against the decades of job and wage cuts, plant closures, and benefit slashing imposed by the corporation and the UAW.
In particular, workers are determined to win back wages and benefits, to reopen closed General Motors facilities and prevent further closures and layoffs, to improve working conditions and to put an end to the despised two-tier wage and benefit system imposed upon workers in contracts negotiated by the UAW as early as 2007. Even deeper cuts were imposed by the Obama administration, with the assistance of the UAW, during the 2009 restructuring of GM and Chrysler, including the provision that all new hires be paid half the traditional wage.
Six of the eight members of the UAW-Chrysler 2015 National Negotiating Committee have been implicated or convicted in the bribery scandal which has been unraveling since the beginning of 2018. UAW officials were found to have taken millions of dollars in bribes from the Fiat-Chrysler corporation, funneled through the joint training center, in return for pushing through concessions contracts in 2009, 2011 and 2015.
With the charges against Grimes and Pietrzyk, the criminal probe widened to include UAW-General Motors officials. Pietrzyk sat on the 2011 UAW-GM National Negotiating Committee, which pushed through a miserable sellout contract which extended an eight-year pay and pension freeze and maintained the tier system, while pushing out thousands of older, higher-paid workers.
Union officials have been found to have spent workers’ dues money on lavish vacations, golf outings, and high-end dinners at leadership conferences, falsely filed as conference expenses, while turning around and cutting jobs, wages, and benefits for the workers they supposedly represent. This only underscores the fact that the UAW is not a workers’ organization but a grifting operation.
New organizations are needed to take the struggle forward. It is critical now that rank-and-file workers formulate their own set of demands and strike committees independent of the UAW, the proven ally and co-conspirator with the corporations and Wall Street against the working class.

GM fires Mexican workers for aiding US strikers and calling for cross-border fight against automaker

On Friday, General Motors summarily fired five workers at its Silao Complex in Mexico because they have resisted company efforts to increase production at the plant in order to undermine the strike by 47,000 GM workers in the United States. The victimization took place shortly after workers issued a public call to unite GM workers on both sides of the border.
The action exposes the fear of GM and all transnational corporations that workers around the world will break the chains of the nationalist and pro-capitalist unions and unify their struggles to defend jobs and living standards.
On September 15, on the eve of the US GM strike, dozens of Silao workers held an assembly where they agreed to resist any demands for increased output that would weaken their brothers and sisters in the US. More than 6,000 autoworkers at the Silao Complex assemble GM’s highly profitable Chevrolet Silverado and GMC Sierra pickups, which are also produced in Flint, Michigan, and Fort Wayne, Indiana. There are 16,000 hourly GM workers in Mexico who make about $2 an hour and work 12 hours a day.
As it was preparing for a potential strike, GM launched a campaign of harassment against workers in Silao and San Luis Potosi, with the assistance of the Confederación de Trabajadores de México (Confederation of Mexican Workers or CTM).
On August 28, Israel Cervantes with 13 years at GM was fired for speaking out against the pro-company union. Cervantes and another outspoken worker, Pedro Masías, with 15 years at the plant, were terminated with no severance pay based on trumped up charges that they failed drug tests. The company never released the results of the tests, and a test done independently by Cervantes showed no signs of drugs.
The harassment intensified after the US strike began as management confronted resistance to its efforts to increase output by at least 25 pickup trucks a day. In response workers decided to appeal directly to US GM workers.
The workers fired Friday are Carlos Marquez, who has eight-and-a-half years at the plant; Fernando Moreno Moya, 23 years; Arturo, with 23 years, Juan Carlos Mendoza, with 25 years, and Ramón Rodríguez, with 23 years. All told these workers have accumulated 102 years of blood, sweat and tears, which was trampled underfoot by a corporation that made $27.5 billion in profits in the last 4 years.
In four voice messages, which were shared and agreed upon by their entire group, the Silao workers appealed to US workers to carry out a common struggle against GM. One read: “We will strengthen your struggle by not letting ourselves be pressured into higher productivity. We will continue to organize in small groups like those you call rank-and-file committees to stop the abuses, and above all, to back your struggle and defend our interests.”
The statements were played for hundreds of US autoworkers who attended a call-in meeting last Thursday sponsored by the WSWS Autoworker Newsletter. The workers also urged US GM workers to adopt the following points to the list of their strike demands: “(1) That the company immediately re-hiring of unfairly dismissed coworkers, (2) That GM stop harassing workers at plants in Mexico, (3) That the company stop prefabricating non-legal arguments for dismissal, and (4) The creation of a commission of workers at the companies involved with legal advisors to oversee the enforcement of these previous points.”
On Friday at around noon, the five leaders of the militant group—known as “Generating Movement”—were called into management’s office and told their contracts were being terminated. As a supposed justification, managers cited the collection of signatures by workers to oust the pro-company union.
But their real “crime” was supporting striking US workers and reaching out to their American counterparts to oppose victimizations.
Carlos Marquez
All five workers had participated in the September 15 workers assembly, which had voted to back the striking US GM workers. Several workers who attended the assembly reported seeing unfamiliar faces who could have been company or union spies or “hawks” as they are known in Mexico.
While the workers were being held in the manager’s office angered simmered in the plant. One worker said, “My people, were telling me ‘ güero, what do we do? Let’s stop the plant. We want you back. What do we do?’ This happened while I was inside negotiating.”
He continued, “I’m almost 100 percent sure that the General Motors executives listened to our audio files. I’m almost 100 percent sure they decided to act and said, ‘It’s time for these people who fight for independent rights of workers to be out of the plant.’ Imagine, there are so many interests at stake, imagine if all General Motors plants would grind to a halt.”
Exploiting the economic desperation these workers would confront without a job or an income, management pressured several to accept a full severance package instead of fighting the terminations.
One worker said he decided to put his wife and three daughters first and accepted the severance payment. “I don’t have the resources to maintain my family and keep fighting without a livelihood,” he added. “That is why your Mexican co-workers felt compelled to accept what they were offering. I’m 100 percent sure people will keep fighting for our rights and the benefits that the company must truly give us internationally.”
Israel Cervantes and his daughter
In their Facebook page, the “Generating Movement” declared, “Five warriors have been taken from us, but that is clear evidence that they are afraid, and we tell you that those still in this group will keep moving forward because we are only fighting for our rights, while the company and union are only screwing us over.”
A leading worker still in the plant told the WSWS Autoworker Newsletter, “We’ll discuss a new strategy, while not letting ourselves be humiliated like this. The work environment is very stressful. Actually, they wanted me to work overtime, but I told my boss that I wouldn’t go, and he said that he would give me a ‘correction warning.’ I told him I wouldn’t sign anything, that I’ll accept the consequences until the end. We are still fighting.”
Other workers who have previously victimized also spoke to the WSWS. María Guadalupe Ibarra Ramírez said she developed spinal cord injuries after eight years at the plant and was fired on June 5. “I haven’t had medical help since June at the IMSS [state health care system], and the union has not given me my savings and didn’t support me against the company.”
Her co-worker, Hilda, added, “That is what they do a worker is fired. They don’t even care if you have enough for the bus. They couldn’t care less about what may happen to you once you are out, and they are firing all those who are injured. The union is on their side. Because my arm was hurting, I requested a change to another line because I didn’t ask for a leave. Unfortunately, I went to the union, which told human resources, and I was fired.”
Fernando Moreno Moya
Striking American GM workers have a duty to defend their courageous class brothers and sisters in Mexico. The demand for their reinstatement will only strengthen US workers.
All over the world, workers increasingly understand that it is impossible to organize an effective strike, let alone a broader social movement against inequality and capitalist exploitation, without collaborating across national borders.
Earlier this year, 70,000 auto parts and electronics workers in the maquiladora sweatshops in Matamoros, Mexico, revolted against the corrupt unions, carried out wildcat strikes to demand higher wages and shorter working hours, and marched to the US border to appeal to American workers to join their fight.
The fight to defend the Mexican workers and to win the demands of GM strikers to abolish the two-tier system, roll over temps, defend health care and win substantial wage increases, and reopen closed plants, can only be taken forward if workers take the conduct of the strike and quickly change its course.
This means building rank-and-file factory committees independent of the UAW, which has collaborated with the auto bosses for decades while blaming Mexican, Chinese and other workers to “stealing US jobs.” To fight the global strategy of the auto companies, workers need to reject the nationalism of the UAW, Trump and the Democrats, and adopt an international strategy to unify autoworkers around the world.


GM fires Mexican workers for aiding US strikers and calling for cross-border fight against automaker

On Friday, General Motors summarily fired five workers at its Silao Complex in Mexico because they have resisted company efforts to increase production at the plant in order to undermine the strike by 47,000 GM workers in the United States. The victimization took place shortly after workers issued a public call to unite GM workers on both sides of the border.
The action exposes the fear of GM and all transnational corporations that workers around the world will break the chains of the nationalist and pro-capitalist unions and unify their struggles to defend jobs and living standards.
On September 15, on the eve of the US GM strike, dozens of Silao workers held an assembly where they agreed to resist any demands for increased output that would weaken their brothers and sisters in the US. More than 6,000 autoworkers at the Silao Complex assemble GM’s highly profitable Chevrolet Silverado and GMC Sierra pickups, which are also produced in Flint, Michigan, and Fort Wayne, Indiana. There are 16,000 hourly GM workers in Mexico who make about $2 an hour and work 12 hours a day.
As it was preparing for a potential strike, GM launched a campaign of harassment against workers in Silao and San Luis Potosi, with the assistance of the Confederación de Trabajadores de México (Confederation of Mexican Workers or CTM).
On August 28, Israel Cervantes with 13 years at GM was fired for speaking out against the pro-company union. Cervantes and another outspoken worker, Pedro Masías, with 15 years at the plant, were terminated with no severance pay based on trumped up charges that they failed drug tests. The company never released the results of the tests, and a test done independently by Cervantes showed no signs of drugs.
The harassment intensified after the US strike began as management confronted resistance to its efforts to increase output by at least 25 pickup trucks a day. In response workers decided to appeal directly to US GM workers.
The workers fired Friday are Carlos Marquez, who has eight-and-a-half years at the plant; Fernando Moreno Moya, 23 years; Arturo, with 23 years, Juan Carlos Mendoza, with 25 years, and Ramón Rodríguez, with 23 years. All told these workers have accumulated 102 years of blood, sweat and tears, which was trampled underfoot by a corporation that made $27.5 billion in profits in the last 4 years.
In four voice messages, which were shared and agreed upon by their entire group, the Silao workers appealed to US workers to carry out a common struggle against GM. One read: “We will strengthen your struggle by not letting ourselves be pressured into higher productivity. We will continue to organize in small groups like those you call rank-and-file committees to stop the abuses, and above all, to back your struggle and defend our interests.”
The statements were played for hundreds of US autoworkers who attended a call-in meeting last Thursday sponsored by the WSWS Autoworker Newsletter. The workers also urged US GM workers to adopt the following points to the list of their strike demands: “(1) That the company immediately re-hiring of unfairly dismissed coworkers, (2) That GM stop harassing workers at plants in Mexico, (3) That the company stop prefabricating non-legal arguments for dismissal, and (4) The creation of a commission of workers at the companies involved with legal advisors to oversee the enforcement of these previous points.”
On Friday at around noon, the five leaders of the militant group—known as “Generating Movement”—were called into management’s office and told their contracts were being terminated. As a supposed justification, managers cited the collection of signatures by workers to oust the pro-company union.
But their real “crime” was supporting striking US workers and reaching out to their American counterparts to oppose victimizations.
Carlos Marquez
All five workers had participated in the September 15 workers assembly, which had voted to back the striking US GM workers. Several workers who attended the assembly reported seeing unfamiliar faces who could have been company or union spies or “hawks” as they are known in Mexico.
While the workers were being held in the manager’s office angered simmered in the plant. One worker said, “My people, were telling me ‘ güero, what do we do? Let’s stop the plant. We want you back. What do we do?’ This happened while I was inside negotiating.”
He continued, “I’m almost 100 percent sure that the General Motors executives listened to our audio files. I’m almost 100 percent sure they decided to act and said, ‘It’s time for these people who fight for independent rights of workers to be out of the plant.’ Imagine, there are so many interests at stake, imagine if all General Motors plants would grind to a halt.”
Exploiting the economic desperation these workers would confront without a job or an income, management pressured several to accept a full severance package instead of fighting the terminations.
One worker said he decided to put his wife and three daughters first and accepted the severance payment. “I don’t have the resources to maintain my family and keep fighting without a livelihood,” he added. “That is why your Mexican co-workers felt compelled to accept what they were offering. I’m 100 percent sure people will keep fighting for our rights and the benefits that the company must truly give us internationally.”
Israel Cervantes and his daughter
In their Facebook page, the “Generating Movement” declared, “Five warriors have been taken from us, but that is clear evidence that they are afraid, and we tell you that those still in this group will keep moving forward because we are only fighting for our rights, while the company and union are only screwing us over.”
A leading worker still in the plant told the WSWS Autoworker Newsletter, “We’ll discuss a new strategy, while not letting ourselves be humiliated like this. The work environment is very stressful. Actually, they wanted me to work overtime, but I told my boss that I wouldn’t go, and he said that he would give me a ‘correction warning.’ I told him I wouldn’t sign anything, that I’ll accept the consequences until the end. We are still fighting.”
Other workers who have previously victimized also spoke to the WSWS. María Guadalupe Ibarra Ramírez said she developed spinal cord injuries after eight years at the plant and was fired on June 5. “I haven’t had medical help since June at the IMSS [state health care system], and the union has not given me my savings and didn’t support me against the company.”
Her co-worker, Hilda, added, “That is what they do a worker is fired. They don’t even care if you have enough for the bus. They couldn’t care less about what may happen to you once you are out, and they are firing all those who are injured. The union is on their side. Because my arm was hurting, I requested a change to another line because I didn’t ask for a leave. Unfortunately, I went to the union, which told human resources, and I was fired.”
Fernando Moreno Moya
Striking American GM workers have a duty to defend their courageous class brothers and sisters in Mexico. The demand for their reinstatement will only strengthen US workers.
All over the world, workers increasingly understand that it is impossible to organize an effective strike, let alone a broader social movement against inequality and capitalist exploitation, without collaborating across national borders.
Earlier this year, 70,000 auto parts and electronics workers in the maquiladora sweatshops in Matamoros, Mexico, revolted against the corrupt unions, carried out wildcat strikes to demand higher wages and shorter working hours, and marched to the US border to appeal to American workers to join their fight.
The fight to defend the Mexican workers and to win the demands of GM strikers to abolish the two-tier system, roll over temps, defend health care and win substantial wage increases, and reopen closed plants, can only be taken forward if workers take the conduct of the strike and quickly change its course.

This means building rank-and-file factory committees independent of the UAW, which has collaborated with the auto bosses for decades while blaming Mexican, Chinese and other workers to “stealing US jobs.” To fight the global strategy of the auto companies, workers need to reject the nationalism of the UAW, Trump and the Democrats, and adopt an international strategy to unify autoworkers around the world.

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