Thursday, October 31, 2019

MORE WELFARE FOR WALL STREET EVEN AS WALL STREET CONTINUES TO ASSAULT THE AMERICAN WORKERS AND HANDOUT BRIBES TO CONGRESS - "The stock market is boosted by the supply of cheap money, but ultimately the returns to the financial elites rest on the extraction of ever increasing amounts of surplus value from the working class. "

Fed guarantees more money for Wall Street as attacks on workers intensify

The US Federal Reserve cut its base interest rate by 0.25 percentage points at its meeting yesterday, the third such cut since July, but gave an indication that this may be the last reduction for the year.
Financial markets, which have been pushing for lower rates—there was a 95 percent expectation of a cut yesterday—took the indications of a hold for the rest of the year in stride. This was because at his press conference, Fed Chairman Jerome Powell virtually ruled out any rate rises for the foreseeable future.
The S&P 500 index closed at its second record high for the week. The index rose 0.3 percent to top its previous record. The index has risen by 22 percent this year, with a major factor being what Powell called a “substantial” shift in Fed monetary policy.
Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell speaks during a news conference in Washington, Wednesday, Oct. 30, 2019. The Federal Reserve cut rates for the third time this year. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)
He told a press conference that the Fed had entered the year expecting to lift interest rates, but then shifted to a “patient” stance before initiating rate cuts in July. Despite the expectation that a further cut in December is unlikely, the markets celebrated the clear indication that the flow of cheap money will continue.
“The Federal Reserve just put a big stake in the ground on the future rate path,” one financial analyst told the Wall Street Journal. “Markets believe that, irrespective of easing trade issues, there is a gigantic pause on future rate increases.”
The Fed’s latest decision underscores the essential class content of economic policy in the US—unlimited amounts of ultra-cheap money for the financial oligarchs on Wall Street to continue their speculative operations, coupled with austerity, wage cuts, speedup and layoffs for workers.
The Fed decision came only days after the sellout of the GM autoworkers’ strike, in which the company, working hand in glove with the United Auto Workers union bureaucracy, secured the expansion of temporary workers, who can be hired and fired at will, and the extension of the so-called “gig economy” into the heart of basic industry.
These are not merely parallel phenomena. They have a causal relationship. The stock market is boosted by the supply of cheap money, but ultimately the returns to the financial elites rest on the extraction of ever increasing amounts of surplus value from the working class. Thus the greater the inflation of financial markets through an influx of money, the more brutal and far-reaching must be the attacks on workers to lift the level of exploitation.
The Fed initially sought to justify its latest round of cuts by maintaining that the rate reductions were an “insurance policy” against the risks to the economy posed by trade tensions, particularly the US-China conflict, and the threat of a no-deal Brexit.
In his press conference, Powell said those risks had eased somewhat in the recent period, before making clear that the policy of providing cheap money would nevertheless continue indefinitely.
Raising interest rates, he said, was “really about inflation,” and there would need to be a “persistent move up” before the Fed would consider raising rates. Inflation expectations were important and the Fed needed to conduct monetary policy to lift those expectations, he continued. He then indicated that the Fed planned to go even further and spoke of the need to think about new policies to make the inflation target of 2 percent more credible.
Given that inflation remains persistently below the 2 percent target and shows no sign of moving up, this amounted to a guarantee to the financial markets of a continuing “accommodative” policy.
There were other remarks that showed that the Fed’s monetary policy had nothing whatsoever to do with providing a boost to the real economy, but was aimed entirely at meeting the demands of Wall Street.
The latest decision came just hours after the release of the latest data on US gross domestic product. The report showed that GDP rose by at annual rate of just 1.9 percent in the third quarter, amid a fall in business investment, compared to a 2 percent increase in the second quarter.
Most significant was a fall in non-residential fixed investment—a measure of what businesses spend on new buildings and equipment. It dropped at an annual rate of 3 percent, its biggest fall in nearly four years. In the words of one business economist, cited in the Financial Times, the “numbers were awful, and a bit worse than we expected.”
The low-growth trajectory of the US economy 

blows apart the lie of the Trump 

administration that its massive tax cuts of 

nearly two years ago, which handed out 

billions of dollars to corporations and the 

ultra-wealthy, would provide an economic 

boost.
The reality is that the personal income tax rate for ordinary workers is now higher than that for the upper echelons. But the tax cuts for corporations and the rich have been used not to finance investment, but rather for parasitical financial operations, including share buybacks and mergers and acquisitions.
During his press conference, Powell abandoned the pretense that the Fed’s monetary policies had any significant impact on investment in the real economy. In response to a question as to whether the Fed was “pushing on a string” in regard to the effect of its measures on the overall economy, Powell replied that interest rates were not the “main driver” for business investment decisions. In other words, they are entirely directed to the financial markets.
There are clear signs of another financial crisis should interest rates rise, or even if there were an indication that they could rise.
These risks were pointed to in a report delivered last month by Fed Governor Lael Brainard to a House of Representatives finance committee. She said business borrowing had risen more rapidly than GDP, and was near its historical peak.
She noted that whereas previously it was mostly high-earning firms with low leverage that took on additional debt, analysis indicated that “firms with high leverage, high interest expense ratios, and low earnings and cash holdings have been increasing their debt loads the most.”
At his Wednesday press conference, Powell responded to a question about a recent IMF report on the build-up of risky corporate debt by acknowledging that corporate leverage was historically high and the Fed was paying “quite a lot of attention” to it. Such phrases inevitably prompt comparisons to the statements issued by the Fed about the sub-prime mortgage market in the run-up to the financial crisis of 2008.
Powell was also asked about the extraordinary Fed interventions into overnight financial markets following the spike in so-called “repo” rates in September. The Fed has announced it will buy $60 billion of short-term Treasury bills each month until at least the second quarter of next year, and has indicated it will lend the repo market at least $120 billion on a daily basis.
Powell could offer no explanation for the repo turbulence, but said investigations had revealed that banks were holding money above their required reserves, but had not put the surplus into the market despite there being a profitable opportunity to do so. The fact that major banks failed to engage in what were regarded as normal operations in the past suggests an attempt to manipulate markets to ensure an additional inflow of cheap money from the Fed.
Powell has insisted that the Fed’s measures are not a return to “quantitative easing” and are purely technical in nature. But the measures are being widely regarded as QE in another guise.
The outcome of the latest Fed decision is clear: a guarantee to Wall Street that the central bank will meet its demands for the supply of cheap money to finance speculation, intensifying attacks on the working class to feed the all-consuming parasitism of the financial oligarchy, and ever greater risks of another financial crisis.


United Auto Worker: 2020 Democrats’ Will ‘Destroy Union Jobs’; Trump ‘Only Person Defending’ American Workers

DEARBORN, MI - SEPTEMBER 27: A Ford Motor Company workers works on a Ford F150 truck on the assembly line at the Ford Dearborn Truck Plant on September 27, 2018 in Dearborn, Michigan. The Ford Rouge Plant is celebrating 100 years as America's longest continuously operating auto plant. The factory …
Bill Pugliano/Getty Images
3:19

A 25-year union worker with Ford Motor Company says President Donald Trump is “the only person defending” American auto workers while 2020 Democrats propose an environmental agenda that will “destroy union jobs” for the middle class.

In an op-ed for the Detroit News, United Auto Worker (UAW) member and Ford employee Melinda Rowe called out 2020 Democrats for their “zero-carbon” agenda that will further decimate the United States’ auto industry in states like Ohio and Michigan.
The Green New Deal agenda of Democrat presidential candidates like Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), Rowe writes, would mean more profits for multinational automaker CEOs and fewer jobs for American auto workers:
GM and the other big auto companies want to make a full switch to electric vehicles, which would allow them to slash union jobs. As any autoworker can tell you, combustion engines are difficult to build, requiring more manpower and skill than electric motors. That’s why auto workers earn such good wages: It’s not easy to engineer a controlled explosion under the hood of a car. [Emphasis added]
When Democrats claim to support organized labor but also advance a radical environmental agenda that would destroy union jobs, they make it abundantly obvious that their support for union workers is merely rhetorical. [Emphasis added]
Trump is the only person defending the interests of union members against the combined forces of Democratic politicians, car company executives, and UAW leaders who care only about advancing their own interests over those of the hard working men and women of their industry. [Emphasis added]
Rowe detailed how executives at U.S. automakers have fallen in line with the Democrat agenda of eliminating fossil fuels, noting that such a move to fully electric vehicles will allow corporations to cut back their workforces more than they already have, saving them labor costs at the expense of U.S. communities.
“We saw a clear example of this in the UAW-GM negotiations, when GM proposed building a car battery factory near the plant that it recently closed in Lordstown, Ohio,” Rowe writes. “The battery plant would likely employ several hundred workers, whereas the Lordstown factory supported more than 3,000 union jobs. The battery plant will also only pay workers between $15 and $17 per hour, about half the $30 per hour that workers earned at the Lordstown factory.”

"Nobody had our backs in office, not Democrats or Republicans. I’m tired of being sugarcoated and being robbed in the process." https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2019/06/02/laid-off-gm-workers-in-ohio-fed-up-with-ruling-class-nobody-has-our-backs/ 

Laid Off GM Workers Fed Up with Ruling Class: 'Nobody Has Our Backs'



Rowe writes that it was “no coincidence” that General Motors (GM) has closed five American manufacturing plants and laid off 14,000 workers as they manufacture electric vehicles in China.
Warren, among other 2020 Democrats, has also pledged a nationwide ban on fracking which would likely increase oil prices and potentially lead to additional layoffs for American auto workers.
American manufacturing is vital to the U.S. economy as every one manufacturing job supports an additional 7.4 American jobs in other industries. Decades of free trade, with deals like the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), have eliminated five million manufacturing jobs from the U.S. economy and resulted in the closure of 50,000 manufacturing plants.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder

GM execs gloat over new UAW contract in call with Wall Street investors


In a conference call with Wall Street analysts Tuesday morning, General Motors CEO Mary Barra and the company’s chief financial officer boasted that the new four-year agreement with the United Auto Workers would allow GM to slash billions in manufacturing costs and give it the “flexibility” to replace higher-paid veteran workers with temps.
Although the walkout cost the company an estimated $3 billion in profits for 2019 and 2020, the savings from the contract will lead to far larger long-term gains, Barra and CFO Dhivya Suryadevara told the analysts. The new agreement, Barra said, would maintain the “competitiveness” of GM, “strengthen the future of this company and create shareholder value.”
Despite the 40-day strike, the longest national auto strike in half a century, GM made $3 billion in third-quarter profits in North America. This is up $200 million from last year, with an 8.4 percent profit margin. GM International reported a $65 million loss on slowing sales in China and elsewhere.
Mary Barra (Source: GM Media)
The large North American profits were largely due to sales of the highly profitable Silverado and Sierra pickup trucks, which the UAW helped the company stockpile by sanctioning forced overtime and speedup before the strike.
GM’s stock rose 4.3 percent on Tuesday. Since the UAW announced the contract was ratified last Friday, GM shares have risen by eight percent.
Barra, who made $22 million last year, said workers and management would go forward as “one team” after the strike. In fact, GM has responded to the UAW’s shutdown of the strike with a campaign of retaliation aimed at intimidating workers who widely opposed the UAW-backed sellout.
The UAW claimed the contract passed by a narrow 57-43 percent margin, but there are widespread charges that the vote was rigged. In any case, workers knew that if they rejected the deal, the UAW would leave them on the picket lines for weeks or months and would not bring back anything better.
Over the weekend and on Monday, at least three Flint Truck Assembly workers, including 19-year veteran Juan Gonzales, were fired due to comments posted on workers’ Facebook pages, which GM Global Security regularly spies on. In addition to this flagrant violation of free speech, the company has also refused to rehire nine GM workers at the Silao, Mexico plant who were fired for defying demands by the company and the union that they increase output and undermine the impact of the US strike.
Inside the plants and distribution warehouses, workers are reporting a virtual reign of terror, with management harassing and disciplining workers. The UAW is enforcing speed up and mandatory overtime to make up for the loss of 300,000 vehicles during the strike.
With the plants already running at “max overtime,” Barra told investors, it would take “discipline” to boost production and get profits rolling again by the second quarter of 2020.
In her comments, CFO Dhivya Suryadevara said, “The new labor agreement preserves our competitiveness, manufacturing flexibility and balance sheet strength, without sacrificing our earnings power.
Gloating over the terms of the contract, she added, “We have maintained our ability to adjust our workforce in response to changing industry levels, protected the balance sheet with no increases to defined benefit pension obligations and no payments or increased obligations to retirees. We maintained out breakeven point of 10-11 million units in the US and therefore maintained our ability to navigate through a downturn. It is important to note that while this labor agreement is inflationary, we expect to offset incremental economics over the course of the contract period with productivity in our system.”
The UAW agreed to the closure of the Lordstown, Ohio plant, which once employed nearly 5,000 workers, along with transmission plants in Michigan and Maryland and a parts distribution center in Fontana, California. The plant closures would allow the company to move ahead with plans to cut $4.5 billion in annual labor costs, the GM’s executives said.
The unrestricted expansion of temps, which will be overseen by the UAW, will provide GM with a disposable workforce that can be expanded or reduced depending on market conditions without incurring the costs of laying off traditional workers, like supplemental unemployment pay or buyouts.
When a Bank of America/Merrill Lynch analyst complained that the deal only rid the company of 2,000 higher-paid “legacy” workers, Barra reassured him that the Special Attrition Program backed by the UAW would likely lead to more workers leaving over the course of the contract.
The stated aim of the auto bosses and the UAW is to drive out older, more experienced workers, referred to as “surplus,” and convert the entire workforce into lower-paid full-time workers, temps and third-party contract workers.
Asked by the analyst if GM planned to replace one-for-one the 2,000 workers being pushed out in the UAW contract, Barra said the company planned to “optimize the workforce” by getting more productivity out of the existing workers.
At the same time, she said, under the new contract, “As we need to hire additional workers we will utilize those temps, and I am very proud that we provided an appropriate path to permanent employment to our temporary workforce, and maintained the in-progression flow, so we will utilize both of those depending on the situation.”
Barra told investors that the company would invest more in electric vehicle technology over the next four years than traditional vehicles. As part of the new contract, the company and the UAW will establish a new joint body to oversee new technologies. Barra said 1,000 new jobs would be created at a battery manufacturing plant near the shuttered Lordstown facility. The workers hired at the joint venture are expected to top out at $17 an hour under a separate UAW contract.
During the course of the strike, Wall Street investors made it clear they were willing to ride out a long walkout as long as GM defeated the strikers and achieved its aim of establishing “21st Century labor relations,” i.e., bringing to the auto industry the type of exploitation and precarious employment prevalent at Amazon, Uber and other “gig economy” companies.
GM has achieved this with the collusion of the UAW, which deliberately isolated striking GM workers by keeping Ford and Fiat Chrysler workers on the job, while working to starve workers into submission with $250-275 a week in strike pay.
The UAW is now targeting 56,000 Ford workers for its next pro-company contract. Wall Street has been punishing Ford stocks for not moving fast enough on its multi-billion cost-cutting program. The company has already indicated that it will not accept the pattern set by the UAW-GM contract but wants far deeper concessions, particularly on health care.
Ford workers are livid over the GM deal and determined to fight. A Louisville, Kentucky worker with two decades at Ford, told the WSWS Autoworker Newsletter, “There are 800 temps at Kentucky Truck, and it keeps going up because Ford is not hiring permanent employees.
“Many have been here two-and-a-half years. Can you imagine working that long, and you can’t miss a day without being fired? They pay union dues, and it’s not right! The company doesn’t care if they get hurt. The medical department gives you Tylenol and sends you back to the line. If you're a temp, you can get fired for getting hurt.
“Workers have given up much for Ford to succeed with the promise that once the company was profitable, we would get it back. We didn’t receive any of it back in the last contract. Ford didn’t take any money from the government, but it took it from their employees.
“I’ve been with Ford for over 20 years, and I make $10,000 less now per year than I did 10 years ago because they got rid of most of our overtime and our COLA. The union is not fighting for us. If this contract is not better than GM, people will pull out of the union,” he said.
Ford and Fiat Chrysler workers must draw the lessons of the GM strike and form rank-and-file factory committees to take the conduct of the struggle out of the hands of the corrupt UAW. These committees should reach out to and mobilize workers throughout the auto and auto parts industry to launch national and cross-border strikes to oppose the drive by Wall Street to return autoworkers to conditions of industrial slavery not seen in a century.

Lessons of the GM autoworkers strike

On Friday, the United Auto Workers announced that its proposed contract with General Motors had been ratified by 57 percent, ending the 40-day-long strike by roughly 46,000 autoworkers.
The deal with GM is the latest in a series of UAW-made sellout contracts stretching back 40 years. The agreement allows the company to massively expand its low-paid temporary workforce and proceed with the shutdown of three factories and one parts facility: the Lordstown, Ohio, assembly plant; the Warren and Baltimore transmission plants; and the Fontano, California, parts distribution center.
Striking workers outside the outside the General Motors Detroit-Hamtramck assembly plant in Hamtramck on September 16 (AP Photo/Paul Sancya)
GM workers widely and angrily opposed the agreement from the moment the UAW released its contract “highlights” on October 18. Over the course of the strike, many hundreds of workers participated in online meetings hosted by the WSWS, discussing how to organize the fight back against the company’s and UAW’s demands.
To overcome this resistance, the UAW set into motion its hired PR reps, social media specialists and company spin doctors, deploying officials throughout the country to secure the deal using a combination of lies and threats at misnamed “educational sessions.” In a widely viewed Facebook video, UAW Local 1853 officials in Spring Hill, Tennessee, called the police on workers campaigning for a “no” vote a week ago.
Many workers have raised doubts over the legitimacy of the UAW’s vote tallies and balloting procedures, particularly the large “yes” votes reported at plants where substantial opposition was well-known, such as Flint Truck Assembly. As one worker commented on the UAW’s Facebook page, “I’m quite sure UAW membership DID NOT ratify this contract, in my past 24 years whenever membership votes no it still passes!”
Whatever the role of outright fraud, there is no doubt that a large proportion of workers who voted “yes” did so because they had no confidence that the UAW would respond to a contract rejection with anything better. They saw no point in enduring further hardship knowing they would only be presented with a recycled version of the same deal.
The UAW’s “ratification” of the deal resolves nothing. The contract is no more legitimate than those previously negotiated by the bribed company agents at “Solidarity House.” If the UAW has succeeded in the short term in forcing the company’s demands through, it has done so at the expense of even further discrediting itself among workers.
The stage is now set for a showdown with workers at Ford and Fiat Chrysler.
Ford, which the UAW has selected as its next “target,” will seek concessions and costs savings to match or exceed those from GM’s layoffs and plant shutdowns. Kristin Dziczek of the pro-corporate Center for Automotive Research told the Wall Street Journal Friday, “This pattern is pretty costly [to Ford and FCA] because one of the big things GM won is closing plants that will save billions. The other two don’t want to close plants. If you don’t want to close plants, what is the win for the company?”
In a statement Friday, Ford threw down the gauntlet to workers, saying it is seeking to “enhance its competitiveness” in its next contract. Industry analysts have speculated for weeks that Ford is looking to reduce its healthcare costs, estimated to top $1 billion next year, by either raising the amount workers have to pay out of pocket or imposing restrictions on access to care.
While Wall Street responded favorably to the conclusion of the GM strike, sending GM’s stock price up 2.57 percent by market close on Friday, it has hammered Ford’s share value over the last year. CEO Jim Hackett is under pressure to accelerate his promises to impose “financial fitness” on the company through layoffs and cuts to labor costs.
The auto giants and the major finance houses that stand behind them are seeking to use the development of new technologies—including electric vehicles and artificial intelligence—to restructure the global auto industry and impose even greater levels of exploitation on workers. Key aspects of the deal with GM are the UAW’s oversight of the use of temps and the establishment of a company-union “National Committee on Advanced Technology,” which mark new milestones in the UAW’s integration into the structures of company management.
The GM strike, the longest national auto strike in the US in nearly 50 years, has objective significance far beyond its immediate outcome. The international resurgence of class struggle has broken into the open among a crucial section of the industrial working class in the US, with effects that will continue to reverberate.
But if workers are to stop the further destruction of their jobs and living standards and prevent similar defeats at Ford, Fiat Chrysler and elsewhere, they must draw the following necessary conclusions:
1. Rank-and-file committees must be formed independent of the unions.
The UAW is not in any sense a workers’ organization, but rather an entrenched arm of management, functioning ever-more openly as a de facto temp agency. As long as it remains in control of the contract bargaining process, it will continue to attempt to enforce sellout agreements, with immeasurable consequences for workers and their families: closed factories, lost jobs, poverty wages, disintegrating benefits, and increasingly dangerous working conditions.
The time is past due for workers to form their own organizations. Workers at every GM, Ford, and Fiat Chrysler plant and workplace should hold meetings and elect rank-and-file factory committees from among the most trusted workers.
These committees should draw up demands that actually correspond to what workers need. And they should establish networks of communication across the auto industry, including the auto parts sector, and with other sections of workers coming into struggle, including the 32,000 teachers and school staff striking in Chicago and the 2,000 copper miners who have walked out in Texas and Arizona.
2. Every fight by workers must be guided by an international strategy.
The GM strike, a component of the global upsurge of class struggle, has revealed the growing recognition among workers of the need for international collaboration.
Early in the strike, GM workers in Silao, Mexico, courageously defied management’s demands for speed-up and overtime, refusing to be used as leverage against workers in the US. Subjected to a wave of firings and other victimizations, they appealed for support from their brothers and sisters in America.
Their stand elicited a powerful response among workers in the US, who read about their fight through the WSWS Autoworker Newsletter. The online meetings held by WSWS have taken on an ever-more explicitly international character, bringing together workers from the US, Mexico, Canada, Brazil, India and elsewhere.
This organic desire for international solidarity and collaboration must now be raised to a higher level. The globally integrated nature of production, and of the working class itself, is an objective fact. It requires workers to adopt an international strategy, coordinate their struggles across borders and consciously reject the nationalism promoted by the unions and the political establishment.
3. The struggle for the interests of the working class requires a socialist perspective and political party.
The GM strike was not a mere contract struggle. In seeking to defend their interests, workers are raising fundamental questions about who runs society and for what purpose. As the founders of modern socialism, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, wrote, “Every class struggle is a political struggle.”
The capitalist class is operating on the basis of a worked-out strategy. The funneling of ever greater sums into Wall Street to prop up the financial markets requires the intensification of the exploitation of the working class, the source of all profit. In particular, the corporations intend to make low-wage temporary work, with no benefits, the new normal.
Around the world, masses of workers and youth are being driven into struggle by the consequences of four decades of social counterrevolution: unending and worsening austerity, authoritarianism and war.
None of the aspirations of those coming into struggle can be met under capitalism. It is a system based on the brutal exploitation of the labor of the working class, one which subordinates all questions to the relentless drive for profit. And it is a system supported by the Democratic and Republican parties in the US and their counterparts internationally.
In order to secure any of their needs, it is necessary for workers to build a political party of their own and fight for socialism: the running of society to meet the social needs of the working class, not the profit interests of the financial oligarchy.


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.

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 “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.

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