Ford Motor Company is trying to force its workers, unionized and non-union, to bear the cost of its multi-billon dollar restructuring. It has lost billions of dollars in recent years and enjoys an ever-shrinking share of the U.S. automotive market.
Ford announced Sept. 15 that it would lay off 10,000 more white-collar workers and close two more plants. Workers at
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The company also announced it was offering all its 75,000 hourly workers buyouts. The buyout offer is part of an eight-point program aimed to reduce future labor costs.
Ford hopes the buyouts will eliminate 40,000 union jobs. In an unfortunate move, the leadership of the United Autoworkers union immediately endorsed Ford’s offer.
The buyout offer comes on the heels of historic mid-contract concessions by the UAW on medical and other benefits at General Motors, which has also suffered multi-billion dollar and market-share losses.
What does the elimination of 40,000 jobs mean? It depends on who you ask. According to the Wall Street investment firm Merrill Lynch, Ford will increase its annual earnings by 25 cents per share for every 5,000 jobs eliminated. This translates into an additional $450 million available for paying out to investors. For autoworkers, however, it means producing the same or more cars by fewer workers at lower wages.
UAW president Ron Gettelfinger said about the buyout offer, “Once again, our members are stepping up to make hard choices under difficult circumstances. Now, it’s Ford Motor Company’s responsibility to lead this company in a positive direction—which means using the skills, experience and dedication to quality that UAW members demonstrate every day in order to deliver quality vehicles to customers.”
Gettlefinger’s view that the workers and bosses at Ford are working together with a shared interest in the profitability of the company is a false orientation. This line pits the workers at Ford against the workers at GM, Chrysler, Toyota, Honda and other auto companies. It sets up a race to see which company can sell more cars in the interests of making the corporate owners more money.
There is opposition to the buyout offer on the shop floor by union militants who see the offer as a continuing erosion of the union’s strength. Opposition is surfacing within the ranks of UAW local presidents. Local 245 president Mario Guerreso, who represents over 2,500 workers at facilities in Dearborn, Mich., said, “I don’t call them buyouts—I call them sellouts. … When you accept buyouts, those jobs are gone.”
Autoworkers need fighting strategy
The UAW and other unions represent workers who labor at manufacturing companies that are undertaking structural changes. Beginning in the late 1970s, the vast expansion of computer technology into all sectors of the economy signaled the onset of such changes. More U.S. jobs were created in the service sector and fewer in the manufacturing sector.
Productivity increased. But workers’ wages dropped as the skills necessary to perform jobs declined. The introduction of the new technology was accompanied by plant closings and massive layoffs.
This trend was further compounded by the increasing reach of capitalist globalization—an economic trend enshrined
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In the United States, corporations have used this to threaten moving plants overseas or across the border every time unions ask for better wages or working conditions. It has contributed to the weakening of traditionally more militant sections of the labor movement.
Yet, the working class remains the producer of all wealth. Without our labor, the capitalist class is unable to make profits. The strike—withholding labor—is still an effective weapon in the arsenal of the working class.
A real strategy could draw on the union’s greatest strength—its ability to shut down a key sector of the U.S. economy—with its militant history as pioneers for the whole working class
The layoffs and plant closings don’t just affect the workers losing their jobs. They affect the surrounding communities as well.
What if the union made a class-wide appeal to all workers to fight to save the jobs at Ford in a real grassroots way? What if the UAW organized a mass march on Congress or the White House, or on the National Association of Manufacturers, to demand jobs be viewed as a property right of the workers based on the hundred years of labor expended since the establishment of Ford? This is what the courts ruled during the 1930s as a result of the sit-ins that led to the unionization of the auto industry.
The UAW could take the lead in organizing buses, as they have done in the past, to transport people to the rally. Community groups and other unions could be encouraged to join. The rally could raise the demand for a moratorium on layoffs and plant closings.
An appeal rooted in the union’s strength and militancy, directed toward the whole working class, could stay the layoffs and plant closings. It would be a first step in turning back the union-busting offensive of the capitalist class.
