Workers’ benefits come dead last when profits are at stake for the bosses in the auto industry. With the always-unpredictable changes in the capitalist market, the big capitalist automakers unfailingly look to cut back on costs and increase profits off the backs of workers.
The recent labor contract negotiations between Ford, GM and Chrysler with the United Auto Workers union are living
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The bosses regularly threaten the unions with factory shutdowns, relocations and layoffs Workers are put up against the wall, and unions often agree to accept deeply concessionary contracts that benefit the owning class.
The UAW is on the verge of signing a new four-year contract with Ford. What does this new contract offer current and future Ford workers?
If the new deal is anything like the ones that Chrysler and GM recently made with the UAW, workers at Ford should expect a gloomy future.
The UAW and nearly all labor unions are addressing the fundamental challenges facing them today by gearing up for the 2008 national elections. To the exclusion of everything else, with this tactic the unions are hoping that they can help elect a president who will “address labor’s needs.”
But both the Republicans and the Democrats are parties rooted in the continuation of capitalist exploitation. Instead of tailing these anti-worker parties, unions should be mobilizing millions of workers to achieve fundamental demands, like a national healthcare system.
More layoffs
Immediately after signing contracts with GM and Chrysler, the two auto giants announced that they would eliminate shifts at assembly plants and lay off workers.
Chrysler alone announced that it will cut between 8,500 and 10,000 hourly jobs in 2008. GM has already promised to cut shifts at three Michigan plants, affecting 1,700 jobs.
On top of this, Chrysler has a three-year program to add to U.S. unemployment called the Recovery and Transformation Plan, which intends to eliminate 13,000 jobs.
Bob Nardelli, chairman and chief executive officer of Chrysler, made the interests of the owners of the means of production obvious in the following statement after signing the contract with the UAW: “Like all good plans, the RTP has built-in flexibility that allows us to stay one step ahead of market change. And that is the way to long-term sustained profitability.”
Aside from the cuts and relocations, the automakers have shifted all their responsibility to retired workers’ health care by eliminating the programs and moving that responsibility to a union-run trust.
This is a move to help the capitalists save billions by only having to contribute a small fraction of their previous obligations.
With all these injustices to autoworkers, a unionized sector of the U.S. working class, workers in other countries can only expect further exploitation by these auto giants if and when plants relocate to more “company friendly” countries.
Understanding the system and mounting a class-wide fightback is necessary for all workers—union and non-union—at this time.
