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Autoworkers and their families have been left entirely on their own by the United Auto Workers union, which, rather than opposing the mass layoffs, is assisting the auto bosses in the “orderly” downsizing of the industry. After decades of labor-management collaboration at the expense of its members, the UAW bureaucracy is not even making a pretense of defending autoworkers’ jobs and living standards. On the contrary, the UAW recently suppressed a wildcat strike by workers at a North Carolina plant owned by DaimlerChrysler’s Freightliner truck division, where 1,200 out of 4,000 workers are slated to lose their jobs. In exchange for the union’s cooperation in the dismantling of Chrysler, the company’s potential buyers are reportedly considering giving the UAW bureaucracy an “equity stake” in the new company, including possible control of its multi-billion dollar pension fund.

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Questions I have ,, Why are the unions selling out the workers?

Are unions still relivent to the proletariat?

Do Unions have a long enough history to see if they are a help tot he workers or will the always sell out the workers?

What makes Union leaders sell out hte workers? Is the phylosophy of Unins a dead end idea for the proletariat?

Readthe rest of the article here....

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“The older workers say let’s keep what we got. Who cares if they bring in a two-tier wage system? The union pushes this every-man-for-himself stuff. There is no means of resisting through the union. The union officials don’t want their style of life disrupted at all. We never see Ron Gettelfinger, the president of the UAW. He doesn’t come to the plant floor. All we see of him is in the newspaper. These are people who are holding our security in their hands. But all they do is go along with the program. Gettelfinger sits on the board of directors in Germany as a ‘labor representative.’ He knows what the company is doing. There is no resistance at all anymore. If any serious issues are raised at a union meeting, the local president will shut down the meeting.

“The UAW is going along with the program. The UAW leaders are too afraid if the employees walk out on strike that they will not get their paychecks. And those are bloated paychecks from the top leadership down to the shop stewards in the plants. Our steward gets paid for a 10-to-12 hour day—he couldn’t care less about the employees.”

The UAW is collaborating with the auto bosses efforts to drive out an entire generation of older workers who accumulated relatively higher wages and a measure of job security and retirement protections and replace them with a much smaller and more highly exploited workforce of low-wage and temporary workers.

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“They are shutting down plants all over the world. I saw a cartoon showing two businessmen standing together. The one guy looks at the other and says, ‘What did you just tell that worker?’ The other guy responds, ‘I told him to stop talking and work faster.’ ‘How must are you paying him?,’ the other guy asks. ‘I’m paying him five dollars a day,’ he says.

‘Well how much are you making from what he is producing?’ the other guy asks. ‘I’m making $25 a day.’ The other guy says, ‘So in other words he’s paying you $20 a day to tell him to work faster.’ That’s the reality of the capitalist system.

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Chrysler seems to have two options:

One: Become a specialty car manufacturer of low volume/high profit vehicles such as SUV's which will require a much smaller workforce to manufacture

Two: Go after the mass market and compete directly with the Japanese and Korean manufacturers. This would mean high volume/low profit cars. This would also mean the unions accepting Japanese-style work rules, small teams with each employee responsible for quality control. I worked on a line for a Magna subsidiary, Decoma Autosystems, which used this model. While Decoma was not unionized, I don't see why a union is incompatible with this manufacturing style.

[ 15 April 2007: Message edited by: Bobolink ]

[ 15 April 2007: Message edited by: Boom Boom ]

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Originally posted by Boom Boom:
The Al Gore movie talked about how the Japanese have much higher emissions standards than the US and yet are able to build and sell far more cars. US (and Canadian) autos don't even meet Chinese emissions standards, for goodness sakes. The auto companies - the Big Three - are suing California to prevent California from enacting even more harsh emissions standards - for eleven years from now, according to the Al Gore movie. Chrysler and Ford and GM must have blinkers on.

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I think they need a change of CEO's and to start designing cars that people want to buy. And they need socialized medicine in the USA. One commentator from the big three joked a few years ago that they were in the business of providing group health insurance for employees first, and making cars is a side-line. Private health insurance premiums are said to tack on over a thousand dollars to the price of a U.S.-made car. They can compete with unionized Toyota workers but not Japan.

[ 15 April 2007: Message edited by: Fidel ]

Conservatives will tend to argue anything other than the neo-Liberal model doesn't actually work when faced with socialist competition. Ideology dies hard.

stomp-stomp CLAP!!!

Buddy you're a young man hard man
Shoutin' in the street gonna take on the world some day
You got blood on yo' face
You big disgrace
Wavin' your banner all over the place
Singin'

We will we will rock you
We will we will rock you
Workers of the world unite

[ 15 April 2007: Message edited by: Fidel ]

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Originally posted by bruce_the_vii:
Hi Boblink:

I don't know much about Magna and have always wonder if it's a sweat shop or provides reasonalbe employment, albiet not UAW level.

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Magna is huge but people don't know anything about it. I saw one documentary on a Magna franchiser that hired immigrant women for next to minimum wage which is kind of a downer.

The cars that are made in the USA and Canada are of the same caliber as any car made on the planet...

When you read about this car being better then that car, we are only talking about a few points of difference.

Productivity in Canada and the USA has never been better... Here in Windsor, they have been making cars from the beginning.. The workers are world class in all areas of auto manufacturing. Yet still, Windsor is loosing jobs.

The total answer is the fact of capitalist globalization.. Which essentialy means the ability of capital to move freely around the globe while workers can not.

This creates an opertunity for the capitalists to pit the workers from one country against another..
In the case of north american. The capitailst were not making enough prfit form the auto industry because they could not exploit the workers as much in the area of surplus value. So they desided to us the workers in China..

The wages in Canada can not compete with the wages in China. For example, the mold industry in Windsor is taking a hit. For the price of steel in Canada to make one mold, in China you can buy the steel, pay a worker to make the mold and then ship it over to Canada to have it fixed. AS that is what happens all the time over here.

I can't find figures for 2006 but I found figures for 2005 from this web link...

http://www.itfacts.biz/index.php?id=P5488

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17 mln cars sold in the US in 2005, US automakers had 56.9% share
Chevrolet was the best-selling brand in the US market in 2005, outpacing Ford for the first time in 19 years, General Motors said. The Big Three US automakers' sales were down 2% overall, while Asian brands' sales climbed 7% and European brands fell 3%. US automakers' US market share fell to an unprecedented low of 56.9%, from 61.7% just three years ago, according to Autodata. Asian brands' US market share rose to 36.5%, up from 34.6%. The total number of vehicles sold in the United States was nearly 17 mln, about the same as the year before.

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lets do the math... for my example I will us $25,000 as that price of a car. So thats $17,000,000 x $25,000 = $425,000,000,000

Now if the Big Three had 56.9% of the market , they would have made ( $425,000,000,000 x 56.9% =) $241,825,000,000.

So let divide taht up between each Manufacturer. I'll make it equal, So thats $80,608,333,333.33 each...

Were the fuck did $241.8 billion go??? or $80.6 billion each?

[ 18 April 2007: Message edited by: trippie ]

here is aqoute form this article...

http://news.sympatico.msn.ctv.ca/TopStories/ContentPosting.aspx?feedname=CTV-TOPSTORIES_V2&showbyline=True&newsitemid=CTVNews%2f20070424%2fToyota_GM_070424

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In 2006, Toyota's global output climbed 10 per cent to 9,018,000 vehicles. In contrast, GM produced 9,180,000 vehicles worldwide -- a difference of about 162,000.

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So let me do the calculations for GM in 2006 using $25,000 as the average price of a vehicle...

9,180,000 x 25,000 = 229,500,000,000

quote:

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Originally posted by Boom Boom:
The Al Gore movie talked about how the Japanese have much higher emissions standards than the US and yet are able to build and sell far more cars. US (and Canadian) autos don't even meet Chinese emissions standards, for goodness sakes. The auto companies - the Big Three - are suing California to prevent California from enacting even more harsh emissions standards - for eleven years from now, according to the Al Gore movie. Chrysler and Ford and GM must have blinkers on.

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Originally posted by Sven:
On top of all that, most of the Japanese cars sold in North America are made by North American labor.

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First (of two posts), let's correct a few misconceptions about unions:

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Questions I have ,, Why are the unions selling out the workers?

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Unions don't "sell out" workers. Unions are in fact cooperative associations of workers collectively owned and, at least for certain on paper but to varying degrees in practice, democratically run by their members via various kinds of democratic process.

Elected leaders can certainly, in certain situations, sell out their members or mismanage the organization they represent or make mistakes, etc., but unions are in fact not separate from workers. They are the workers, or at least a common extension of them.

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Are unions still relivent to the proletariat?

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Since large and significant percentages of the "proletariat" are organized in this form across the globe, that alone shows the answer is obvious.

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Do Unions have a long enough history to see if they are a help tot he workers or will the always sell out the workers?

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Unions in one form or another have been around since people began forming communities and structured forms of trade and production--several thousand years. Whether openly or brutally suppressed and illegal, unions/guilds/cooperative and friendly and benevolent workers' societies have always been around.

It's a proven beneficial and pretty indestructible form of association that is fundamentally akin to community-building and socialistic thought and practice.

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What makes Union leaders sell out hte workers?

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When it happens, it can be for a variety of reasons: lack of vision or courage, intimidation by bosses, corruption or pay-off by bosses or racketeers, inability to solve a serious situation, etc.

But keep in mind, that what union leaders negotiate is subject to debate and vote by the membership. If the leaders have some degree of credibility, the members usually vote to accept what they recommend--but that isn't always the case, as we see all over the place.

And the debates often revolve around whether a proposed deal is a sell-out or whether it's just the best that could be achieved given the circumstances, or much more often simply as whether it’s acceptable enough, etc.

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Is the phylosophy of Unins a dead end idea for the proletariat?

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the government should take over these plants and businesses if they decided to dump the workers and move to new areas for cheap labour

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That's certainly an option that's been tried in many different forms throughout the world. It's usually called "nationalization" (or sometimes “collectivization” or “socialization”).

But before anyone gets too thrilled about this, in should be pointed out that nationalization in itself doesn't lead to the end of capitalism and the beginning of socialist democracy; but rather to state capitalism with a variety of results: from the relatively successful and beneficial (like in Western Europe) to totalitarianism and corruption (like Eastern Europe).

Without the fundamental democratization of the means of production, trade and capital and the shifting away from the maximizing accumulation/market monopolization mode of production, capitalism continues to dominate the economy in one form or another.

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So let me do the calculations for GM in 2006 using $25,000 as the average price of a vehicle...

9,180,000 x 25,000 = 229,500,000,000

Thats right folks , GM made about $229,500,000,000 in 2006 and Wall Street was telling us GM was going bankrupt....

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Errrr….not exactly. While it’s an economic fact that capitalistic institutions exploit labour and gouge consumers, bilk taxpayers, and commodify and de-humanize everything, this is not a correct measure of how much profit a specific enterprise sucks up.

Even if you assume those figures are right, you need to calculate into the total retail price the total cost of production, labour, materials, interest and financing (much bigger than many people think), marketing and advertising (up to 30 per cent of retail price), dealership costs, taxes, depreciation, corporate bureaucracy (probably all waste), insurance, energy, etc., as well as the cost of profit itself (shareholder dividends, bond pay-outs executive bonuses, etc.)

It’s not just a matter of getting the retail unit price and multiplying it by the number of units sold at that price. So if the average retail price is $25,000, but it costs $18,000 to make, that’s only $7,000 in profit. Now, of course that’s still a huge amount, but it’s much less than the original calculation.

Remember, since you’re a fan of Marxism, you should recognize, as Marx did, that while labour creates far more in value than what is paid to workers in wages, benefits, social insurance and services, pensions, etc., it doesn’t mean that the capitalist bosses they directly work for get to pocket everything else. Rather, the surplus wealth not paid to labour is often fought over and hoarded by various capitalistic interests.

It works the opposite way too. For example, GM makes lots of money from a whole lot more than just selling cars. Last I remember, that conglomerate owned, at least in part, over 100 subsidiaries involved in everything from machinery and general manufacture to real estate and speculative investment—some of which are operated as losses to offset or subsidize those that turn profits. It’s a great way to make income look like a loss.

I' ve read a lot of your posts ( and I don't mean just here) and you have alot of information but I think the answers that you have give to my questions are weak. you can do better....

at present Unions all over the globe are working hand in glove with management selling out the workers and protecting themselves... For example you can see the CAW and UAW working with the companiies to buy out the work force... This can only mean a decline in the political strength of these worker organizations as theirmembership declines... Also you can see the Unoins working against the Railway workers here in Canada...
These are not good signs...

You stated that Unions have been around for a very long time. My question is, after all this time are they bringing us forward or are they holding us back? I think,with all the historical information about the roll unions have played in human history, they are not moving humanity forward.

There is a time and there was a time when they wre usefull , that time is coming to an end. It is only logical that the present ideology of Unions needs to evolve... I say that time is now.

As far as my understanding goes... In a socialist society Unions are not needed... am I correct?

You made a few assumptions when reading my calculations... First one being, you assumed I was talking about profit margines... No were did I mention profits... I use $25,000 as the average for a new car... i then calculated that with the number of automobiles sold to give the ruff estmate of the gross moneys made by the companies... I don't have all the information to give it a brake down.

Its a lot of money and I can't see why they are having financial troubles....

My theory is , and I will assume others think it as well, the capitalists are trying to break the workers ... also America is in an economic decline and their need for profits is taken even more on the backs of the workers...

their agenda of blaming the workers is taking affect as a lot of people here in Windsor point their fingers at the "greedy ovrpayed workers"..

Why did the Candian workers split form the US workers and form the CAW? There is a reason for this .... that act alone divided the workers from each other and turned them into competiters. You can see how the capitalists are able to us this against the workers...

What about the airline industry with unions fighting each other and the workers taking pay cuts and losing out on pensions...????

Look at the Steal industry in Hamilton as the Capitalists got a judge to help break up one of the companies . The workers lost a great company that they helped build.

Were were the unins of Canada? How could they let the capitalist get away with this????

[ 25 April 2007: Message edited by: trippie ]

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at present Unions all over the globe are working hand in glove with management selling out the workers and protecting themselves...

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This is not the case, and if it's actual unions we are talking about, it's an impossibility.

As said before, unions are in fact cooperative associations of workers collectively owned and, at least for certain on paper but to varying degrees in practice, democratically run by their members via various kinds of democratic process.

Elected leaders can certainly, in certain situations, sell out their members or mismanage the organization they represent or make mistakes, etc., but unions are in fact not separate from workers. They are the workers, or at least a common extension of them.

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For example you can see the CAW and UAW working with the companiies to buy out the work force

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First, the CAW is an organization of close to 260,000 people; the UAW has almost a million members. They are the collective expression of each one of those worker members.

They democratically elect representatives and officers and various levels of the organizations, who administer the organization, negotiate contracts, research issues and information, engage in political and social activism as directed by conventions of those organizations, and make recommendations to the members. If the recommendations are not to the satisfaction of the majority of members involved, they can vote them down. If they are accepted, then that becomes the standard. If the members are unhappy with the performance of the leaders, they can vote them out and replace them.

Now, it’s obviously not that simple or straight-forward, when you add all of the political differences, complex situations, anger and apathy, factional infighting and power-base-building, etc., that you find in any organizations—not matter how democratic or cooperative.

Second, buying out the work force, as in bonus severance packages, early retirement with full benefits, etc., doesn’t necessarily mean selling out. These are often agreements reached after bitter fights and job action—often when the workers fail to keep businesses open, these are settlements that are made.

Sometimes this seems inevitable. Sometimes many members are glad to take this option, since they are already burned out, stressed out or simply tired of working in that industry or for that particular firm.

It’s true there are often alternatives that are possible in theory (worker take-overs and buy-outs, lobbying shareholders, demanding government action to protect jobs, etc.). But this options require a lot of organizational and educational skills among the memberships and the leadership, as well as, quite often, the financial resources—and often that is lacking. It’s not necessarily because the leaders don’t want to try these things—rather it’s usually because they don’t know how or lack the resources or the support among the broader community to do them.

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You stated that Unions have been around for a very long time. My question is, after all this time are they bringing us forward or are they holding us back? I think,with all the historical information about the roll unions have played in human history, they are not moving humanity forward.

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Well, with due respect, obviously you don’t seem to know much about labour history, or have an understanding history in general.

If you look at how so many things have changed, battles won, rights and living standards achieved, etc., over the last few centuries, you will see that unions in their various forms have always been at the center of those achievements.

It was working people, artisans and peasants organizing together economically (as in unions) that forced monarchs, emperors, pharohs and plutocrats to make concessions that made democracy possible; the guilds of the Middle Ages were instrumental is setting democratic cooperative townships, known as communes (where “communism” comes from), with their own democratic constitutions that provided much of the basis for democratic revolutions and the modern socialist movement, as well as the basis for municipal governments, accessible judiciary and social safety nets.

Who has historically formed the main bulwark against totalitarian/authoritarian regimes, capitalist corporations and oppressive bureaucracies? Who has historically been the key backers of most human rights and social justice causes? Who has played a key role in proving that socialism is a practical reality via co-ops. CED, worker ventures, etc.? Who has been the economic force behind progressive political movements that have brought in laws and rules promoting and defending everything from universal education and health care, environmental protection, health and safety laws, due process and equality before the law, minimum working and living standards, retirement and pensions, community based business and development, etc.?

Unions of various kinds throughout history. No improvement? Every improvement that’s ever been has either been initiated, supported, empowered or championed by various unions of various kinds.

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As far as my understanding goes... In a socialist society Unions are not needed... am I correct?

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ill use this quote for example

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Second, buying out the work force, as in bonus severance packages, early retirement with full benefits, etc., doesn’t necessarily mean selling out. These are often agreements reached after bitter fights and job action—often when the workers fail to keep businesses open, these are settlements that are made.

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The buyingoutot the workers has only come about because of the lost battles ofthe workers...

After the bourgeoisie of the USA were deffeated on the early 1970 and had to make a retreat from Veitnam, they were able to come back and retake power withthe Reagon Government...

How was that possible?

The capitulation of the workers leadership in the Democratic party and the Unions.

What happened to all the left winged militancy of the Unions over that last 50 or so years?

Why did Marx say that the proletariat will not spontaniously figure otu what to do to take power... Why did Lenin and Trotsky try to teach and educate the workers?

Were were the Unions when Reagon fired the Air Traffic Controlers?

the reason that companies can buy out the workers today is becuase of the long history of hte Unins selling out the workers...

Do you think if the workers were lead by the Unions properly, that the companies could even offer such a thing?

Yes the workers , through farious unions have been able to improve life wiht socialist ideas...But at the same time the greatest help was through the Bolshevic revolution...With out the treat of workers revolt and joining the USSR, do you think the governments would have allowed all these welfare states?

Look at today, withthe fall of the USSR socialistic welfare systems are being dismanttled all over the place and what do we have?.. The leader of the CAW openly calling for his members to elect liberal bourgeois candidates.....the CAW openly working with the companies to whittle away at the rights workers have fought for over all these years....

I think you are being subjective when assesing our present situation of the class warfair we are having.

For instance were are the Unions with respect to Canadas partisapation in imperialist war of agression?

Arwe they mobilizing the people against it? are they eductaing the people ?

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2007/may2007/cerb-m15.shtml

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Even before DaimlerChrysler officially announced the sell-off at a press conference in Germany, the United Auto Workers (UAW) issued a statement endorsing the sale of the company to Wall Street speculators, saying it was “in the best interests of our UAW members, the Chrysler Group and Daimler.”

DaimlerChrysler Chief Executive Dieter Zetsche praised the UAW for its support in the opening sentences of his remarks to the press. The surrender of the auto union was so immediate and abject it evidently took some auto and financial analysts by surprise.

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The striving of the UAW to transform itself into a capitalist enterprise is the outcome of a long process. For three decades, in tandem with the decline of the global market position of the US auto makers, the UAW bureaucracy has been seeking ways and means to distance its own fate from that of the auto workers it nominally represents. Wedded to capitalism, the American two-party system and a nationalist perspective, the UAW could advance no independent perspective to defend the social interests of auto workers. Inevitably, the size and industrial power of the union underwent a precipitous decline—which continues unabated today.

The more the union leadership betrayed the interests of the rank-and-file, in order to “defend American jobs”—i.e., the profits of the Big Three US auto firms—the more closely it sought to integrate itself with corporate management. The Chrysler bailout of 1979-80 was a turning point, in which the union openly embraced the policy of corporatism, symbolized by the entry of then-UAW President Douglas Fraser onto the Chrysler board of directors.

There followed tacit union support for outright union-busting at UAW parts plants, the proliferation of joint union-management committees and joint slush funds of various kinds, and a policy of offering supplier companies low-wage contracts in return for their agreement to let the UAW “represent” the workers—that is, collect dues automatically deducted from the workers’ pay checks.

The strike fund remained flush to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars because the union virtually abandoned the strike weapon. There has not been a national strike against a Big Three company for decades. But that is woefully inadequate to sustain a bureaucracy numbering in the thousands under conditions of ever-declining membership rolls.

Now, however, the disaster engulfing rank-and-file auto workers—who face reduction to the status of low-paid, semi-casual labor with few or no benefits—provides the bureaucracy with the opportunity to control vast resources and secure its own financial future.

The Cerberus deal, and the union’s complicity, bring to the fore the essential character of the UAW: It is the instrument of a corrupt, parasitic and privileged social layer that has nothing in common with the working class. It is a social layer deeply hostile to the interests of workers.

An understanding of the nature of the UAW is a precondition for the development of the type of independent industrial and political struggle—based on socialist and internationalist policies—that is required to defeat the conspiracy of the auto bosses, the banks and Wall Street asset-strippers, and the union itself, and to defend the jobs, working conditions and living standards of auto workers.

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