GM’s ultimatum: Your paycheck or your job

[Hannah Bell]

There is a war going on, and it’s not halfway around the world. What’s clear from the so-called “innovative agreement” being rammed down the throats of UAW members at GM’s Lake Orion assembly plant is that GM has declared war on its workers. The deal, forcing the 40 per cent of the laid off workforce with the lowest seniority to take a pay cut of almost 50 per cent, is hardly innovative. When have corporations not used intimidation tactics and threatened workers jobs in order to cut pay and benefits, tear up contracts and attack unions?

Plant by plant, GM is making dubious promises of job security as leverage to drop UAW wages to levels below the average hourly wage in the U.S. They did it in Saginaw—workers swallowed painful concessions to get another company to buy their plant and keep it open. They tried it in Indianapolis, but were caught off guard when a well-organized rank-and-file resistance shot down an illegally negotiated agreement with upstart supplier JD Norman to slash hourly wages to $15.50 for production and $23 for skilled trades.

These aggressive tactics are not unique to GM. Chrysler CEO Sergio Marchionne is reported to have made a statement that UAW workers had to “get used to a culture of poverty,” while White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel has been quoted as saying “f---the UAW.” From Detroit to Wall Street to Washington there is a consensus at the top: wages must come down! No more “middle class” workers!

The potentially devastating situation in Lake Orion is not only not “innovative”—it is not an “agreement.” Workers did not agree to this divisive expansion of the rotten two-tier structure. Members of Local 5960 have been told by the UAW leadership—which is claiming the right, under vague language voted on during the GM bankruptcy, to negotiate this back-door deal—that they have to accept it without a vote.

Every UAW member, working or retired, must stand with our sisters and brothers in Lake Orion and demonstrate our resolve to stop the cancer of non-union wages from spreading... Rarely is it said that a big corporation is “lucky” to be making huge profits — in the case of GM $2.2 billion in the first six months — but so often we are told that we are “lucky” to have a job.

We’re not supposed to think that a job — without which we cannot provide the basic comforts of life to ourselves and our families — is a basic right.

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[Mugweed]

1. GM lost my business a couple years ago

When they announced they were discontinuing the Saturn line, I decided the one I own is the last GM product I will buy. They put the axe to a line of well-built, fuel efficient cars while they continue to churn out SUVs and "crossovers"...both top-heavy, overpriced, gas guzzling, glorified station wagons...and pickup trucks to be sold to suburbanites who never actually haul anything. Now I constantly get ads in the mail as a valued GM customer, highlighting these glorious wastes of resources and hoping I'll just turn in my Saturn (that has 115,000 miles and should last me another decade) and buy one of their disposables. I feel bad for the employees. They're tied to a failure of a business model that is destined to need another bailout loan in the near future. They will be the ones to take it in the ass while the upper echelon tries to save themselves.

[FirstTimeVoterAt37]

2. We're the new cheap labor

[alfredo]

3. Years ago they did the same thing to the workers in Flint Michigan.

Once they got the workers to bend to their demands, they closed the plant and moved to Mexico. I guess the wage cuts freed up money to build the new plant in Mexico.

[spin]

4. For half wages I would expect very little quality in GM cars...

about one half of what little they have today.