General Motors announces mass layoffs of workers in the US
By Jerry White
21 December 2016

General Motors officials on Monday announced that it would eliminate one of the two production shifts at its Detroit-Hamtramck assembly plant and cut 1,192 of the factory’s 3,000 jobs. The cuts, which will begin March 5, are in addition to thousands of other temporary and permanent layoffs announced by the US’s largest automaker in recent weeks.

Citing a slowdown in less profitable passenger car sales, the company announced Monday it will close five assembly plants, including Detroit-Hamtramck, for one to three weeks in January, idling over 10,000 workers. The other plants effected are Fairfax Assembly in Kansas City, Kansas, for three weeks; the Lansing Grand River plant in Michigan for two weeks; and plants in Lordstown, Ohio, and Bowling Green, Kentucky, for one week.

In addition to the shift elimination in Detroit, GM announced last month that it was suspending third shifts at the Lordstown and Lansing Grand River plants, also in
January, resulting in the layoff of 2,000 workers.

Other major firms are using the holiday season to slash their workforces. Boeing Commercial Airplanes has slashed 6,000 jobs in the state of Washington alone this year. The company’s CEO, Kevin McAllister, warned, “While we have made progress in reducing costs and improving affordability, we will need to do more in 2017.”

The earthmoving equipment manufacturer Caterpillar, after laying off 10,000 employees last fall, said last week that it will issue another round of pink slips without specifying how many. Xerox, which is splitting in two before the year’s end, warned of coming layoffs, which will likely hit the 39,000 employees at Xerox’s “legacy” copier business.

GM shares rose a quarter of a percent on the announcements as part of an orgy on Wall Street that saw the New York Stock Exchange rose to just short of 20,000 points on Tuesday. The corporate and financial elite has no intention of letting up on the relentless attack on the jobs, wages and health and pension benefits of workers. The ruling class anticipates huge profits as the incoming Trump administration slashes corporate taxes and regulations.

Trump has tapped GM CEO Mary Barra for a seat on his 16-member economic policy team, along with Stephen Schwarzman, CEO of the investment firm Blackstone; JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon; and former General Electric CEO Jack Welch.

According to a Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act (WARN) filing that GM sent to Michigan authorities Monday, about half of the affected workers at the Detroit plant are temporary workers, nearly 80 work at GM Manufacturing Subsystems LLC, a subsidiary of GM, and 32 are salaried workers being transferred to other plants.

In a callous statement, GM spokesman Tom Wickham said in an email, “GM adjusts its manufacturing plants’ production schedules to meet market demand as part of the normal course of business.” Company claims that it will relocate most of the workers are doubtful at best.

In October 2015, GM and United Auto Workers officials announced with great fanfare that a second shift would be added to the 4.1 million-square-foot Detroit-Hamtramck plant, which would absorb the 500 workers cut from GM’s nearby Lake Orion facility. The announcement was timed to dampen opposition from GM’s 53,000 US workers to the UAW-backed concessions contract, which Fiat Chrysler workers had rejected by a 2-to-1 margin.

In addition to retaining the hated two-tier wage and benefit system and keeping total labor cost increases below the rate of inflation, the UAW contract facilitated the layoff of workers in an economic downturn. It expanded the use of low-paid temporary workers who could be hired and fired at will and sanctioned the Detroit automakers’ plans to end mid-size and small car production in the United States.

As a result, GM has seen record profits, including $2.8 billion in the third quarter, exceeding Wall Street estimates and doubling profits from a year earlier. The company, which had a cash hoard of $21.5 billion as of September, spent $5 billion to buy back its own shares this year and plans to buy back another $4 billion by the end of 2017.

While throwing workers onto the street, billions have been squandered to boost the returns of its richest investors. This includes Barra herself, who saw her total compensation rise 77 percent in 2015 to $28.6 million. The UAW, whose former vice president Joe Ashton sits on GM’s board of directors, has also been a major beneficiary. The UAW still owns a substantial block of GM shares through its control of the multibillion-dollar retiree health care trust.

The UAW International and UAW Local 22 did not issue any statements on the layoffs, and neither returned phone inquiries from the World Socialist Web Site .
Workers at the plant, however, were livid over the announcement.

“I’m not happy,” Michelle, who has worked at the Detroit-Hamtramck plant for eight and a half years, told the WSWS. “People were upset at the plant meeting yesterday. No one could understand why they added the shift eight months ago if they were going to get rid of it eight months later.
“There were no union representatives on stage. It was getting ugly. Some workers had just bought GM cars to help the company, and this is how they were paid back.”

Many of the workers hired last April, she said, were being laid off before reaching one year of employment so that they would not qualify for Supplemental Unemployment Benefits (SUB) pay from the company. “They’re being laid off on March 5, just weeks before the April cut-off date,” she said.
“Everybody’s scared about the economy and Trump getting elected. They’re selling big cars, but that is going to dry up and we could all lose our jobs. The union agreed to a cap on our profit-sharing checks, even though the company is making billions.”

Carddears was hired in 2008. She worked six months and was then laid off for three years before getting a job at the Detroit-Hamtramck plant in November 2011. “It’s sad what they’re doing to people and shows that the economy is heading toward a dive. I don’t know what’s going to happen to me.

“We do all the hard work in there building the cars, and they can just get rid of us. People were angry when they heard, and 17 workers just walked off the job. If we don’t fight then we are all going to be out of work.”

“Yesterday they told me I was out of a job after two years,” a young worker who did not give her name said. “The union told us we had job security. That was a fraud.”

The GM layoffs follow similar announcements by Fiat Chrysler and Ford in response to signs of a slowdown in the US automotive market, which has had three consecutive years of record sales. Most analysts say that the mini-boom in vehicle sales, largely spurred by low fuel prices, easy credit and pent-up demand from the Great Recession, is finally ending. GM’s inventories surged 28 percent between August 1 and December 1 to the highest level in nearly nine years, according to Automotive News.

At Dan & Vi’s Pizza on Chene Street across from the plant, a young welder at a nearby factory, Samantha, said, “They’re laying these workers off before the holidays—that’s ridiculous. I’m scared because I just got into the sheet metal trade, and we could lose our jobs.” Her friend Samuel added, “GM got a federal bailout, and they are throwing 1,200 workers out of their jobs.”

Akia, a young Chrysler worker, said, “In the four-year contract the UAW got it takes seven years to get top dollar. I’m supposed to get it by 2019—if I last that long.”

Symbolizing the transformation of the former Motor City into a low-wage haven, the day after the GM layoff notice county officials announced that online retailer Amazon will open a distribution center in nearby Livonia next year and hire 1,000 workers. The facility will be built at the former site of GM’s Delco Chassis factory, shut in the 1990s and demolished in the early 2000s.

http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2016/12/21/genm-d21.html

Man, if the auto industry alone loses 3200 jobs in January, with more coming down the pike from other industries, the next few years look bleak indeed. Trump is supposed to be putting together a "package" for rebuilding US infrastructure. If he can get the Republican congress to go along with that kind of jobs program, he might be the new FDR - but I doubt that that will happen. This whole place might tank on Trump in his first year.

Man, if the auto industry alone loses 3200 jobs in January, with more coming down the pike from other industries, the next few years look bleak indeed. Trump is supposed to be putting together a "package" for rebuilding US infrastructure. If he can get the Republican congress to go along with that kind of jobs program, he might be the new FDR - but I doubt that that will happen. This whole place might tank on Trump in his first year.

Looking bleak the next few years ? It's already fucking bleak and has been for a long time for the retirees. While these capitalist pricks have a big party on Wall Street the austerity and destruction continues in the trenches. You know the those trenches Dhalgren where real people exist hanging on by a fucking fingernail after giving a lifetime of sweat and blood to these vampires. The UAW retirees took in the ass on this thing the whole fucking way after giving concessions for decades and now being completely shut out without a voice while at the mercy of the UAW bosses and their sellout negotiations. Healthcare benefits dumped into the hands of vampire trusts, underfunded, and slashed whenever the whim arises while the co-pays and dectubilbes rise every year along with all profit sharing and every other retiree benefit gone while these cocksuckers make billions on the bailout.

Man, if the auto industry alone loses 3200 jobs in January, with more coming down the pike from other industries, the next few years look bleak indeed. Trump is supposed to be putting together a "package" for rebuilding US infrastructure. If he can get the Republican congress to go along with that kind of jobs program, he might be the new FDR - but I doubt that that will happen. This whole place might tank on Trump in his first year.

The Donald got his work cut out for him....Asshole spent the entire campaign saying anything he thought would get a rise and now he owns that shit. I expect he will be given a lot of slack by his base, for a while, but when he and his billionaire gang express their base condition(as they inevitably will) and start fucking everybody below them it will get noticed, especially if there's a bunch of loud, hard eyed agitators giving it no rest. Grid yer loins.

New year opens with wave of layoffs in the US
By Jerry White
9 January 2017

The New Year is opening in the US with a wave of layoff announcements and threats of further downsizing during the year.

In the latest blow to retailers, hundreds of women’s clothing stores, operated by Ohio-based chain The Limited, shut their doors over the weekend at shopping malls across the United States. The company, which has 235 stores nationwide and 4,000 employees, quietly began layoffs in December before shuttering its stores on Sunday.

Last week, Macy’s announced it was closing 68 stores and cutting more than 10,000 jobs. Sears also said it will shut down another 150 Sears and Kmart stores, after poor holiday sales. Kohls and JC Penney previously carried out mass layoffs.

Retailers have been hit by a series of factors, including the stagnation of real wages of large numbers of consumers and the growth of online shopping giants like Amazon.

In addition to the retailers, the Big Three Detroit-based automakers are carrying out thousands of temporary and permanent layoffs, including the elimination of entire shifts—and the wiping out of more than 3,000 jobs—at assembly plants in Detroit and Lansing, Michigan, and Lordstown, Ohio, halfway between Cleveland and Pittsburgh.

Last Friday, the US Bureau of Labor Statistics reported slower-than-expected job growth in December. The economy added 156,000 jobs last month, the vast majority in the lower-paying service sector. Obama’s Labor Secretary Thomas Perez hailed the numbers, saying they showed the “strength” of the economy. In reality, there has been no recovery for millions of Americans who, living from paycheck-to-paycheck and up to their necks in debt, face the constant threat of job loss.

Other recent layoff announcements include:

· Lexington, Kentucky-based Lexmark International is laying off 320, or 10 percent, of its software business employees.
· Data-storage company Seagate Technology Inc. has cut 155 jobs at its Shakopee, Minnesota facility.
· Alorica will cut 200 jobs at its customer communications center in Utica, New York.
· Dole Packaged Foods will close its Stockton, California frozen yogurt product plant, eliminating 30 hourly and supervisory jobs.
· Internationally, Chinese tech giant ZTE will cut five percent of its global workforce or 3,000 jobs.

The dire situation facing workers will only escalate under the incoming Trump administration. Despite his bogus pronouncements of concern for the plight of American workers, Trump’s economic program is based on massive corporate tax cuts and deregulation and protectionist trade measures, which will destabilize the world economy and provoke retaliation against US exporters. He is also proposing a sharp spending increase for the military and some funding for infrastructure projects, all of which will be a boondoggle for private contractors and other businesses.

Corporations are also demanding the continued lowering of labor costs in the US, which was central to the economic policy of the Obama administration over the last eight years.

This was implemented with the full assistance of the trade unions, which worked with the White House to suppress a “wages push” by millions of workers whose labor agreements expired in 2015-16 and who were determined to recover wages lost in the years following the 2008 financial crash. With the backing of the unions, wage increases in the private and public sectors have largely been limited to the rate of inflation and any raises have more than been eaten up by increased health care costs under Obamacare.

The latest retail layoffs highlight structural changes in the economy. Millions of workers, young and old, face a “New Normal” of low-paying, precarious jobs, while the wealthy elite extracts billions in profit, chiefly through financial parasitism.

Dayton, Ohio businessman Leslie H. Wexner opened the first The Limited store at a shopping mall in the Columbus, Ohio suburb of Upper Arlington in 1963. So named because it limited the variety of clothing to lower costs of quick-selling merchandise, the brand eventually grew to 750 stores with sales of more than $1 billion.

This allowed Wexner to expand into other retail ventures that would be based in the Columbus area, including well-known chains such as Abercrombie & Fitch, Victoria’s Secret, Express, Bed, Bath & Beyond, and others. A decade ago Wexner sold a majority share of The Limited to private equity firm Sun Capital Partners, which bought the company outright in 2010. Wexner, the CEO of L Brands, pulled in $26,669,306 in total compensation in 2015.

A month ago, The Limited announced it was laying off 248 of its headquarters staff in New Albany, Ohio, as Sun Capital continued to pursue a possible sale. After selling off all of its clothing stock at up to 90 percent discount, along with fixtures and mannequins, the empty stores were permanently closed Sunday.

“I think it is very sad,” said Amanda Conley, 49, who bought two of the last pairs of pants at a central Ohio store, told the Columbus Dispatch. “It’s been a staple here. Of course, it affects employees and their livelihoods.”

Even as workers were being tossed into the streets, however, the $9 billion private equity firm was milking the retail chain for as much as possible. In a letter to investors Friday, Sun Capital Partners said it made 1.8 times its $50 million investment in Limited Stores while writing down the remaining equity value to zero.
Fortune noted, “The disclosure illustrates how private equity firms can boast a profit from companies whose equity value has been wiped out, having previously recouped their original investment by taking dividends from these companies, often by having them borrow more money to fund the dividends.”

Many traditional retailers are falling victim to pressure from online giant Amazon, which is able to quickly ship merchandise from its massive and strategically located warehouses using low-wage workers whose productivity is electronically monitored. In the case of The Limited they have also fallen victim to other “fast-fashion” stores, like those owned by Swedish multinational H&M (Hennes & Mauritz AB), which specialize in the latest fashion discount apparel aimed at younger shoppers.

Apparel retailers, including H&M, rely on a global supply chain, which includes brutally exploited workers around the world. In April 2013, 1,133 garment workers were killed and 2,500 wounded when Rana Plaza, an eight-story building housing several textile factories, collapsed in the Bangladeshi capital on Dhaka. Half of the 125,000 shirts made each day at the complex were sold to H&M. Workers made $1.43 a day, for 10-12 hours, producing 250 T-shirts per hour.
Retail workers in the United States are subjected to inconsistent hours, low pay and an authoritarian atmosphere at work. Most are on-call employees who must phone in or wait for a call from a manager to find out their schedules. Turning down a shift because of a scheduling conflict with family, school or another job means having your hours cut or instant dismissal.

The retail industry as a whole employed around 16 million workers, up more than nine percent since 2009; nonsupervisory retail work pays 30 percent less than other private sector jobs.

Last June. 5,000 workers authorized the first strike in 40 years at Macy’s flagship department store in mid-town Manhattan and four other locations in the state. Workers wanted wage and health care improvements and to end the policy that allowed Macy’s to reduce a salesperson’s commission if a customer returned the merchandise within six months.

Collaborating with state and local Democrats, including New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, the Retail, Wholesale & Department Store Union (RWDSU), which is part of the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) union, quickly reached a deal, which retains the punitive commission policy and significant out-of-pocket health care costs.

http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2017/01/09/jobs-j09.html