smlp
04-30-2009, 10:15 AM
By Jerry White
29 April 2009
In the agreement worked out at Chrysler, the Obama administration has elevated the United Auto Workers to the position of chief cost cutter, tasking the UAW with the job of slashing jobs, reducing wages and benefits and imposing more brutal conditions of exploitation on the workers it claims to represent.
The Chrysler agreement will serve as the model for a similar betrayal of General Motors workers.
The White House will give the UAW majority control of Chrysler, with 55 percent of the company’s stock, and a 39 percent ownership stake in GM, making it the second biggest GM shareholder. The federal government will own more than half of GM stock.
This will complete the transformation of the UAW into a business which depends for its income on a share of the profits sweated out of the workers.
As BusinessWeek noted, “The union will in fact own more of GM and Chrysler than the Ford family owns of Ford Motor Co. It will own larger stakes in GM and Chrysler than billionaire financier Kirk Kerkorian was able to accumulate in his runs at both companies.”
The UAW, which is being advised by the Wall Street investment firm Lazard, will gain seats on the auto companies’ boards of directors and will play a major role in restructuring and downsizing the firms, from product selection and ensuring “competitive labor rates” at key suppliers, to reviewing the company’s global production plans.
Once thousands of jobs are cut and the workers are stripped of what remains of the gains won in past struggles, the share value of Chrysler and GM will rise, guaranteeing vast profits for Wall Street and its junior partner, the UAW.
The UAW is seeking to ram through the new contract with Chrysler in a ratification vote today—less than 24 hours after workers were given the UAW’s list of contract “highlights.” Even what the UAW executives have chosen to include in their handout to the workers—as always, a dishonest and self-serving document designed to conceal more than it reveals—demonstrates that the UAW is a “union” in name only.
Everything workers have traditionally associated with a trade union—the right to strike, higher wages and benefits than non-union workers, shop floor protections, a chance to retire with a secure pension and health care benefits—has been jettisoned.
There will no longer be even the pretense of collective bargaining and contract guarantees. Instead, according to the contract summary, wage and benefit rates “will be based on Chrysler maintaining an all-in hourly labor cost comparable to its US competitors, including transplant automotive manufacturers.”
In other words, UAW workers will be paid the same or less than non-union workers at the Japanese-owned factories in Mississippi, Alabama and other southern states—with one difference: They will still have to pay dues to the UAW.
Under the terms of the agreement, time-and-a-half pay for working more than eight hours or on weekends will be eliminated, with overtime calculated instead on a weekly basis, i.e., for hours worked over 40.
Break time will be reduced from 46 to 40 minutes each day.
Cost of living allowances—won after the 67-day strike by GM workers in 1970—will be eliminated, along with performance and Christmas bonuses.
Skilled trades will be consolidated into two classifications.
The two-day Easter holiday will be eliminated.
The UAW’s collaboration in offering up the next generation of auto workers as a source of cheap labor, without the slightest job security, continues. The agreement will extend the use of temporary part-time employees and the hiring of so-called “entry-level employees” who are paid half the wages of older workers and receive few benefits and no employer-paid pensions.
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The American ruling elite sees the impoverishment of auto workers—long the best paid industrial workers in the US—as a precedent for transforming class relations by unleashing a wave of wage-cutting attacks against the entire working class.
-------
read the whole thing:
http://wsws.org/articles/2009/apr2009/chry-a29.shtml
29 April 2009
In the agreement worked out at Chrysler, the Obama administration has elevated the United Auto Workers to the position of chief cost cutter, tasking the UAW with the job of slashing jobs, reducing wages and benefits and imposing more brutal conditions of exploitation on the workers it claims to represent.
The Chrysler agreement will serve as the model for a similar betrayal of General Motors workers.
The White House will give the UAW majority control of Chrysler, with 55 percent of the company’s stock, and a 39 percent ownership stake in GM, making it the second biggest GM shareholder. The federal government will own more than half of GM stock.
This will complete the transformation of the UAW into a business which depends for its income on a share of the profits sweated out of the workers.
As BusinessWeek noted, “The union will in fact own more of GM and Chrysler than the Ford family owns of Ford Motor Co. It will own larger stakes in GM and Chrysler than billionaire financier Kirk Kerkorian was able to accumulate in his runs at both companies.”
The UAW, which is being advised by the Wall Street investment firm Lazard, will gain seats on the auto companies’ boards of directors and will play a major role in restructuring and downsizing the firms, from product selection and ensuring “competitive labor rates” at key suppliers, to reviewing the company’s global production plans.
Once thousands of jobs are cut and the workers are stripped of what remains of the gains won in past struggles, the share value of Chrysler and GM will rise, guaranteeing vast profits for Wall Street and its junior partner, the UAW.
The UAW is seeking to ram through the new contract with Chrysler in a ratification vote today—less than 24 hours after workers were given the UAW’s list of contract “highlights.” Even what the UAW executives have chosen to include in their handout to the workers—as always, a dishonest and self-serving document designed to conceal more than it reveals—demonstrates that the UAW is a “union” in name only.
Everything workers have traditionally associated with a trade union—the right to strike, higher wages and benefits than non-union workers, shop floor protections, a chance to retire with a secure pension and health care benefits—has been jettisoned.
There will no longer be even the pretense of collective bargaining and contract guarantees. Instead, according to the contract summary, wage and benefit rates “will be based on Chrysler maintaining an all-in hourly labor cost comparable to its US competitors, including transplant automotive manufacturers.”
In other words, UAW workers will be paid the same or less than non-union workers at the Japanese-owned factories in Mississippi, Alabama and other southern states—with one difference: They will still have to pay dues to the UAW.
Under the terms of the agreement, time-and-a-half pay for working more than eight hours or on weekends will be eliminated, with overtime calculated instead on a weekly basis, i.e., for hours worked over 40.
Break time will be reduced from 46 to 40 minutes each day.
Cost of living allowances—won after the 67-day strike by GM workers in 1970—will be eliminated, along with performance and Christmas bonuses.
Skilled trades will be consolidated into two classifications.
The two-day Easter holiday will be eliminated.
The UAW’s collaboration in offering up the next generation of auto workers as a source of cheap labor, without the slightest job security, continues. The agreement will extend the use of temporary part-time employees and the hiring of so-called “entry-level employees” who are paid half the wages of older workers and receive few benefits and no employer-paid pensions.
-------
The American ruling elite sees the impoverishment of auto workers—long the best paid industrial workers in the US—as a precedent for transforming class relations by unleashing a wave of wage-cutting attacks against the entire working class.
-------
read the whole thing:
http://wsws.org/articles/2009/apr2009/chry-a29.shtml