www.newsandletters.org
|
|
NEWS & LETTERS, June-July 2006GM demands threaten workers' futureShreveport, La.--General Motors has been pushing cost-cutting concessions in medical benefits and job security. They have used the billions of dollars in company losses as a threat of bankruptcy, especially after Delphi, the parts supplier that GM spun off, had declared bankruptcy and looked for a judge to slash wages and benefits. Under the circumstances, a number of workers at the Shreveport plant are taking the $150,000 buyout that GM negotiated with the UAW. That has forced supervisors back on the line. I heard that when one former supervisor at GM Shreveport started complaining about the heavy workload, the workers around told him he was the fool who had added the work on in the first place. That ex-supervisor was lucky they were just mocking him. Years ago at a previous plant I had worked at, when supervisors were forced back into production, they would hear open threats of payback for what they had done to workers under them. Many supervisors would quit rather than return to the line. For retirees, GM has made cuts in medical benefits, but pensions remain the same. So many companies, even the biggest ones, are wanting to dump their pension fund if they can get away with it. The federal agency that set up to guarantee workers’ pensions can be a tool for companies to use for their benefit. My friend’s father worked at a steel mill which declared bankruptcy. The Pension Guaranty Board slashed his pension from $1,500 a month to $900. What is much worse, after his death his widow got only $90. The UAW and the labor movement have been on the defensive ever since negotiating concessions with Chrysler in the 1970s. You can’t put workers’ demands on hold. It reminds me of Sojourner Truth arguing with Frederick Douglass, one ex-slave to another, right after the Civil War. Douglass argued against raising the issue of women’s rights until the rights of newly-freed Black men were assured. Sojourner Truth thought that if the women waited to demand their own rights, it would take a lot to bring the issue up again. The demonstrations of immigrant workers shut down factories and packing plants around the country. When politicians and employers try to discriminate against Mexican immigrants, they also target by appearance workers that were here before the country was formed. Some came with the Spanish in the 1600s as far north as Colorado, where I used to live. We are seeing in the immigrant rights movement all the elements for a revived labor movement. --GM retiree |
|
Home l News & Letters Newspaper l Back issues l News and Letters Committees l Dialogues l Raya Dunayevskaya l Contact us l Search Published by News and Letters Committees |
