Now The Auto Bosses Want To Feed At The Public Trough

[Richard Mellor]

I apologize as I sent an incomplete version out previously, this is the correct one.

Richard

After years of destroying good Union jobs and forcing concessions on workers, the auto bosses want our help. A taxpayer bailout or bankruptcy are the only choices on the table but both will mean savage cuts and job losses. But there is another option.

11-19-08

http://www.laborsmilitantvoice.org
http://www.weknowwhatsup.blogspot.com


A stage play is being performed in Congress at the moment and the actors are the legislators and US auto industry executives. The auto bosses have come to Washington for their share of the taxpayer's money being handed out quite freely in that city, a city once known for its disdain for "big government". The play is a political drama being staged to convince the US working class that their intense opposition to bailing out the rich can only lead to catastrophe. Throughout the play the politicians chide the corporate heads whose company they frequently keep on the golf courses of America. They are angry with them for their bad management and want to ensure the public sees that they are angry too, and are really on our side.

This drama is necessary because US workers and the middle class are reluctant to continue a process that they correctly see as the perpetrators of a crime being rescued by the victims. The play is covered by the capitalist mass media and amid all the phony chastising of the executives there is the constant reminder that the world will end if GM, Ford and Chrysler do not get help from the taxpayers. The Democrats are pushing a bailout backed by the heads of the UAW and the entire US trade Union leadership. The deafening silence that is the norm for the heads of organized labor when worker's living standards are under attack is broken in unison as they rush to prop up capitalism and its discredited representatives.

The efforts to sway public opinion are considerable. If the big three go under it will be a threat to national security we are told. There will be three million jobs lost in the first year alone. This will mean the end of the US's manufacturing base with all the consequence s attributed to it one politician said on CNN. "It's about saving the US economy from a catastrophic collapse,", warns GM's boss, Rick Waggoner. Big business politicians from Sanders Levin of Michigan to President elect Barak Obama are warning of dire consequences if these criminals don't get help.

The idea is to terrorize the US working class in to passive acceptance of something we know in our gut is flawed. Workers at the big three who have had their living standards savaged by these very same people are used to help their bosses convince the rest of America to go along, after all, we don't want to see them or anyone else lose their jobs. According to the media, there have been rallies in Texas and e-mails sent out to customers urging them to contact their congressional representatives urging them to support a bailout for auto. The Team Concept at work

As they have with other giveaways of public funds, the politicians of both political parties are justifying these corporate handouts in the wake of "extraordinary and exigent circumstances". Past "extraordinary and exigent circumstances" such as workers losing their homes and livelihoods or the lack of quality public education and health care has not brought forth the funds to remedy these problems; for the bankers, these and other circumstances such as mentally ill people, many of them veterans, sleeping under freeway underpasses is not "extraordinary" enough. Indeed, it is the norm for the capitalist economy.

In this instance the capitalist class tells us that these special circumstances have prevented the auto industry from getting credit, a continuation of the credit crunch argument. But this does not mean there is no money, it means that bankers, speculators, investors, private equity lords and hedge fund managers etc. are refusing to let their capital out of their sight; they are reluctant to lend it or throw it in to circulation for fear it might not come back increased or might not come back at all. The market is not working for them right now so the taxpayer must come to the rescue with public funds. This is a good deal for the moneylenders for while they are reluctant to lend to banks they are not so fearful about lending to governments. So through their two political parties they arrange for the taxpayer to borrow money from them that the government lends to the banks that these very same investors refuse to lend20to. Naturally, we or our children will have to pay these loans back with interest through a combination of cuts in social services, jobs, wages etc and tax increases.

The system that they have claimed solves all problems and is the height of civilization is so broken that they want to plunder the state coffers even further and have the working class bail out yet another failed industry.

Despite them being termed "socialistic" measures and despite that the present administration is perhaps the most conservative free market administration in modern times, they have taken in to public custody two thirds of the housing industry, the world's largest insurer, bailed out the banks, and now are looking at doing the same for auto "The times and the planetary crisis demand it" says David Bonior, one o f Barak Obama's advisors on the auto industry. But he recognizes that the crisis has discredited capitalism and that the free market ideology that they champion has been severely undermined and qualifies his remarks, "The trick is to do it within the construct of capitalism-----enlightened capitalism" he adds recognizing that the "old" capitalism is a bit of a dirty word. WSJ 11-18-08) We have had "crony capitalism" "extreme capitalism" and "rampant capitalism"; "enlightened capitalism" is their answer now.

Without the injection of public funds by way of the state that they control, the capitalist system would have collapsed. Day by day we have been warned of catastrophe if we don't do what we feel in our gut is not the right thing to do, hand over billions of dollars to the thugs who caused the mess in order to rescue their system. The Labor leaders work in tandem with the bosses in order to terrify us in to submission. They provide no alternative but to submit to the interests of capital, the same strategy they apply in strikes and Labor disputes. We have a choice between cuts in pay or no job we are told, fighting back is useless. There is no alternative to capitalism is the thrust of it all and we are left between the devi l and the deep blue sea.

A combination of the bosses and the Labor leaders bring the auto workers and the US working class two choices:

(1) We can cough up the money for the big three and save the world as we know it from collapsing
(2) We can refuse to bail out the auto industry forcing bankruptcy and the world as we know it will collapse.

An auto industry in bankruptcy is also no real alternative for workers. It will mean a vastly reduced workforce and wage and benefit package in order to make them more competitive. The bankruptcy courts will accept nothing less. This is the strategy Delphi used to savage worker's living standards, declaring bankruptcy even though it was not broke. The taxpayer got our money back from the previous Chrysler bailout in the eighties but half the jobs were gone; workers saved what remained through sacrifice and the concessions and cuts in auto continued. Bankruptcy or bailout are both strategies that will preserve the profits of the auto bosses at the expense of workers; they are both efforts to make workers more "competitive", and either way it is the workers who will get shafted. We built Unions to protect us from the competitive forces of the market, not to he lp us compete in it. Mexico is also complaining that its workers need to be more competitive as cheaper Labor in China and Southeast Asia is luring investors away. Investors left Detroit for Mexico and are now leaving Mexico for Shanghai. A Mexican worker is too expensive, for them. We cannot win that game.

With no alternative the workers in auto especially will most likely support giving the industry money. We know it's our money but it's better than being out of a job or facing the catastrophe that the media tells us is inevitable; we need to work.

But these are not the only choices.

LMV has consistently raised alternatives to this catch 22 scenario. We raised these alternatives during the recent contract talks between the UAW and the big three and prior to that during the attacks on workers at Delphi.

We call for the nationalization of the entire auto and auto supply industry under workers control and management with compensation only on the basis of proven need. This is the alternative that would work, that would keep workers in jobs, that would end the golden handouts to management and shareholders, that would shorten the workweek and so create more jobs,that would begin the process of moving to fuel efficient and environmentally friendly vehicles. And along with collaboration with the rest of the transport system lead to an integrated system based on road, rail and air fueled by sustainable and clean energy.

Is this alternative ever mentioned in the mass media? Or if we are to be correct,the mass capitalist media? No. Their media only puts forward options that are acceptable to it, those that are within the guidelines of its capitalist system. The media in the US is extremely censored, more so than any other major industrial country. Many Americans and others throughout the world are completely unaware that there were more than two candidates running for US president. The only views expressed are those of one of the two capitalist parties that have a monopoly on political life in the USA.

We will be told this third alternative is impossible, that it will never happen etc. etc. But this is the only alternative that will work. Capitalism produces too much, as Marx explained more than 150 years ago. It produces too much because industries like transportation are privately owned and they pay us less in wages than we produce in value, this is the source of their profit. But because of this we cannot buy back the very products we make. Only yesterday this was confirmed by a representative of the LA auto show who said that the problem with the big three is that "they have too many people making too many products in too many factories selling to too many dealers" they have to be restructured and that means shedding jobs and driving down wages and benefits.

This third alternative of nationalization is what we must fight for if we are to end the constant insecurity poverty and war that is a by-product of the so-called free market. As working people build a movement that takes us down this road we will win more concessions from them along the way than we will get from passively accepting their solutions to this crisis or the ongoing crisis of capitalism. The auto bosses have forfeited their right to own the industry and its time to end their rule.

Join with us in building a movement that will offer us a more secure future. What kind of movement has this to be? The leadership of the UAW unquestioningly supports the Team Concept. That is they support the big three staying in private hands and based on the profit system and they make the union cooperate with management at all levels from the shop floor to Washington on this basis. This is a recipe for disaster. It has already led to disaster. The companies are going bankrupt and the wages and benefits slashed and millions of jobs either gone or threatened. The first step has to be to end any involvement with the teamwork approach. The union has to withdraw from all cooperation with management and establish its own independent organizational structures from the shop floor to Washington to the international Labor movement.

The first step after ending the team work approach is to establish Hands off our Jobs/Wages/Benefits committees in the workplace, in every department and in every union local and at every level in the union. The union leadership is not going to lead a new independent movement at this time. When an independent movement is built on the shop floor which threatens them then splits will appear in the top Union bureaucracy and sections of the union leadership can be pulled away from their cooperation and capitulation with management.

These Hands Off committees must also base themselves on the fight for the nationalization of the auto and auto supply industry as explained earlier and from this, refuse to accept any job, wage, or benefit cut. The fight for this alternative cannot be carried on by lobbying or negotiation. It has to be carried out by mass direct action methods. That is by organizing go slows on the job, by organizing mass pickets and closing down the jobs and also most importantly building to occupying the plants and holding them until all demands are met.

This struggle has to be carried out throughout the entire auto and auto supply industry. But not only that it has to be carried out internationally. The fight has to be taken to all the auto industry, union and non-union. In this fight the non-union auto sector can be organized. This struggle also has to be taken to rail, air, and all sectors of public transport, to unionize all of these, to increase their wages and benefits and also to integrate the transport system on the basis increasing public transport and moving to a much cleaner environmentally safe industry.

The international aspect of this struggle is central. Rank and file workers here in the US must organize their Hands off committees through the Americas and world-wide. The auto industry is an international industry. A successful fight cannot be waged in one or two countries. Rank and file activists should be sent out to other countries to make concrete links and to set up organizational structures worldwide. This is the only way that victory can be achieved.

A last word to workers on the shop floor. This fight will not be won unless workers on the shop floor become active. All workers have to become active in the shop floor building the Hands Off commitees. Unless they become active in the locals and at all levels of the union building these alternative fighting rank and file caucuses nobody else will do it for us. The world has changed,times have changed. Only workers stepping forward and taking action, educating themselves in the history and tradition of struggle, and building the fighting nuclei organized internationally that are described above, the Hands off Committees based on mass direct action, can we defeat the attacks that are raining down and achieve a decent life for all.

For more reading on auto go to:
http://www.clnews.org/forums/showthread.php?t=4819
http://www.clnews.org/forums/showthread.php?t=7042
On building a new movement:
http://www.clnews.org/forums/showthread.php?t=6967