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WSWS : Workers Struggles : North America : GM Strike

Auto workers strike key GM metal fabricating plant

By Jerry White
7 June 1998

Workers at a key General Motors metal fabricating plant in Flint, Michigan walked off the job Friday morning in a strike which could halt production of GM's profitable full-size pickup trucks and sports-utility vehicles and, within two weeks, force the closure of 18 plants in the United States, Canada and Mexico due to a lack of parts.

The 3,400 striking workers, members of United Auto Workers Local 659, are protesting the lack of hiring, speed-up, health and safety grievances and the outsourcing of jobs.

The UAW also held a strike vote June 4 at GM's Delphi Automotive Systems Flint East plant. The 5,000 workers, members of Local 651, voted overwhelmingly to strike June 11 over similar issues.

Conditions in the auto plants have deteriorated, with older workers on the assembly line--the average age at the Flint metal fabricating plant is 50--constantly being driven to raise output. This has resulted in an increase in heart attacks and injuries. The work at this plant is particularly dangerous since workers must handle razor-sharp sheet metal and maneuver it at high speeds through the heavy stamping presses to produce hoods, fenders, doors and other parts.

In an attempt to undermine the impact of the strike, GM secretly moved stamping dies for its new pickup truck out of the plant during the Memorial Day weekend, when the facility was closed. The dies were shipped to a plant in Mansfield, Ohio. When the company attempted to move more dies just days before the strike, it was stopped by workers inside the plant.

UAW officials have accused GM of reneging on its pledge to invest $300 million in Flint stamping operations after the union collaborated with management to increase productivity.

Auto workers on the picket lines have expressed their determination to halt the destruction of jobs after decades of corporate downsizing in Flint, the birthplace of the UAW. In the late 1970s GM employed 90,000 workers in Flint. Today, fewer than 30,000 employees work at GM manufacturing and office complexes in the area.

GM officials have made no secret of their intention to continue the destruction of jobs. Next year GM's Buick City large-car assembly plant is slated to close, wiping out another 2,800 jobs. A new engine plant being built in Flint will employ only 1,400 workers, 2,100 fewer than the current engine plant it will replace.

GM has hired very few younger workers in the last decade-and-a-half. Many of the sons and daughters of the workers in the plants have to work in sweatshops that supply the Big Three auto companies, or at other low-wage jobs in the service industry. Though Michigan boasts a record low official unemployment rate, better-paying jobs have been replaced for the most part with temporary, part-time and low-wage jobs. A US Department of Labor survey found that Flint was the only one of 55 metropolitan areas in the Midwest to experience a decline in average annual pay in 1996, the last year for which figures are available.

In 1997 GM's profits totaled $6.7 billion, with $2.3 billion coming from its North American operations. However, Wall Street has signaled its dissatisfaction with the company's 3.9 percent return on investment by keeping share price increases moderate despite the bull market. GM Chairman John F. Smith Jr. has pledged to push this figure up to 5 percent so as to increase the payoffs to the company's wealthy shareholders. One of Smith's goals is to increase GM's share of the US market, which is 30 percent today, down from 50 percent in the early 1960s.

GM's struggle for larger market share takes place under conditions of a global crisis of overproduction in the auto industry, particularly in the North American and European markets. According to one report, even if the entire US auto industry were taken out of the equation, there would still be a glut of automobiles.

This has led to ruthless competition, with companies like GM shutting down older plants, purchasing labor-saving technology, shifting production to lower-wage regions of the US and the world and squeezing ever greater output from fewer and fewer workers. The recent merger between German-based Daimler-Benz and Chrysler anticipates a major consolidation of the auto industry and new attacks on the jobs, living standards and working conditions of auto workers internationally.

The erosion of jobs and working conditions that underlies the Flint strike is the product of two decades during which the UAW leadership has pursued a policy of ever closer collaboration with management. For their own obvious reasons, UAW officials are seeking to direct the anger of the workers solely towards the company, but anyone familiar with the auto industry knows that GM, Ford and Chrysler have only been able to eliminate hundreds of thousands of jobs and increase profitability at the expense of the workers because of the cooperation of the UAW itself. The ongoing destruction of jobs in Flint is in some ways the sharpest expression, not only of the ruthless pursuit of profit by the company, but the failure of the UAW to organize any serious opposition.

Top UAW officials have denounced GM for an "American last" strategy, saying that the company is destroying jobs in Flint while shifting production to Asia, Mexico and Eastern Europe. Such a resort to American chauvinism is a tried and true tactic of the union leadership, designed to divert the workers from a struggle against the companies and the profit system itself, as well as the labor bureaucracy's own treachery.

Given the fact that GM is a transnational corporation that can shift production from country to country, an "American first" policy that pits American workers against their fellow workers in other countries is the direct opposite of a viable perspective for struggle. What is needed is an international strategy to defend the jobs and conditions of all auto workers and mobilize them in a united struggle against GM and the other auto giants.

The World Socialist Web Site spoke with a GM worker who worked in Flint in the early 1990s before moving to another GM plant. Like thousands of other "GM gypsies," he has been forced to transfer from one plant to another. He said, "There are similar issues in my plant in Saginaw. GM just tried to get rid of all the mechanics and contract out the work to a private company. They are taking jobs everywhere and it has to be stopped.

"Back in 1989 when I hired into Buick City, there were 14,000 workers. Now there are 10,000. There has been a slow seepage of jobs and the company does not replace the workers who retire. The union has helped them on this score.

"In my plant, and it's the same in the Flint metal plant, you see old guys in their sixties working 12 hours a day, seven days a week. They have gray hair, but they can't afford to retire because they are taking care of their children who can't get good jobs. They are under great financial pressure.

"The union duped the workers when they told us that the concessions we made over the years were only temporary. We faced several wage cuts and other give-backs and our plants still closed. I've already been through three plant closings.

"The attitude of the union has been, let's keep our jobs by bidding to do the work cheaper and faster. Now the workers are saying, `We're already doing a hell of a job, how can you expect us to do more?'

"The UAW is discredited. The workers know that concessions don't work and the union has run out of excuses. I think that's why they are calling these strikes. They are also worried about losing the union dues money.

"The younger guys, and by that I mean men in their 40s, they know the UAW does not represent us. We feel that all the auto workers should strike until we win some guarantee of job security."

See Also:
Marxism and the Trade Unions - A lecture by David North
[January 1998]