A-Infos (en) GM strike and globalism (2-items)

[MichaelP <papadop@PEAK.ORG>]

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GENERAL MOTORS -- A POLITICAL STRIKE CONFRONTS THE GLOBAL ECONOMY
By David Bacon

        SAN FRANCISCO, CA (7/26/98) -- Ending the strike of two auto parts
plants near Detroit -- a process which used to take just a few days -- has
instead lasted weeks.  But delay and stubborn conflict is not the most
unique factor marking this strike.  It's the fact that General Motors has
accomplished what generations of leftwing activists in the factories were
never able to achieve.  The company has provoked a political strike.
        The conflict in Detroit is not directed against a government.  In
that way, it's still not the same as the political strikes now gripping
South Korea, Russia, or even Puerto Rico.  But this conflict is political
nonetheless.  GM strikers have been forced to confront the decision-making
process governing the world economy -- determining where investment flows,
which plants grow and which ones die.
        The strike shows the shape of conflicts to come.  Pushed by their
employers, U.S. workers are slowly but surely joining labor movements
abroad, who are also shoved against the wall by the global economic system.
        GM began by reneging on a commitment to the local union at the
Flint Metal Center near Detroit, whose huge presses stamp out body parts
for almost all the company's vehicles.  Three years ago, GM management
offered to trade a work practice, one which has made life on the line a
little more human, for new investment which would guarantee the factory's
future.
        For decades, workers at Flint have worked at a manic pace through
breaks and meals, so they could get off work a few minutes early when their
production quota was filled.  GM wanted workers to stay a full eight hours
on the line.
        In return, the company promised, it would bring new machinery into
the plant, making it as productive as its newest factories in Mexico and
Brazil.  But despite its promise, new investment never materialized.
Eventually the workers walked out to force the issue.  When they stopped
producing parts, two dozen other plants that depended on them were forced
to halt production as well.
        The strike started as a fight over jobs.  The union at the Flint
Metal Center knows well that without new investment, production will
gradually be transferred to those plants where the company has installed
new machinery.  Falling production means disappearing jobs.
        But in order to protect those jobs, workers had to challenge GM's
strategy for corporate investment.  GM has chosen to gradually abandon its
U.S. factories, and concentrate on building new facilities elsewhere.  A
week after the strike started in Flint, a leaked company document detailed
corporate plans to increase production in Mexico from 300,000 to 600,000
vehicles by 2006.  GM's Delphi parts division, whose Delphi East plant
struck along with the Flint Metal Center, is already Mexico's largest
private employer, with 72,000 employees.
        According to University of California Professor Harley Shaiken,
"the productivity of workers in Mexican plants is on a par with plants in
the U.S.  Investors get first-world rates of productivity, and a workforce
with a third-world standard of living."
        While 150,000 U.S., Canadian and Mexican workers have been idled by
the strike, they have generally viewed the cause as their own.  Even in
Mexico, where wages are a tenth those in Detroit, workers are told the
company can find a cheaper place to build the next factory.  GM's
investment priorities are the central problem workers face in every plant.
If the union wins in Flint, it will be easier for them to face the same
dilemma.
        The strikers don't propose to prohibit GM investment in Mexico or
other countries.  They're not protectionists.  They simply demand that the
company invest enough in the U.S. to maintain the existing level of
production, and a comparable level of technology.
        But that simple demand has made the strike political, and very
difficult to settle.  GM will not have its workers participate in decisions
over investment strategy -- to the company, this is a sacred right
bequeathed by capitalism.
        Workers outside the U.S., however, are looking at the GM strike,
wondering what took U.S. workers so long to take up the issue.
        Visiting the U.S. last spring, Yoon Youngmo, a leader of the
militant South Korean Confederation of Trade Unions, chided his
counterparts here for not fighting harder for their own jobs.  "You make it
more difficult," he said, "for us to defend our jobs in Korea, because the
government and the chaebols constantly tell us to look at America.  'In
America,' they say, 'unions don't try to stop layoffs or job elimination,
and they're the most advanced unions in the world.  Be more reasonable.'"
        For two years the KCTU has been locked in a bitter battle against
the government over exactly this issue -- jobs and corporate investment.
Especially since the Asian economic meltdown, the South Korean government
has sought to implement an austerity program based on high unemployment and
vast cuts in the public budget.
        The authors of this program, the International Monetary Fund and
World Bank, have dictated the same prescription throughout Asia and Latin
America.  U.S. policy, which the IMF and World Bank enforce, encourages
countries to bid for new plants, production and technology, by creating
favorable investment conditions.  Where wages are high, whether in South
Korea or the U.S., unemployment and job loss are used to lower workers'
expectations.
          U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright recently reiterated
that Asian governments must accept the "bitter medicine" of economic
reforms.  President Clinton has repeatedly threatened economic sanctions
against countries like Indonesia, which hesitate.
        Whether governed by dictators or democrats, in every country the
same rules apply.  When the KCTU threatened a general strike last week to
force the government to stop the massive unemployment engulfing South
Korea, former pro-democracy campaigner President Kim Dae Jung issued arrest
warrants for 100 trade union leaders, and threw the head of the KCTU in
prison.
        In Flint, Michigan and Seoul, South Korea, unions are no longer
striking over wages and benefits, but over the rules which govern which
factories shut down, and how many workers will see their jobs disappear in
the process.
        Flint and Seoul are not exceptional.  Puerto Rico just endured a
2-day general strike over the privatization of its telephone system, which
threatens to eliminate thousands of jobs.  In Russia, hundreds of coal
miners have camped in front of Yeltsin's White House for months, calling on
him to resign over policies which will close half the country's mines, and
which cannot even assure the payment of miners' wages.  Yeltsin, the
democrat, now threatens to rule by decree to enforce the IMF's austerity
plan.
        U.S. workers for decades viewed themselves as exceptions to all
this -- not subject to the same class conflict which has radicalized
workers elsewhere.  But they're being taught a new reality.  Capital flows
where the profits are highest.  All countries must compete to create the
most favorable conditions for investment.

        Union organizers have a saying -- "the boss is the best teacher."

        General Motors is proving them right.
---------------------------------------------------------------
david bacon - labornet email            david bacon
internet:       dbacon@igc.apc.org      1631 channing way
phone:          510.549.0291            berkeley, ca  94703
---------------------------------------------------------------

 UAW's Shoemaker: GM Unduly
 Influenced By Wall St. In Strike


    By Christopher Bowe

 FLINT, Mich. --General Motors Corp. (GM)
 painted itself into a box formed by analysts and Wall Street,
 pushing the United Auto Workers to strike at two GM
 plants here, Richard Shoemaker, the union's vice president,
 said Wednesday.

 "GM knew what the impact would be (from the strike)," 
 Shoemaker said, speaking before union members from the
 Delphi Automotive Systems plant who were gathered to
 vote on Tuesday's tentative agreement. The vote is
 expected later Wednesday. "(GM) should have known
 better," the union official said.

 Shoemaker added that the union understands that GM
 must have an overseas presence. But instead of lowering
 the standard of living of American workers, GM should work

 to raise the standard of living and purchasing power of           
 workers in foreign plants toward American workers'
 standard of living.

 "Don't lower the standard of living or quality of life,"
 Shoemaker said. "That's wrong."

 Shoemaker spoke to workers from UAW Local 651 who are
 employees at the Delphi plant. About 5,800 workers from
 that plant went on strike June 11. The workers gathered to
 hear union officials explain details of the tentative
 agreement with GM.

 Union members were invited to ask questions about the
 provision. They will ultimately vote on whether to ratify the
 agreement and return to work. Union officials expect the
 agreement to be ratified.

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