Why the UAW Should Fight for Nationalization

http://www.socialistappeal.org/content/view/691/71/


Why the UAW Should Fight for Nationalization

Written by David May
Tuesday, 10 March 2009

As was anticipated, the incoming Obama administration has begun
putting new bailout plans into action for nearly-bankrupt auto
companies GM and Chrysler. And just as many auto workers had been
expecting, the most recent “rescue packages” have come with more than
a few strings attached: 50,000 jobs will be eliminated and more plants
will be shuttered. As the economic crisis deepens, the bosses will
seek to unload the burden onto workers’ shoulders. This underlines the
need for militant, class struggle policies in the unions to place the
burden of the crisis where it belongs: with the bosses!

The economic downturn has hit the auto industry hard, with the “Big
Three” U.S.-based auto makers GM, Ford and Chrysler already in
financial trouble long before facing a steep sales slump that began in
October. GM has seen its share price fall to a 74-year low, $1.52 per
share, on February 20th, it lowest price since 1934. Only a year ago,
GM’s share price was $25.54. On the same day that GM shares took a
nosedive on the stock exchange, its Swedish-based subsidiary Saab went
to court to seek protection from creditors so that the unit can be
sold off. GM owes more than $27 billion to creditors, not counting the
public loans it has received from the federal government.

President Obama has created an auto industry task force, headed by
National Economic Council chair Lawrence Summers, which will oversee
the loans and “reorganization” (i.e. downsizing) of the auto industry.
The task force will make its decision as to whether the GM and
Chrysler cuts will lead to future profits on March 21st. In exchange
for an additional rescue package totaling $14 billion announced on
February 17th, the task force and Congress are demanding that the
companies show “responsibility” by cutting costs. In the restructuring
plan it submitted to Congress, GM said it will cut 47,000 more of its
244,000 jobs worldwide and close five more North American plants,
bringing the total down to 33, and that it would eliminate production
of Pontiac and Saturn brand cars. By 2012, GM plans to close 14 North
American plants. GM would also receive the lion’s share of the newest
rescue package. Chrysler’s plan calls for cutting 3,000 additional
jobs in exchange for $2 billion in loans, on top of the $3 billion
loan it has already been guaranteed by the federal government. These
most recent loans bring the total rescue package given to the auto
companies to $39 billion.

Both GM and Chrysler are near bankruptcy, and have said that even with
the new loans they will need still more public financing to remain
solvent. Just days after receiving the nearly $13 billion in new
loans, GM announced it would need at least $30 billion more to avoid
bankruptcy.

In Congressional hearings in December, GM and Chrysler management,
along with United Auto Workers President Ron Gettlefinger painted a
bleak picture: unless the federal government gave the companies
billions of dollars in public finances, they would go bankrupt,
meaning even more job losses and plant closings. Gettlefinger pledged
to work with management to “amend” the UAW’s national contract with GM
and Chrysler. In other words, he agreed to help the bosses cut the
workers he is supposed to represent’s wages, benefits and jobs.

Despite having the opportunity to speak directly to Congress, and
indirectly to millions of working class people by being on the
national stage, the UAW leaders failed to present any alternative to
these cuts or to play any independent role in the talks with Congress.
Gettlefinger simply followed the line of management and their
Democratic “friends” who are offering to “aid” auto workers by placing
the burden for the economic crisis – which the working class did not
create nor bears any responsibility for – on auto workers’ shoulders.
The UAW can do without these kinds of “friends”!

The auto industry does need help. But it needs a solution that is
based on advancing the interests of working people, which is the role
that our unions are supposed to play. This means that the UAW needs to
break with both the auto bosses and the Democratic Party, which day by
day is showing where its true interests lay by placing corporate
profits before the needs of working families and our communities.
Despite the bleak set of options presented by GM, Chrysler and the
Democrats, of either: A) bailouts and job cuts or B) total bankruptcy,
there is actually a third option: nationalization of the auto industry
under democratic workers’ control.

The auto industry has become the front line of the bosses’ efforts to
make the working class pay for the crisis. If the UAW were to take an
independent stand and negotiate independently with the federal
government, fighting tooth and nail to defend each and every job,
defend every penny for wages and benefits and fight to keep all the
plants open, auto workers would readily gain the support of workers in
the steel, airline and other industries, who are also under attack.

Nationalization under workers’ control would allow for the creation of
thousands of quality new jobs, for the expansion of the country’s
public transportation infrastructure and lay the foundations for an
economy based on society’s needs, not corporate profits. If the UAW,
along with the whole of the labor movement, mobilized the membership
to reject cuts, concessions, and to demand for nationalization of the
industry under workers’ democratic control, they could mobilize the
support of the working class as a whol