Britain: GM slashes jobs as auto crisis deepens
Earlier this week, General Motors (GM), the world's largest auto manufacturer, announced plans to cut production capacity in Europe and North America by ten per cent.
This would require the loss of about 5,000 GM jobs in Europe. GM plans to end the Oldsmobile line in the USA which could lead to 10,000 job losses there.
The most dramatic proposal is the ending of motor manufacture at GM's Vauxhall plant in Luton, England, directly shedding 2,200 jobs.
For GM, this is only the first wave of rationalisation. More job cuts are in the pipeline. For those workers who remain, more speedups are on the menu. GM's stated aim is that all plants should match the productivity of Opel's Eisnach plant.
The GM action is the latest in the current round of convulsions hitting the global auto industry. The past two years have seen a wave of mergers and "alliances" in which the world market in cars has increasingly been controlled by a handful of corporations. Five companies (GM, Ford, DaimlerChrysler, Toyota and Volkswagen) account for more than two thirds of all cars sold worldwide.
The essential cause of the current crisis is capitalist overinvestment in the search for higher profits and market share, irrespective of whether there is the need or effective demand for the cars in the first place.
This race to dominate world output leads to a constant push to increase productivity, with each car-maker trying to undersell their competitors in the increasingly competitive market.
As a result, productive capacity massively outstrips effective demand. In Europe there is enough capacity to make 18 million autos a year but salkes wil not exceed 15 million in 2000 if that. In the USA the 18 milliona year car market will laso decline by at least one million in 2001.
If all the world's autoplants were working at normal capacity, they would probably be turning out 40% more cars than the market could absorb under boom conditions. And boom conditions are coming to an end in global auto markets.
In south east Asia, sales are still rising as the recovery from the recession of the late 1990s continues. But in the world's two largest markets, north America and Europe, car sales are now falling. All the auto giants now face a squeeze on their profits -- GM Europe lost $ 181 million in the 3rd quarter of 2000.
The weakest will go under. Daewoo was declared bankrupt a month ago. Even the strongest must concentrate production in their most profitable plants and models if they are to continue their dominance. GM's rationalisation plans are the first step in this process.
In the same week, DaimlerChrysler have publicised their intention to step up cooperation with Mitsubishi in sharing of components in future models. They have not yet made any public announcements of the numbers of jobs they want to shed.
Rumours are proliferating about where the axe will fall next. Most commentators assume that the next announcement will be a rationalisation of the European production of Renault-Nissan, with the probable closure of the Nissan plant at Sunderland, England. Peugot have even suggested that the future of their highly productive plant in Reyton, near Coventry which produces the 205 may be in doubt.
The excellent response of the Luton workers to the news of the plant closure was just what was needed. The sense of betrayal is obvious. For years they are told that their future is secure if they avoid militancy and increase productivity.
This they do and all for what? To contribute to the world wide glut of cars and the inevitable bout of downsizing. More are coming to understand that they are beubg shafted by the logic of capitalism – whether it comes in the form of US, Korean, German or British owned factories.
If jobs are to be defended, it will require the determination shown by the Vauxhall workers, who responded to the GM announcement by going out on unofficial strike and a magnificent occupation of the Vauxhall offices. A joint meeting of the unions at the plant on Wednesday declared their determination to resist closure "by whatever means".
This must include plan to occupy the pland an dhold all its expensive technology to ransom.
A full meeting of the International Metalworkers Federation European Manufacturing Committee has been called to develop a union strategy to resist the GM proposals. International coordination is urgently needed when auto giants like GM aim to slash jobs internationally. But rank and file car workers need to link up across boundaries, rather than relying on union leaders.
Many trade union bureaucrats have already responded to the announcements by promoting national capitalist solutions. Transport and General Workers Union General Secretary Bill Morris called on the British government to respond to "urgently address this haemorrhage of skilled jobs from the UK to Europe."
Such responses could have only one effect. Unions in different countries compete with each other to offer the bosses speed-ups and unsocial shifts in a futile attempt to ensure the axe only falls elsewhere.
Where plants are threatened with closure, socialists call for nationalisation under workers control, with government funding to guarantee wages and jobs. Cross-border links need to be build between rank and file auto workers, to campaign for a workers’ answer to the crisis that global capitalism is inflicting on car production.
The world cannot absorb ever more cars, with their harmful effect on the environment and disastrous effect on transport. Workers do however need lots of other things that these factories can be converted to producing. But this requires a rational and global plan – at least on a Europe-wide level to begin with . For this we ned to control the levers of government and finance. Simply taking hold of one factory will not sort the ness out.
We need a workers’ government and a democratic plan that abolishes production for profit and starts from what we need, not what can make a rich elite richer still.
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