USA: auto jobs massacre aimed at boosting shares
Workers Power Global
The bosses response to the slowdown in car sales continued when DaimlerChrysler announced this Monday that one in five jobs were to be cut from the Chrysler payroll in the United States and Canada, with further swingeing job cuts and plant closures in Latin America.
Some 19,000 hourly paid and almost 7,000 salaried jobs will be cut in the US and Canada. No figures have been announced for the jobs to be cut from the plant closures in Mexico, Brazil and Argentina.
The decline in north American car sales led to Chrysler losses of USD 512 million in the third quarter of 2000, a figure that is likely to rise to over a billion dollars for the last three months of the year. As usual when the capitalist econony is in trouble, it is the workers who are expected to suffer.
The Chrysler announcement comes a month before DaimlerChrysler announce plans for "restructuring" globally, with further cutbacks likely, including at DaimlerChrysler's Japanese affiliate, Mitsubishi Motors.
The first wave of cuts, announced earlier this week, involves:Closures of an engine plant in Detriot, of engine and transmission plants in Toluca, Mexico, and assembly plants in Lago Alberto, Mexico; Cordoba, Argentina and Parana, Brazil.Cut-backs from three shifts to two in most other Chrysler plants in the US and CanadaSpeed-ups for those workers who remain.
Similar packages to be imposed on Chrysler's suppliers, who have been ordered to cut their prices by at least 5%The company hope to push through the job cuts in the US and Canada through encouraging workers to take early retirement.
The present agreements between Chrysler and the unions guarantee US workers will continue to receive 95% of basic pay until the present union/company contract runs out in 2003, and Canadian workers get 65% of basic pay until 2002.
The leadership of the Canadian Auto Workers (CAW) union have denounced the plans. Union president Buzz Hargrove said of the Chrysler plans: "For stockholders, it is a blip, but for the workers it is a tragedy."
CAW leaders are calling for strong action from the Canadian government to protect the jobs of auto workers, and are adamant that the workers should make no further concessions to Chrysler management.
In contrast, the initial response to the Chrysler announcement by the bureaucrats of the United States union, the United Auto Workers (UAW), is a complacent brag about how effective the current union contract has proved in guaranteeing "job and income security protections".
Yes, it is good that exising union members have their living standards protected for a couple of years. But this narrow focus ignores the devastation the job cuts will mean for working class communities.
The supine response of the UAW leadership once again emphases that any effective working class response to the international crisis of car production will only come when rank and file militants begin to build co-ordinated international resistance.
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