From Low-Wage Capitalism

"Thus, in order for the capitalist in company A to beat out the capitalist in company B, the workers in company A have to out-compete the workers in company B by allowing their wages to be cut below the others -- and/or submitting to speed up or other 'productivity' measures.
"The capitalists in company B then go to their own workers and tell them that in order to remain competitive with comapny A, which has just reduced its labot costs by cutting wages or benefits, the workers in company B have to at least match those cuts. And so it goes in the race to the bottom. This is the trap workers are in if their representatives buy into bourgeois ideology at the bargaining table and remain within the capital-labor framework imposed by the bosses." (Low Wage Capitalism, p. 264-265)

"Accepting the bosses' notion that labor must subordinate its demands to the overriding necessity of capital to remain competitive and profitable is a self-defeating ideology." (Low Wage Capitalism, p. 265)

"To hold the workers responsible for the profitability of capital is to demand that they agree to intensify their own exploitation to solve the crisis of their exploiters. This must be explained to the workers. They can easily comprehend it." (Low Wage Capitalism, p. 266)

"The question should be posed: Why must the exploited sacrifice their wages, their benefits, their working conditions, and their very jobs in order to maintain the continued prosperity of the exploiters, who have lived off the wealth created by the workers in the first place." (Low Wage Capitalism, p. 266)

Under pressure form the U.S. Treasury Department, the White House and the Ford Motor Company, the United Auto Workers leadership has taken a major backward step by making dangerous concessions that will undermine the economic conditions of their own membership.

According to the the New York Times the deal:

"...suspends inflation-related pay increases and performance bonuses, allows Ford to save as much as $6.5 billion by substituting shares of its stock for cash it must pay into a new retiree health care fund and eliminates the jobs bank, a controversial program that allowed workers to continue receiving nearly full pay after being laid off. Now workers whose jobs are eliminated will receive less pay, for a shorter period, and would lose that benefit if they refuse to take a job that opens up anywhere in the country."

The UAW leadership proclaimed that the new agreement brings hourly labor costs to $55 an hour. First of all, this does not represent the wages of the workers but rather an average of overall costs to the company for retirees pensions, health care and other benefits.

But most importantly, and most dangeroulsy, the union announcement declared that this latest agreement is a step in the direction of bringing Ford pay scales down to the level of Toyota, Honda, Nissan and other overseas companies.

In other words, the goal of the negotiations is to bring the pay scale of the organized workers down to the level of unorganized workers -- to reduce the status of union workers to the status of non-union workers.

This amounts to allowing the auto bosses to push the economic crisis onto the backs of auto workers. A leadership that represents labor should be going in the opposite direction -- the direction of struggle against concessions.

Instead of negotiating to bring the conditions of their own membership down to the level of unorganized workers, what is need is a mass fightback to raise the conditions of not only the Ford workers and the auto workers, but the broader working class.

These concessions, should they be allowed to stand, do not only affect the Ford workers, they stand as a precedent for GM and Chrysler. One antidote to the concessionary drive of the profiteering auto magnates would be to shut down Ford, Chrysler, GM and all the parts plants that supply the auto industry. That would open the class struggle and push things back in a progressive direction.

If concessions were necessary after the struggle, then the union could make concessions. But no one knows what the outcome of such a struggle would be. It could be that instead of concessions there could be great gains. There is no way to determine this except by fighting back.

To make concessions in advance, without a fight, assures a negative outcome. What is needed is for the rank-and-file to begin to organize from below and to eventually reverse the course of retreat that has been followed for the past three decades.

Labels: capitalist, capitalist crisis, Chrysler, concessions, Ford, GM, jobs bank, low-wage capitalism, non-union, retiree, Toyota, treasury, UAW, unions, wages, White House