DETROIT, MI, October 16 — “Eventually, we’ll all be Tier 2!” That’s what one woman said as about 200 autoworkers picketed outside the locked gates of UAW headquarters at Solidarity House today. They were protesting a 50% wage cut for 40% of the workforce at the Lake Orion GM assembly plant, UAW Local 5960. Workers came from a number of plants and locals, including Local 23 at the Indianapolis stamping plant where workers rejected wage-cuts, defied the Governor and ran UAW International reps out of their union hall.
Under the new contract, Tier 2 workers will make $14.50/hour and work alongside Tier 1 workers making $28/hour. Fearing a repeat of the Indianapolis rebellion, where wage-cuts were overwhelmingly voted down, 457 to 96, workers would not be allowed to vote on the wage-cuts. This is UAW President Bob King’s “UAW for the 21st Century,” where GM and the union “share common goals and a common vision” of keeping U.S. bosses on the top of the heap with a future of low wages and endless war.
The ability to cut wages without a ratification vote was implanted in the 2009 national contract, which was ratified, as a precondition for the Obama bailout and restructuring of GM and Chrysler. That contract slashed starting pay for new hires to $14.50/hour. In the fine print that was never included in the “highlights” distributed to workers as they voted, it also says that to produce sub-compacts at a profit, GM and the UAW “will work together...to arrive at innovative ways to staff these operations.”
The Lake Orion workers were laid off last November and GM began retooling the plant to build a subcompact and compact car. The first workers called back will work at full wages and benefits. The rest of the workforce will come back at Tier 2 wages and either wait for a Tier 1 opening due to retirement or try to transfer to another GM plant.
One worker said, “The union knew the plant was going to be two-tier…they just waited till the last minute to drop it on us.” And they plan to “drop it” on many more workers in order to keep members. “This is not going to go to other plants unless we are able to bring a [subcompact] car into Ford or Chrysler that we don’t currently have. We might look at something similar for that situation,” King said.
King forgot to mention imposing poverty wages on workers when he spoke at the October 2 March for Jobs and Justice. But that is really what it was all about. When you unite with the bosses and march behind them, you are on the slippery slope to fascism and world war, because that’s how they solve their crises. They blabber about Republican “extremists,” but it wasn’t the Tea Party who slashed 200,000 auto jobs and cut our wages in half. It is King and Obama, acting on behalf of the biggest bosses and bankers in the world.
The liberals and union reformers also gave us the first non-union GM plant in the U.S. since the 1930’s; a new lithium-ion battery plant near Detroit. The plant is partly government subsidized, did not call back one unemployed UAW member and pays less than $14/hour.
Since the Chrysler bailout of 1979, the UAW has given up billions in concessions and more than a million jobs, all in the name of “job security.” Today they represent less than half of the U.S. auto industry and have lost two-thirds of our members. Class collaboration does not save jobs. Our security lies with the international working class, sharper and sharper class struggle and the development of mass communist consciousness. Ultimately we have to overthrow the bosses and abolish wage slavery with communist revolution.