UAW Patriotism Betrays GM Workers in Plant Closing

FREEMONT, CA, February 26 — “TOYOTA BETRAYS AMERICAN WORKERS,” screams the glossy, very expensive flier being distributed at the U.S. Auto Show. “Help save 50,000 American jobs,” is what those leafleting are instructed to tell those entering the auto show. This red, white and blue nonsense is what passes for a UAW campaign to “save” the NUMMI assembly plant that is scheduled to close on March 31, tossing 4,500 workers and their families into the street.

NUMMI was a joint venture between GM and Toyota, formed almost 30 years ago and is Toyota’s only unionized plant in North America. During the recent GM bankruptcy, ordered and plotted by the Obama administration, GM pulled out of NUMMI and any contractual obligations, leaving it to Toyota to close the plant.

The plant closing will also affect over 40,000 workers who either work in supplier plants or other related jobs, from small businesses selling work boots and work gloves to bars and restaurants, to companies that clean the factory and many more. NUMMI is very productive and profitable, with maybe the largest workforce of any assembly plant in North America, and sells two-thirds of what it produces in California. 

But even that is not enough. More money can be made by moving the work to non-union plants in Canada, San Antonio, Texas and Mexico. In these factories, the “Toyota” workers do the final assembly and make up about one-third of the workforce. The rest are sub-contractors that assemble doors, dashboards and other components, and make about one-third of what the Toyota workers make. The newly refurbished Jeep plant in Toledo, OH now runs the same way, with a UAW contract.

The UAW “SAVE NUMMI” campaign is a patriotic fraud to turn workers’ anger and public opinion against Toyota and away from GM. It’s a repeat of the racist campaigns of the 1970’s that led to the racist murder of Vincent Chin, a Chinese student in Detroit, beaten to death by two Chrysler workers because they thought he was Japanese. Nowhere does the UAW hold GM responsible. In fact, while the Auto Show was in Chicago, the UAW staging area was the plush Drake Hotel, on the Gold Coast. This also happened to be where all the GM execs were staying.

At the very least, these workers were under UAW contracts and should have been offered the same buyouts, severance packages and bumping rights as thousands of other GM workers. Recently a fight broke out at a packed UAW Local 2244 meeting over this issue. Many workers know the campaign is a fraud and want GM to settle up with them. The UAW leadership is focusing on “saving” NUMMI, to get GM off the hook. No one in Solidarity House (UAW international headquarters in Detroit) believes the plant can be saved, because they are not willing to shut the whole industry down to save it!

And how could they? After helping GM, Ford and Chrysler close dozens of plants and eliminate hundreds of thousands of jobs, after cutting the pay of Detroit 3, Delphi, American Axle and others to $12/hr., after helping turn Detroit into a ghetto victimized by 50% racist unemployment, after losing two-thirds of its members and representing less than half of the domestic auto industry, the UAW leadership couldn’t fight the bosses if they wanted to. And they don’t want to.

The Toyota workers who wrote in the last issue of CHALLENGE, and UAW members facing endless threats to their jobs and living standards, will unite across company and  international borders, because the times demand it and because PLP is committed to making it happen. And we will fight to turn every attack and plant closing into a struggle to win our coworkers to abolish wage slavery with commnist revolution.