France: What’s Good for GM Is Lousy for Workers

STRASBOURG, July 31 — In what bosses in France hope will be a trend-setting decision, workers at GM’s automatic transmission plant here approved a 10% cut in wages and benefits in return for keeping their jobs. The two-month struggle with GM illustrates the nightmare of life under capitalism.

In late September, 2008, when GM went bust, its Strasbourg plant was turned over to Motor Liquidation Company, a hollow shell charged with finding a buyer. Deals with VW, Mercedes and Weichai fell through. In June, GM offered to buy back the plant for one symbolic euro, on condition that the 1,150 autoworkers take the 10% cut and that all unions sign the three-year contract. GM promised to keep all workers on the payroll for the life of the contract. (265,000 jobs were lost in France in 2009, including 168,000 industrial jobs.)

The largest union at the plant, the CFDT, urged accepting GM’s terms as “the lesser evil.” It was backed by two smaller unions, the CFTC and FO, and by the Socialist Party. The second-largest union, the CGT, backed by the “Communist” Party, opposed the sellout.

On July 16, 200 workers struck to protest the give-back, which includes a two-year wage freeze and voids a previous agreement establishing the 35-hour work week at the plant. But one week later, faced with a GM ultimatum to accept or see their jobs shipped to Mexico, 70% of the 950 workers participating in a non-binding secret ballot referendum accepted the deal.

That same day, management organized some workers to hold CGT union stewards hostage for several hours, threatening to kill them if they did not sign the contract. On July 27, the CGT announced it was filing charges against the assailants.

But on July 28, the CGT signed a separate deal with GM, promising not to challenge the new contract in the courts for the next three years. GM allowed the CGT to save face and did not force the union to sign the contract. Today GM announced it was going ahead with the purchase, which will take two months to finalize.

Everyone knows the Strasbourg workers have gained nothing in giving in to GM’s blackmail. In 2007, the Continental Tire factory workers in Clairoix agreed to return to a 40-hour week in exchange for a management promise not to close the factory. Today, it is closed.

Firstly, the bitter defeat for the GM workers demonstrates that a lack of unity plays into the bosses’ hands. Secondly, it shows that the best our class can obtain under capitalism is rotten compromises. In both cases, the remedy is to unite around communist leadership to organize for a revolution that will put our class in power