Tag: General Motors

http://wsws.org/articles/2011/…

For a good look at the upcoming auto worker contract cuts talks and how the UAW looks to continue the betrayal of the workers who provide its very reason for being, read this article.

(From the link.  ek)

US auto workers face historic struggle

Jerry White, wsws.org

8 September 2011

On September 14 the four-year labor agreements covering 114,000 US auto workers at GM, Ford and Chrysler expire. Although the companies have raked in more than $7 billion in profits this year, they have made it clear that workers-who have not had a raise since 2003-will see no improvements in wages or working conditions.

On the contrary, with the full backing of the Obama administration and the United Auto Workers (UAW), the auto executives are pressing ahead with plans to drive out the remaining better-paid workers and create a low-paid, casualized workforce.

I’m still absorbing the news that the Sichuan Tengzhong Heavy Industrial Machinery Company Ltd, one of the giant industrial corporations that characterize present-day Chinese “socialism,” has purchased the Hummer brand from General Motors as the latter shuffles down the path blazed long ago by Studebaker and American Motors.

The Hummer is of course the vehicle sensible people love to hate: ugly, heavy, dangerous, gas-guzzling, polluting, military (in roughly the same sense as camouflage footsie pajamas) and a big fat macho fraud–the damn thing is built on a regular GM SUV chassis, just like a plain old Chevy Colorado.

The psychological makeup of Hummer purchasers has been looked into more deeply, most succinctly by Ruben Bolling, the crackerjack creator of the Tom the Dancing Bug comic. (Won’t embed for some reason–view his hysterical dis of Hummer owners here.]

I, however, have an even more theoretical speculation on the fate of the Hummer, based on the old Marxist precept that changes in people’s consciousness tend to trail changes in material conditions. Let me draw first a brief analogy-when I spent a little time in West Africa in the early ’80s, I met a couple of young guys, Komi and Kasimir, who were adherents of voudon (a/k/a voodoo). We talked about the belief system and they turned out to be followers of a particular fetiche or deity, which forbade them to eat anything cooked in a metal vessel or with metal utensils.

Kasimir and Komi told me of one the most dreaded of the voudon cults, whose fetiche was connected with smallpox, Its adherents would paint their faces white on sacred occasions and were feared for their ability to call disease down on enemies. Now this was only a decade since scientists and medical personnel had finally eradicated the disease in its last strongholds in Africa, so I asked if this group was still as feared as it had used to be. They both thought and said no, actually it was not as powerful and its fetiche not seen to be as deadly. Changes in consciousness trail changes in material conditions!

Back to the Hummer. The military’s HumVee was a star of the last substantial victory for the US military, Operation Desert Storm, the 1991 Gulf War. The Arnold Schwarzeneggers of the US felt uncontrollable lust and a civilian version was soon forthcoming, and became a GM product by 1998.

9/11-fueled war fever sent sales soaring even higher–for a while. But by early 2004 they were declining precipitously. I rather doubt that it was due to sudden environmental concerns among its target audience. I think what happened is that fairly early in the occupation of Iraq, it became clear that this mighty war wagon could be taken out by a couple of Baghdad teenagers with a big artillery round and a garage door opener. Whether people thought about it consciously or not, IEDs had taken the bloom off the rose.

I don’t know what Sichuan Tengzhong Heavy Industrial Machinery Company management is thinking. I can’t see a big Hummer comeback in the US and the contribution they’d make to China’s already horrific pollution boggles the mind. Indications are they plan to market these vehicular plug-uglies more heavily in developing nation markets. I can only say I hope they take a richly deserved bath on this venture.



Crossposted from Fire on the Mountain.

Richard Wolff, American Economist well-known for his work on Marxian economics, economic methodology and class analysis, Yale University Ph.D. in Economics, and Professor at The New School University in New York City, talks with Real News CEO Paul Jay about the reform needed to pull the United States out of economic crisis.

“If we say something is too important to let it die, too big to fail, then we’re saying it’s so important to the society as a whole, but if it’s that important, it can’t be in the hands of a few people in the first place. If you’re too big to fail, your too big to be in private hands.” He goes on to suggest that if there is chaos in the US economy, the rest of the world will have chaos as well. “We have an unknown situation, the outcome of which could be very bad, we actually have a vision of that already, Mexico, it’s a society in free fall.”

Real News Network – May 2, 2009

Too big to fail, too big to be privately owned

Auto industry affects the whole society, it’s too significant for private ownership

Original article, by Jerry White, via World Socialist Web Site:

The CEOs of Detroit’s Big Three auto companies are appearing before the Senate Banking Committee today to present plans for the restructuring of the US auto industry as they seek federal loans to avert bankruptcy. The plans involve the destruction of the jobs and living standards of tens of thousands of auto workers and factory closures that will devastate communities across the country.