General Electric, the job killer
By
Stephen Millies
Published Jan 30, 2011 9:47 PM
Dracula shouldn’t be put in charge of the blood bank. Yet President
Barack Obama named General Electric CEO Jeffrey Immelt to chair a new Council
on Jobs and Competitiveness.
GE is one of the biggest job killers in U.S. history. Just in Schenectady, N.Y.
— where Obama announced Immelt’s appointment on Jan. 21 — GE
has axed 22,000 jobs since 1978. That’s according to Thomas F.
O’Boyle, author of “At Any Cost: Jack Welch, General Electric, and
the Pursuit of Profit.”
The United Electrical Workers union reports that GE shut 29 U.S. plants and one
Canadian plant in the last two years. This was GE’s thank-you note after
the Federal Reserve rescued it with a $16.1 billion handout in 2008. A big
player in the military-industrial complex, GE got over $967 million in Pentagon
contracts in 2010. (militaryindustrialcomplex.com)
Immelt was paid $14.2 million by GE in 2007. That’s what 942 minimum-wage
workers make — if they’re lucky enough to work 40-hour weeks for a
full year.
Immelt replaces former Federal Reserve Board chair, Paul Volcker. Under
Presidents Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan, Volcker drove up the prime rate to
21 percent as part of a job-killing, union-busting strategy.
Neutron Jack Welch
Jack Welch, Jeffrey Immelt’s predecessor as GE’s CEO, was called
“Neutron Jack” by GE workers. Like a neutron bomb, Welch destroyed
people’s jobs while leaving the plants intact.
Welch got rid of 112,000 jobs at GE. He argued that, “Ideally you’d
have every plant you own on a barge” — so it could moved to
wherever the lowest wages were. Welch broke a strike of 2,800 NBC technicians
in 1987. In Massachusetts alone, according to O’Boyle, GE fired 7,000
workers in Lynn and 8,000 in Pittsfield. Erie, Pa., saw 6,000 GE jobs evaporate
while Fort Wayne, Ind., lost 4,000. Twelve thousand people in Evandale, Ohio,
were thrown out of work.
Welch also wanted to evade environmental laws. GE fought for decades against
any Environmental Protection Agency-imposed cleanup after dumping more than 1.3
million pounds of cancer-causing chemicals into the Hudson River. (cleanup.org)
GE poisoned Connecticut’s Housatonic River and the Coosa River Basin in
Georgia. While running the Hanford Nuclear Reservation in Washington state, GE
started in 1949 to release radioactive material to see how far it would travel.
In 1963, GE began radiating 64 prisoners in Walla Walla, Wash., to test the
effect on their reproductive organs. (corpwatch.org)
Welch is a sexist pig. According to O’Boyle, a former Wall Street Journal
reporter, Welch asked a woman being interviewed for a job at GE Plastics in
1973, “Would you f — k a customer for a million-dollar
order?” Instead of being prosecuted, Welch has a fortune of $720
million.
Light bulbs and loan sharks
GE is the oldest member of the Dow-Jones industrial average. In 1893, it became
the first manufacturing corporation organized by Wall Street’s biggest
banker, J.P. Morgan.
This was an important step for finance capital, which began dominating the
economy. Big industrialists like steel baron Andrew Carnegie used to finance
themselves out of their own profits instead of turning towards Wall Street.
GE made nearly 100,000 products, including 30,000 types of light bulbs. But it
turned itself into a bank. In recent years, close to half its profits came from
GE Capital.
This morphing of industrial capital into finance capital almost sank GE. Its
stock valuation plunged from $400 billion in 2007 to $210 billion today.
Racism and union busting
Long ago, GE actually had a liberal sheen. GE towns like Schenectady and
Bridgeport, Conn., had socialist mayors.
GE research labs employed the electrical wizard Charles Steinmetz, a militant
socialist who left Germany because of political persecution. Steinmetz was
planning to help electrify the Soviet Union before he died in 1923.
But after World War II, GE used redbaiting to try to destroy UE, the electrical
workers union. Ronald Reagan became GE’s spokesperson. It took a 102-day
strike in 1970 to bring GE to the bargaining table.
In the 1970s, Workers World Party members fought to get a union in GE’s
Portsmouth, Va., factory. GE defeated this union drive by threatening to move
the plant to Taiwan — which it did anyway, a few years later.
The electrical industry lagged behind steel mills and auto plants in hiring
Black workers. African Americans accounted for only 3 percent of the electrical
jobs in 1960. (“The Electrical Workers” by Ronald W. Schatz)
GE built “Appliance Park” in Louisville, Ky., in the 1950s as a
“runaway shop” operation. Thousands of jobs moved there from
Northern union strongholds. The National Negro Labor Council, led by future
Detroit Mayor Coleman Young, fought to get jobs at Appliance Park. Between 1973
and 1998, GE axed 16,000 jobs in Louisville. (Time, Nov. 9, 1998) Thousands of
Black workers must have been fired.
Meanwhile, GE built a complex employing thousands to make CT scan, x-ray and
magnetic resonance machines in Waukesha, Wis. Less than 1 percent of Waukesha
County’s population is African American. Waukesha is home to
immigrant-bashing congressperson, James Sensenbrenner.
As head of GE’s Medical Systems Division — now called GE Healthcare
— Jeffrey Immelt ran this apartheid operation before becoming GE’s
CEO in 2001.
Articles copyright 1995-2012 Workers World.
Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire article is permitted in any medium without royalty provided this notice is preserved.
Workers World, 55 W. 17 St., NY, NY 10011
Email:
[email protected]
Subscribe
[email protected]
Support independent news
DONATE