Chrysler workers brace for layoffs

Few Chrysler workers will be going on a spending spree with their new raises. With the auto giant having just announced across-the-board production cuts, most of us will want to save as much as possible.

The layoffs have already begun, with most plants planning several weeks of shut down and/or reducing the number of shifts. Nothing has been specifically stated yet, but it is likely some closings will be announced between now and the expiration of the national contract this time next year.

All the Big Three automakers say they need to extract sacrifices to remain competitive. If they were really determined to compete aggressively, why would they be slashing production, thus voluntarily ceding market share to their overseas competitors?

They seem less interested in regaining market share than in extracting a greater share of surplus value from the workers and emerging from temporary financial losses a leaner, meaner profit machine.

Last year hourly workers at General Motors voted to forego a dollar per hour of their negotiated wage increase. The top leadership of the United Auto Workers pushed this concession as a way for the financially troubled GM to fund retiree health care costs, even though an $800 increase in retiree health insurance premiums was also part of the package.

The cuts were ratified, but over 40 percent voted for rejection. The same proposal passed at Ford, but by fewer than a hundred votes. Many locals called for a recount, but that request was denied.

Since then, Chrysler workers represented by the UAW have been wondering when they, too, would be asked to take a pay cut. The Chrysler Group of Daimler Chrysler has shown a profit for 12 consecutive quarters, but claims it needs concessions “to be competitive.”

Local union leaders who comprise the Chrysler Sub-Council were set to vote on the issue at a meeting Sept. 9. A vote of the entire membership was to follow if the Sub-Council voted in favor of a cut. Talking to co-workers, this writer’s sense was that the givebacks would suffer a resounding defeat, and might not even pass the leadership vote.

Then, on Sept. 8, while speaking at the Detroit Economic Club (what was a union leader even doing mingling with such thieves?), UAW President Ron Gettelfinger cited Chrysler’s financial health and proclaimed there would be no vote.

That should have been the position all along.

Worker productivity has risen 24 percent in the past four years, a fact stated by none other than Chrysler CEO Tom LaSorda himself in an August letter to all employees. Canceling negotiated raises would leave Chrysler workers with a pay increase of less than 2 percent for the same period.

It’s just another proof of Workers World’s front-page headline of two weeks ago: “Productivity soars, incomes drop.” While workers turn out more products than ever, they are earning less and less.

Any rejection of this theft is a step in the right direction. Now workers at Chrysler’s Ohio Stamping Plant, relieved to be receiving a well-earned raise later this month, are speculating as to what the thieves will be trying to steal when the national contract expires next year.

Martha Grevatt is an elected trustee of UAW Local 122.