GM, Ford, Chrysler buyout 'offers' signal new round of job cuts

Promises, promises. Last fall promises of job security were enough to convince a majority of United Auto Workers members at Ford, General Motors and Chrysler to ratify four-year contracts they might otherwise have rejected. The contracts, which a sizable minority opposed, were the most concessionary of any in the auto union’s 73-year history.

By January the promises were revealed for their emptiness. Many thousands at all three companies, regardless of how they or the workers at their plant voted, were now laid off. News coverage reported mass anger.

Now the latest development is a new round of buyouts, enticing workers to quit or retire. This strategy serves the bosses in a number of ways. It lets Ford, GM and Chrysler permanently shrink the workforce and allows laid off workers to return, minimizing worker anger. At the same time, by creating an atmosphere of economic insecurity, the companies are encouraging lower-seniority workers to take one-time cash payments of $100,000-$140,000 and give up their good-paying union jobs forever. If enough workers leave, eventually there will be openings for new hires making half the pay of those who take the buyouts.

Ford and GM will give every single hourly employee a buyout “offer,” while the number of Chrysler workers being encouraged to leave will also be substantial. When the contracts were ratified last fall, UAW membership at the Big Three stood at a mere 173,000; with these new cuts the figure can be expected to drop well below 150,000. If not enough workers sign up for the buyouts—for which they are given just 45 days to make such a life-altering decision—it goes without saying that forced layoffs will continue. Executives such as GM’s CEO Rick Wagoner are hinting that more plant closings are on their agenda.

Whether workers are given a bribe or given the boot, the permanent elimination of that many jobs is a vicious attack on the communities who depend on them. It can only add to the economic devastation facing states like Michigan and Ohio, whose foreclosure crises have gained worldwide exposure. The end result will be the further pauperization of the working class caused by capitalism’s compulsive drive for greater and greater profits—in the words of Chrysler CEO Bob Nardelli, “the insatiable appetite for cash.”

For their part, the companies stand to make huge gains. GM has previously stated that in four years time, with the many contract concessions, labor costs are expected to be slashed by 50 percent. If the same holds true for Ford and Chrysler, their combined savings amount to a $6.5 million dollar per hour rip-off of workers’ labor! At the same time, if the immediate cost of the huge number of buyouts shows up as a net loss, the companies will have no moral qualms about demanding a new round of concessions in the middle of the contract.

While insisting he will oppose any further plant closings, UAW President Ron Gettelfinger defended the buyouts, stating, “We knew what we were doing when we went into it, but we also recognized that the companies needed help.”

Just what do the bosses intend to do with all the money they hope to save from all this help? “Wagoner has said that within a decade, up to 75 percent of GM sales could be in foreign markets,” the Detroit News reported Jan. 18. Along with this orientation to the overseas market, the companies have transferred production away from unionized plants in the U.S., building state-of-the-art sweatshops in Latin America and Asia.

The latest corporate strategy can only bring misery to workers worldwide. Workers must not fall into the protectionist trap of blaming workers in other countries for “stealing our jobs.” If we really believe that we own our jobs, we must, for ourselves and our communities, rebuild our union from the ground up around the slogan “a job is a right.” It’s a property right and we should insist that no overpaid executive be allowed to mess with it.