The Working Class Devours Itself

Social Darwinism in the 21st Century, the working class devours each other

In the weeks of the close of 2008, we have seen an amazing thing, that the fate of millions of working class families is being downplayed by the other members of the working class. I am talking about that dark night of disaster that could befall the members of the one of the greatest labor organizations to come out of the shadows of the Great Depression, the UAW.
We seen the financial giants of Wall Street stride smugly into the hearing rooms of the nation’s capital, and walk away with a bonanza of taxpayer bucks, with no questions and no strings attached in October. The Big Three or the US automakers announced that they are on thin ice financially and in need of some help, 25 billion dollars worth. When the big three CEO’s sat at the hearing tables in Washington, they were asked how they traveled to the meeting, and were roundly criticized for using their corporate jets. Then they were told to come up with a plan and come back and talk. Well, after traveling by hybrid vehicle back to DC, they submitted a plan for 34 billion dollars of assistance. This amount was reduced to 14 billion and is in jeopardy of being shot down by a block of GOP Senators from the Deep South. Why is there so much resistance to helping our US auto industry?

The UAW is the reason, for the white power paradigm has long hated this organization. When the UAW was created in the 1930’s, it represented all workers, white and black, fighting for better pay, benefits and working conditions for all. In the 50’s, 60’s and 70’s; it was the UAW who marched alongside the civil rights protesters. A presence at all of the demonstrations, from the march on Washington in 1963 to the Memphis Sanitation Workers strike in 1968, was Walter Reuther, the first President of the UAW, who became a icon and martyr of the movement. The UAW not only fought for its members, but for all who were marginalized in our society, all of the progressive policies from the New Deal to the present have the stamp of the UAW on them. Social Security, Unemployment insurance, Medicare, Medicaid to name a few, came from the social movements of progressive industrial labor organizations like the UAW.

Starting in the early Reagan years, the UAW came under attack, with the upsurge of imports eating away at the market share of the US automakers. This is when the concept of “team” came about, management and labor working together to increase efficiency and cut costs. Actually, if you examine this period of the 80’s and 90’s, it was management who came away from the table with the lion share of cost reductions, introduction of robotics, work rule changes and a declining worker population. The workers and the UAW were consoled with the fact, that they saved their jobs for the moment. The auto boom of the 90’s was not shared by the UAW by the big three, for the jobs kept declining, with plant closures, line consolidations and spinning off of the parts plants. This increased the profit share of the big three 1,000 fold, while the gain share by labor was nil, other than the profit sharing payments that some workers received at the time; which if considered alongside the rule changes, job reductions and plant closures were insignificant. The beginning of the new millennium was the start of another round of problems with market share for the big three.

This slide to the bottom by the US automakers was also dragging the UAW with it. The Big Three, who had a fascination with SUV’s and trucks, that when loaded up with accessories normally seen on luxury cars, yielded them fantastic profits. All made possible by the work rule changes, automation and job cuts agreed to by the UAW. The labor cost of a new vehicle had slid to only 10%, including wages, healthcare and pension; while the profit share had sky rocketed.
As energy prices started to spike, the US automakers made even bigger SUVs’ and trucks that were harder and harder on gas. They resisted calls from their dealers and the public to make more fuel efficient vehicles for one reason; the profit margin on them was lower. All the while, the big three whipsawed the members of the UAW, having them compete amongst themselves for product lines; who ever made the most concessions received the work. In 2007, the contract talks yielded the greatest step backward in the history of the UAW, with the members agreeing to a 50% wage reduction for new workers, increasing the timeframe for temporary workers to one year and eliminating or reducing healthcare, and pension benefits. The industry went through a series of buyouts of workers who are grandfathered under the older agreements. As a result the numbers of workers receiving the higher wages were cut. Now comes the final chapter in 2008 and the decimation of millions of worker families by their fellow workers.

Instead of being critical of the failure of the US automakers to react to the energy prices, calls for green cars and re-engineering the idea of the auto in our society, we have seen the tried and true method of bash the workers used by their enemies and surprisingly by their fellow working class members. I am constantly amazed that folks who have and still are being marginalized into poverty by wages that have lost purchasing power take delight in the plight of the autoworkers. They used the tired clichés and rhetoric, of the US Chamber of Commerce and the right to pour salt into the wounds of the autoworkers caused by the assault on them by the GOP.

Why cannot workers, all workers understand that the battles that other workers are fighting are really their battles too? For a loss of wages, benefits and other things that were hard fought for by our predecessors’ on the picket line, in the streets and in the courts; will come home to all of us eventually.