LANSING, Mich. — The General Motors bankruptcy, announced Monday, was expected, having been predicted for weeks if not months. But the enormity of how far this once mighty giant of U.S. monopoly capitalism has fallen is shocking nevertheless. For many it seems like not so long ago when GM was not only the leader of all auto producers with a commanding 54 percent of the U.S. market, it was also the undisputed dominant corporation in the country’s economy.
In filing for bankruptcy yesterday, GM said it will close 14 plants in the U.S., half of them here in Michigan. It will leave less than 40,000 GM autoworkers nationwide, a tiny fraction of the 395,000 employed by the company in its heyday in the 1970s.
Nowhere is the shock greater than Michigan, GM’s birthplace. Today, the state has an official unemployment rate of almost 13 percent, and because it has seven times the auto jobs of the next highest state, Ohio, people here fear things will only get worse as the job loss in auto ripples through the economy.
At a “Keep the Dream Alive — Reinvest in America” rally that drew several thousand here yesterday, Jim Chapman a steelworker at Great Lakes Works in Ecorse, Mich., which makes steel for auto bodies, said he is a victim of that rippling effect. This father of five has been laid off for six months. “If you’re not selling cars, you’re not making steel,” he said. “It trickles down.”
Lansing, Mich., rally demands, "Keep the Dream Alive — Reinvest in America."
Under a plan announced by President Obama on Monday, the federal government will provide up to another $30 billion to keep GM afloat while it emerges, restructured, out of bankruptcy. That is on top of $19 billion in federal money the company received earlier. The Canadian government will chip in another $9 billion as part of the deal. The downsized company will have 60 percent U.S. government ownership, with smaller portions of its stock held by the United Auto Workers union, bondholders and the Canadian government.
Ron Bloom, who heads Obama’s auto task force, told reporters the government will be a “reluctant shareholder” and will not get involved in day-to-day management. But, he said, with taxpayer money now keeping GM afloat, the government “has to demand something in return for this capital."
In exchange for the new government aid, GM agreed to go through bankruptcy to eliminate more than $27 billion in debt held by bondholders. It also agreed to build a new small car in idled UAW factories and to increase the share of U.S.-based production from 66 percent to 70 percent, the White House said. The union has agreed to a no-strike pledge until 2015.
The White House noted that "the UAW has made important concessions on compensation and retiree health care that, while difficult, will help save jobs for active employees, pensions and health care for retirees."
UAW leaders pointed out in a press statement that "the biggest sacrifices will be made by the tens of thousands of workers who will lose their jobs as a result of the numerous plant closings that GM is announcing in its restructuring plan."
Addressing yesterday’s rally here, Lansing Mayor Verg Bernero said, “D-Day for GM is a sad day.” He said he was “grateful for an administration that is grappling with a problem it did not create, but certainly inherited.”
Many at the rally were angry that GM, while receiving bailout money which may total $50 billion or more, is shutting down 14 plants at home while it increases production outside the country.
“When you offshore jobs, you export the American Dream,” said Bernero.
Bill Parker, president of UAW Local 1700 at Chrysler’s Sterling Heights, Mich., Assembly plant, which is also scheduled to close, said workers are outraged that Chrysler wants to close an additional five plants. His plant employs about 1,400 workers and produces the Sebring sedan and convertible, along with the Dodge Avenger. He asked the crowd of several thousand to join him in calling on the Obama administration to demand that Chrysler reverse its decision.
“Chrysler got the money but they did not get the message,” said Parker, referring to the more than $7 billion in federal bailout money the company has received. The intent of that government assistance was to help people, Parker said. Now, he declared, “our sons and daughters face the prospect of doing worse than we are.”
Referring to GM’s export of jobs to low-wage countries, Michigan Sen. Debbie Stabenow told the crowd that she is “tired of talking about the race to the bottom. I have been doing it for 10 years. We have to raise others up, and not keep pushing us down.”
The Rev. Jesse Jackson emphasized the effect the bankruptcy and closing of GM plants will have on communities. When you close 14 plants and hundreds of dealers, you also close auto suppliers; you cut off a town’s tax base, you close their schools, and cause their teachers, police and fire departments to also shut down, he said.
As details of the GM bankruptcy plan emerged, some 3,000 labor and progressive activists were meeting at the America’s Future Now conference in Washington.
“Loss of jobs and the economic devastation that has spread across this country results from corporate greed,” Change to Win labor federation chair Anna Burger said there. Economic recovery means “more than just companies making a profit,” she said. Echoing Lansing Mayor Bernero, Burger said, “It means good secure jobs, decent incomes and the prospect of a secure retirement — in short, the American Dream.”
Another labor leader, speaking informally, noted that the auto union was caught “between a rock and a hard place” and was able to come out of the bankruptcy negotiations with a few things including a little less pain for some active workers and retirees. But, he said, “Once again, we have workers making the sacrifices while companies close plants and ship operations overseas. Once again we are doing what the finance industry says we should be doing to make a company 'viable' even if that means more massive job loss and continued de-industrialization.” This is a continuation of an approach that “just doesn't cut it,” he said.
“The problem with doing business this way is that it leads to disaster for workers and in the end it doesn't do much for GM either — by doing it their way they ended up deep in debt,” the labor leader said.
“What we really need,” he said, “is a bold new approach that retools our old plants to build mass transit, light rail, green cars and all the things we need for the future. Globalization is here to stay. We need to make it work for the majority, not just for the few, by creating a real plan to keep good paying manufacturing jobs and green jobs here in America. Let’s use our leverage to fight for this approach.”
John Rummel is the Chair of the Michigan District of the CPUSA.jrummel @ pww.org. Joel Wendland and John Wojcik contributed to this story.
Welcome to everyone in Winston Unity Center and to everybody on line.
We are living in very turbulent times. The world is in transition. An
old era — an era of neoliberalism, financialization and rightwing
extremism — is fading away and a new era is being born.
But no one is quite sure what the new era will look like. It resists
easy prediction. It is safe to say that the future of both our country
and the world is still to be written.
As bad as things have been over the last three decades, few thought
they could get much worse. But they have. Depression economics has
entered our vocabulary not simply as a historical event, but as a lived
experience for millions.
Only a short time ago most economists said the economic cycle had been
tamed. In 2004, in a speech titled “The Great Moderation,” Federal
Reserve Board Chair Ben Bernanke said we live in an era in which
macroeconomic instability has been eliminated.
Fast forward five years and the Great Moderation has turned into the
Great Crisis. That which few thought would ever happen again has
happened again, and without much warning.
The social fabric is rupturing. The terrain on which billions of people
earn a living and raise their families feels foreign, even
unrecognizable. Haven’t you heard more than one person say, “Is this
the country I grew up in?”
"Out of the Crisis: Building a new era of justice and peace" was a speech delivered by Sam Webb, National Chair of the Communist Party USA.
The speech was the opening address to the organization’s National Committee, which includes leading communists from around the country.
Video and text versions of the speech are available at http://www.cpusa.org/
Out of the crisis Building a new era of justice
and peace
a speech by Sam Webb, National Chair
of the Communist Party
Saturday, March 21 9:30 am Eastern
This Saturday, March 21, Sam Webb, the national chairperson of the
Communist Party USA, delivered a speech titled, “Out of the crisis:
Building a new era of justice and peace.” The speech was streamed
live via the web right here on our website www.cpusa.org. You can watch it above.
The speech was the opening address to the organization’s National
Committee, which includes leading communists from around the country.
It was only yesterday that “free market” ideologues were dancing on Karl Marx’s grave with scornful shouts that “greed is good” and “TINA” — “there is no alternative” to capitalism. These fat men guffawed contemptuously at Marx’s warning that capitalism is built on wage exploitation, that workers never earn enough to buy back what they produce, creating “overproduction” and periodic crises — some deep and long — that can only be solved by socialism.
The turmoil in financial markets and the bailout to the tune of $700
billion has turned the public eye and wrath on Wall Street and
Washington. While millions are aware of the triggering causes, ranging
from predatory lending to deregulation to insatiable greed, what isn’t
so obvious is the longer-term process that brought our financial system
and economy to the edge of the abyss.
If there were such a thing as a perfect economic storm, I would say we are close to it.
The housing crisis continues and shows no sign of ending; credit and money markets are either churning or freezing up; the stock market is gyrating; unemployment is leaping upward (sharply so in the communities of the nationally and racially oppressed); poverty is up and wages are down; oil and food prices are climbing; the value of the dollar is falling sharply compared to other currencies; the level of indebtedness is astronomical and will be difficult to unwind in the near term. And we sit on the edge of a financial collapse with all the accompanying dislocation and hardship that it would bring.
As the Bush administration attempts to ram a bailout package of nearly one trillion dollars through Congress, it begins to feel like Colonel Sanders asking the public to trust him to take care of the chickens.
If it weren’t so damn serious, there would be something almost comical about it. Here we have the White House, which has squandered trillions of dollars over eight years, and its point man, Hank Paulson, fresh from 38 years of gaming the financial system while working at Goldman Sachs, insisting that Congressional leaders hand over a trillion dollars to them with no debate and no strings attached.
by Joelle Fishman, Chair, Political Action Committee, CPUSA, 09/23/2008 17:17
The shockwaves from the financial crisis have left working class families in every part of the country in a state of great worry and fear.
Over $100 billion of public money has been spent to bail out huge financial corporations while millions of people are losing their homes, losing their health care, losing their pensions, losing their jobs and losing college loans. Those who have been paid the least, African American, Latino and women workers, are losing the most.
by Scott Marshall, Vice Chair and Labor Commission Chair, 05/02/2008 11:08
I’ve always wanted a button that reads, “Workers of the world unite, back by popular demand” — almost as long as I’ve wanted one that says, “May Day, made in the USA.”
May Day 2008 would have been a great time for both.
Why do communists hate capitalism so much? Why do you think it's a failure? How would a communist society be any better? Haven't those been horrible failures too?
Scott Marshall, Labor Director of the Communist Party USA, appeared on Arkansas Talk Radio, KARN 102.9. In this 15 minute segment, he spoke about the Communist Party USA, the current economic crisis, a green economy, and much more.
Last weeks data on unemployment is the latest confirmation that the economy is going south. Nothing that the federal government or Federal Reserve Bank has done so far has contained a widening and spreading economic recession. The economic downturn that was triggered by the collapse of the housing bubble and the seizing up of credit and money markets is winding its way to nearly every sector of the economy and to every region of the country.
The United Auto Workers struck American
Axle & Manufacturing Holdings Inc at 12:01 a.m. Tuesday when no deal was reached on a new labor pact. The largest proportion of American Axle parts are for GM’s pickups and SUVs. Affected are more than 3,600 workers in plants in Michigan and New York.
This morning President Bush signed the Central American Free Trade Act-Dominican Republic (CAFTA) a trade agreement between the United States, and El Salvador, Nicaragua, Guatemala, Honduras, Costa Rica, and the Dominican Republic. Last week the bill narrowly passed the Senate after midnight-hour wrangling, threats and bribery by the Republican Party. The Communist Party, USA denounces this agreement and believes it bodes ill for the working people of the U.S. and Central America...
Over the past two decades, the entire structure of retirement security, as well as other public and social programs, has come under increasing attack from corporations, White House administrations and the ultra-right. This assault has greatly increased under the administration of George W. Bush. (From the People's Weekly World Newspaper)
by Scott Marshall, Vice Chair and Labor Commission Chair, 09/25/2003 14:35
Thousands will be marching in the streets of Miami, Florida, during the week of Nov. 17-21, protesting the proposed Free Trade Agreement of the Americas (FTAA). They will pour into Miami from all over the country and from all over the world. The protesters will be trade unionists, anti-globalization activists, environmentalists, family farmers, religious activists, civil and human rights activists. Thousands will come to Miami to make their voices heard at a meeting of trade ministers from around the Americas.
by Jarvis Tyner, Executive Vice Chair, 01/08/2003 10:56
We are living through a very dangerous period. The Bush Administration and most Republicans in Congress are using the events of September 11th to push their reactionary agenda: imperialist aggression abroad, racism and austerity at home. We are in the middle of a deepening economic crisis made worse by the terrorist attack on September 11, 2001, the great corporate scandals of 2002, and the right-wing policies of the Bush Administration.
by Scott Marshall, CPUSA Vice Chair and Chair, CPUSA Labor Commission, 02/09/2002 00:00
Capitalism may well be facing its worst crisis since the Crash of 1929. I say that fully aware that, as a friend of mine once put it, you Communists have accurately predicted ten out of the last 2 real economic crises.
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