Sep. 25th, 2007

sophiaserpentia: (Default)
My inbox, when i bother to check it, can be an interesting place. For example, today i received this (excerpted). Not sure i agree 100%, but there are some good points here:

Socialist Party of Michigan Statement on the 2007 GM Strike

On Saturday September 24th over 73,000 UAW workers across the country walked out in the first nationwide GM strike in 37 years. The Socialist Party of Michigan fully supports the GM strike and we call upon the entire labor movement, blue collar, white collar, and no collar, to mobilize around it.

The strike follows an enormous wave of attacks on the wages, benefits, and job security of autoworkers, as GM reaches $207 billion in revenue and pays out $10.2 million a year to its CEO alone. In addition to demands for further pay cuts from workers and refusals bargain over job security, the company is attempting to force a notoriously insecure Voluntary Employees Beneficiary Association (VEBA) program on GM workers which will eliminate the company’s responsibility to administer employee healthcare while funding it at only 60-70% of the amount it owes.

The claims by GM that, despite its recent rebound, it must balance past financial troubles on the backs of workers who created every penny of its wealth is an outright lie motivated by the greed of the very executives who alone bear the responsibility for any financial troubles the company has incurred. The large shareholders and executives of GM have no fundamental right to make a profit at all from the labor GM workers provide. If their reckless decisions have hurt the financial stability of the company, it is only another reason to remove the parasites and let workers run things themselves!

We urge striking UAW workers to reject any contract that includes VEBA, two-tier wages, supplements to be negotiated after ratification, or any cuts in pay or benefits whatsoever. It is rank-and-file GM workers, not UAW officials who are making the financial sacrifices in this strike, and it is the rank-and-file workers who ultimately have the power to determine where the strike will lead. As the current period demonstrates, the more that concessions are made, the more that demands for concessions will follow. The only way to stop the cycle is for the Big Three to once again feel the muscle of the working class. 

Profile

sophiaserpentia: (Default)
sophiaserpentia

December 2021

S M T W T F S
   1234
567891011
12131415161718
19202122232425
2627282930 31 

Most Popular Tags

Page Summary

Style Credit

Expand Cut Tags

No cut tags
Page generated Jul. 10th, 2025 04:57 am
Powered by Dreamwidth Studios