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from the found-more-exploitable-workers-elsewhere dept.
The World Socialist Web Site reports
[October 3], Toyota wound up production at its plant in Altona, a working-class suburb in southwest Melbourne. The closure marks the end of the company's 54-year Australian manufacturing operation. The shutdown left 2,700 workers unemployed, and threatens tens of thousands more jobs in the car components industry.
The Australian Manufacturing Workers Union (AMWU), which covers car workers, previously oversaw the shutdown of Ford's production in Melbourne and Geelong in October last year, eliminating the 600 remaining jobs. Once Holden closes its operation in South Australia, in less than three weeks, a further 944 workers will be left unemployed, and car production will cease in Australia.
A University of Adelaide study in 2014 predicted this would result in the destruction of some 200,000 jobs across the country.
The string of shutdowns is an indictment of successive Labor governments, at the state and federal level, and the trade unions. Having imposed round after round of sackings, speed-ups and cuts to conditions, the unions, functioning as an industrial police force of the car corporations, have done everything they can to ensure "orderly closures".
[...] after extracting vast profits from their employees, Ford, Toyota, and Holden, have decided their Australian operations are not providing a sufficient return for their ultra-wealthy shareholders. They have thus ended manufacturing, wreaking social havoc on devastated working-class communities.
This is part of a global restructuring by the major car producers, aimed at taking advantage of poverty-level wages and economies of scale in Asian manufacturing hubs. Workers in every part of the world, from Asia and the US and Europe, are paying the price.
[...] The unions, taking their nationalist and pro-capitalist program to its logical conclusion, support this global race to the bottom, helping companies pit workers against each other along national lines. The AMWU, working with Toyota and the major companies, drove down wages and conditions over the past 20 years, seeking to ensure Australian car manufacturing was "internationally competitive".
[...] This is part of a broader corporate offensive against jobs, wages, and conditions, following the collapse of the mining boom, amid a deepening crisis of Australian capitalism. Massive job cuts have been imposed in the energy sector, telecommunications, and virtually every other industry.
A Roy Morgan survey in August found that more than 10 percent of the national workforce, more than 1.2 million people, were out of work.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Monday October 09 2017, @09:22PM (16 children)
I worked for a telco equipment company which lost 2/3rds of its people after the 2001 crash.
One guy was ranting really loud that the management was all bastards (somewhat true by that point), and the founder was an asshole who stole ten years from him because he was getting laid off.
As if he hadn't been well paid for ten years, with great benefits, nor enjoyed the stock options that paid for his nice house and man toys...
(Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 09 2017, @11:42PM (14 children)
It didn't lose them; it knew exactly where they were.
It fired them.
...meanwhile, Mondragon (a worker-owned cooperative) doesn't lay off its worker-owners.
When things get tight, worker-owners are moved to a different product line, if that is a good choice; if necessary, every worker-owner's workweek is cut a bit.
Worst case: Everybody there still has a job at a living wage.
Now, when have you ever seen a Capitalist company start cutting at the pork side of the operation, shedding the highest-paid non-producing dead weight first?
(BTW, Mondragon's greatest pay differential is 9:1.) [googleusercontent.com] (orig) [wikipedia.org]
...and at Suma, the largest worker-owned co-op in UK, -every- worker-owner gets the -same- (very nice) compensation package. [google.com]
Socialism is clearly better.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0, Disagree) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 09 2017, @11:57PM (6 children)
Wow, talk about cherry-picking.
Mondragon is all too happy to pay its non-owner staff low wages, for part-time work, and can them when it suits them. They've effectively created a two-tier system.
They're also operating in a distinctly socialist-light environment, in which individual accumulation of capital is expressly supported.
... and as for socialism being somehow "better" there's no mention of individuals freelancing outside the coopera-corporate system. Fuck them, amirite?
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 10 2017, @12:52AM (5 children)
Mondragon is all too happy to pay its non-owner staff
Everyone working at Mondragon is an equal owner of the company.
That's what "worker-owned cooperative" means.
Nitwit.
I've repeatedly explained this for three and a half fucking years.
Are you new here or were you in the "special" class at school?
low wages
A living wage.
In a worker-owned co-op, the worker-owners democratically decide how the profits will be used.
If you think they are going to screw themselves, you're just stupid.
for part-time work
Even on a reduced schedule, they still make more than enough to pay the bills.
N.B. In France, EVERYONE has a 35 hour workweek and they do just fine there as well.
a distinctly socialist-light environment
You are very poorly educated.
It's clear that you haven't bothered with the autodidact thing either.
You have, however, uncritically swallowed a whole bunch of Cold War bullshit.
in which individual accumulation of capital is expressly supported
Capitalism and Socialism are OWNERSHIP models.
In the first, there are lots of non-owners; in the latter, everybody is an EQUAL owner.
The first is an Autocracy; the latter is a Democracy.
Thanks for playing our game.
Collect your dunce cap on the way out.
You can now go back to your wage-slave job and continue to allow your Capitalists overlords to exploit you.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 10 2017, @01:32AM (4 children)
So, denial is cool.
And if you want to live in denial, never google as follows, and if you do, then DEFINITELY never read the linked content:
http://www.google.com/search?q=non-owner+workers+mondragon [google.com]
In your happy world of denial, you can continue to fantasise that I'm a poorly-educated wage-slave. I'm sure you'll feel very happy with that.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 10 2017, @02:59AM (3 children)
Mondragon makes every attempt to promote from within.
It is an extremely rare occurrence when they have to bring someone new in to get stuff done.
My understanding is that when someone new is brought in, he has to pay the modest ante just like everybody else in the company and he then becomes a worker-owner.
...and your crap link brings up nothing to dispel my vision of how the company works.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 10 2017, @03:15AM (2 children)
The parent post is a glowing illustration of what we call "confirmation bias". Things that support the favoured view are obviously true. Contrary evidence is manifestly false, or not worth investigating, and certainly not worth believing or taking seriously.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 10 2017, @03:35AM (1 child)
...and quote from that.
...or provide a better search link that actually supports your supposition.
...and which will get through the S/N comments engine without being molested (e.g. quote marks stripped).
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 13 2017, @05:01PM
Not the OP, but what the hell, a guy (or gal) gives you a google link and you can't even follow it up? Wow, talk about your entitled little basement socialists.
Direct quote from a pretty friendly website: "Many cooperatives in the group not only abroad, but also outside of the Basque Country in the rest of Spain, make use of a significant number of non-member employees (Mondragon’s rule in the Basque Country is min 85% worker-member), especially in periods of high demand or season."
Sounds a lot like temporary workers being brought on and tossed out to me. There's more: "The Eroski Group grew rapidly and could not keep up with the speed of expansion, and, hence, a larger and larger percentage of the Eroski work force came to consist of non-member workers in conventionally-owned subsidiaries." So, yeah, there's that. Bought subsidiaries. Conventionally-employed people.
And then of course there's the lobster-pot thing of not being able to transfer your capital account. Why the hell not? It's yours, right? No, it's not yours, it's the cooperative's. And you get the privilege of being one of them, if that's your thing.
Hell, they even had to finally admit that certain kinds of professionals were kind of necessary, and that they would kind of demand higher wages, and then relax their rules for that. Go figure, the market for workers really does matter.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 10 2017, @04:31AM (6 children)
Capitalism does not conflict with how the people of Mondragon have decided to allocate their capital...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 10 2017, @08:51PM (5 children)
...only if you don't understand how decisions are made in the typical Capitalist operation.
...and if you concentrate on "capital" when trying to distinguish between Capitalism and Socialism, you're probably the type who would also become fixated on "liberal" when trying to analyze "Neoliberalism". [soylentnews.org]
...and Mondragon regularly outcompetes Capitalist operations in the market.
...in 40 countries, spanning 5 continents.
.
Let's play '"Name that system".
Example 1:
You go to work and someone else has decided what you will produce.
Someone else has decided how you will produce it.
Someone else has decided where it will be produced.
Someone else has decided what will be done with the profits.
Example 2:
You go to work and you and your coworkers democratically decide what you will produce.
You and your coworkers democratically decide how you will produce it.
You and your coworkers democratically decide where it will be produced.
You and your coworkers democratically decide what will be done with the profits.
N.B. Every worker's vote is equal to any other worker's vote.
...and the reason it works this way is because there are no non-worker owners|stockholders|board of directors.
In fact, it would be accurate to say that the workers (and only the workers) collectively own the means of production.
.
In the 1st example, TPTB could
- have you doing things in an unsafe way
(West, Texas fertilizer factory (exploded); Union Carbide's Bhopal plant (leaked poison gas and killed thousands and thousands))
- have you dump poisonous coal ash into the nearby river because The Ownership Class doesn't live in the community where the production is done, so they don't care about that community
- export your job because they found cheaper, more exploitable workers (The point of TFA)
- pay the workers as little as they think they get away with and cut benefits each year
(The Aussie workers repeatedly made concessions but got canned anyway.
Welcome to the post-Thatcher/post-Reagan era.)
In the 2nd example, workers who own their own company would tend not to
- do things in a worker-hostile/dangerous way
- poison the air, water, soil, and people of their own community
- export their jobs
- cheat themselves WRT compensation
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 10 2017, @10:49PM (4 children)
Sounds pretty capitalist to me. Owners of capital make a collaborative decision on what to do with their capital collectively, on a basis of voluntary cooperation. Now bearing in mind I haven't studied the legal systems of the whole world, but I'm not aware of any place that would be illegal, and I'm pretty sure not in Australia.
Why don't you go there and suggest that they start building cars themselves? I'm sure all those laid-off workers will be happy to chip in for a new factory.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 11 2017, @01:51AM (3 children)
You haven't accounted for the non-owners within Capitalism.
(Socialism doesn't have any of those.)
Thanks for playing our game.
Collect your dunce cap on the way out.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 11 2017, @03:21AM (2 children)
You still haven't explained why those australian auto workers aren't going to pool their resources and out-manufacture all the filthy vampire-owned ones like Toyota.
I mean, that's the logical conclusion of your position, right? Something about occupying the factories, the workers claiming the means of production, and then all riding off into the democratically managed sunset? Or doesn't that theory apply if they all have to chip in? Or are the vampires somehow preventing them from doing this? If so, how, and how can we make it better? After all, once released from their capitalist bonds they will produce more cars, faster and cheaper than their competition in Thailand. And better, of course.
C'mon, throw us all a bone here.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 11 2017, @09:49PM (1 child)
My hypothesis is that they're even more stupid than you are.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 12 2017, @03:35AM
Impossible. We hear plenty about how talented, virtuous, and just plain gee-shucks nice guys these poor deprived workers are. They will outperform, outproduce, outdesign and simply outdo their wageslave competition on every level. They might just happen to be ignorant. So, are you advising them? Or one of your fellow travelers?
Are you going to make a shining example to show the whole world? Don't keep us in suspense, here.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday October 10 2017, @01:55PM
There's two sides... the telco job/lifestyle of the mid-late 1900s (up to about 1990) was presented as a life-career. You put in your hours, every year for 30 years, don't screw up too badly during that time and at the end there's a decent pension and we all live happily ever after. Contrast this with "consultant" careers that paid (in the 1980s) 3x and more in salary, but little or no benefits.
So, when the lifer-career jobs turn around and start dumping employees who've "done nothing wrong" in their personal/professional actions, always performed as requested, that's where the feelings of injustice erupt.
Presently, I'm employed by a bigish firm that's in the process of transitioning from a life-career institution to more of a "gig economy" hirer of consultants and temp workers. It's a tough act for them to put on because a big carrot they've used in the past to get their "associate-consultant-contractor-flunkies" to work for such low pay is that if they do a really outstanding job as a contractor, they'll get transitioned to the glorious full-time position. But with health insurance benefits sucking worse every year, pension benefits dwindling into the past, 401(k) matching getting watered down, etc. that carrot isn't what it used to be, and we've got lower level employees just walking away from the glorious-full-time spots as trailing spouses or for even less compelling personal reasons.
Personally, I'd like to work the old 3x pay consultant gigs about 50-75% of the time, and spend the time between jobs traveling and enjoying life. Unfortunately, since the 1990s, all that has been on offer are jobs that pay like lifer-career but lay you off like a consultant.
🌻🌻 [google.com]