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from the continuing-downward-spiral-for-workers dept.
The World Socialist Web Site reports:
In spite of a continuous chorus in the media of a booming economy creating robust job numbers, General Motors is unleashing a new round of attacks on autoworkers in North America as part of a global cost-cutting offensive against the working class.
The corporation announced on [April 13] it will cut one of two operating shifts at its massive Lordstown, Ohio, assembly plant, cutting as many as 1,500 jobs effective June 15. As recently as 2016, the plant was operating three shifts around the clock with nearly 4,000 workers. By the end of June only 1,500 will remain.
As sales for the compact Chevy Cruze, the only vehicle produced at the facility, began to slip, GM shuttered the third shift in January 2017, axing 800 jobs. Over the course of 2017, the plant was idled for weeks at a time and rumors began to circulate about the impending layoffs.
As an indication of the severity of the cuts, this is the first time since the recession of the 1980s that the plant will operate with only one shift.
[...] The company sold 450,000 fewer vehicles to dealers last year than they did in 2016, but because of aggressive cost-cutting attacks on the workers, imposed by the union, which include everything from an expansion of Temporary Part Time employees at less than half pay, widespread layoffs and shutdowns[,] GM pretax profits for 2017 topped $12.8 billion.
US passenger car sales are on track to decline for the fifth straight year while sales of light trucks are setting records. US sales of compact cars dropped 10 percent in the first quarter and 5.8 percent through 2017.
Lordstown is not the only plant affected by this shift. GM's Detroit-Hamtramck factory, for example, relies heavily on production of small and midsize sedans, including the Buick LaCrosse, Cadillac CT6, Chevrolet Impala, and the Chevrolet Volt. In October, the automaker announced plans to cut about 200 jobs there and halt production beginning November 20 through the Christmas break, affecting 1,500 jobs over the holidays. The second shift was eliminated in March 2017, eliminating 1,300 jobs.
[...] The same conditions are developing in [GM] factories everywhere as GM pursues its cost-cutting strategy with a vengeance.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 19 2018, @03:50AM (4 children)
Even for a Euro-socialist such as myself, this statement is just... cringe-worthy, to put it mildly. This type of phrasing is what turns people away from the good effects of socialism.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 19 2018, @10:49AM (1 child)
What things are you doing so that you and your coworkers become the owners of the means of production.
If your answer is "None", then you aren't a Socialist.
turns people away from the good effects of socialism
I would be interesting in your opinion of what those are.
As you apparently don't know what a Socialist is, that should be quite comical.
...and the only thing "socialist" about this whole thing is the name of the website.
If they were going for anything Socialist, they'd be saying "Take over the means of production and become the owners." [googleusercontent.com] (orig) [libcom.org]
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 19 2018, @11:05AM
The new owners confronted the bank that held the deed to the property and didn't back down.
The workers got repaid for the time that the means of production was idle. [googleusercontent.com] (orig; at about the 60 percent mark on the page) [dissidentvoice.org]
There's a tire factory in Mexico that has a similar story of the workers becoming the owners.
Both are now Socialist worker-owned cooperatives.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by eravnrekaree on Thursday April 19 2018, @03:46PM (1 child)
Socialism is a lie. The problem here in the rust belt is Globalism. Nationalism is the solution. Globalism is what has led to the rust belt being turned into what it is, the decimation of working class families. What do you Socialists hate most? Nationalists. Becuase you want to drive the people in first world economies into poverty with your globalism with mass immigration and offshoring so you can then dupe them into your totalitarian Socialist schemes with the poverty you created. Having to compete with cheap immigrant labor and foreign labor in third world countries, you hatred of borders and national sovereignty, is whats driving people into poverty and then you exploit it for own totalitarian agenda.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 19 2018, @11:14PM
The problem [...] is Globalism.
That's just Capitalism doing what Capitalism does: minimizing costs by finding the cheapest labor.
If your tiny little brain could actually connect dots, it would see that the problem is Capitalism.
(Thomas Piketty wrote a 696-page book on the topic.)
Nationalism is the solution
Riiight. That Hitler thing worked out so well.
Capitalism + Nationalism == Fascism
Gawd, are you ever stupid.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]