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posted by janrinok on Thursday April 19 2018, @03:28AM   Printer-friendly
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.


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  • (Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 19 2018, @05:49AM (4 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 19 2018, @05:49AM (#668885)

    Socialist

    An actual Socialist wants a change in the ownership model.

    Cuba goes part-way by allowing traditional owner/non-owner employee businesses, but doesn't allow them to get too big e.g. no franchises or chain operations.

    That's still not Socialism.

    Socialism is where every worker is an owner of his workplace, things are decided democratically, and his vote is equal to the vote of any other worker-owner.
    (There are no non-workers who are owners.)

    ...and (Capitalist) Henry Ford would look at these modern Capitalists and say "WTF?"
    In 1913, Ford doubled his workers pay to $5/day.
    He realized that workers are also consumers and, without consumers, an economy goes bust (like USA's is now).

    -- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]

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  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Gaaark on Thursday April 19 2018, @10:14AM (1 child)

    by Gaaark (41) on Thursday April 19 2018, @10:14AM (#668971) Journal

    ^this!
    You don't have workers earning, you don't have customers buying.

    So simple even a CEO or shareholder should be able to figure it out.....

    --
    --- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
    • (Score: 3, Insightful) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday April 19 2018, @10:27AM

      by The Mighty Buzzard (18) Subscriber Badge <themightybuzzard@proton.me> on Thursday April 19 2018, @10:27AM (#668978) Homepage Journal

      Yup, I have to double check my thought processes to make sure I'm not just undercaffeinated when I agree with gewg_ but paying your workers what they're worth to you is an important part of capitalism. Keep the throat cutting where it belongs, on the store shelves.

      --
      My rights don't end where your fear begins.
  • (Score: 2) by bobthecimmerian on Saturday April 21 2018, @12:37PM (1 child)

    by bobthecimmerian (6834) on Saturday April 21 2018, @12:37PM (#670032)

    Our education as children in the US, at least for me and my friends, covered basically four communists: Marx, Lenin, Stalin, and Mao. We all know the results, the "People's leaders" took power for themselves and instead of corrupt monarchies that slaughtered citizens at will and treated the average person like a slave you had a "communist party" that did the same thing but even worse.

    However, that's not the whole story of communism. In the 19th century and 20th century there were communist groups that were libertarian communists, like Mikhail Bukanin. Bukanin predicted exactly what happened to Soviet Russia and Communist China in the 18-fucking-60s. Libertarian communists reject the idea of private ownership of capital (thus, they are communist) but they also reject the idea of a central state to manage the communist economy (thus, they are libertarian). There was a section of Ukraine that operated that way around 1920 but the Bolsheviks conquered it, and sections of Spain operated that way in the late 1930s but other groups conquered it. This is where I'm putting my research... maybe this branch of communism won't inevitably shift into hell on earth.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 22 2018, @08:14AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 22 2018, @08:14AM (#670272)

      a section of Ukraine that operated that way around 1920 but the Bolsheviks conquered it

      Yup. The Ukrainian famine of 1932 - 1933 (Holodomor) was entirely man-made.
      After Lenin died in 1924, Stalin took over.
      Partly, the Ukrainian genocide was punishment for the Ukrainian desire for a better system.

      sections of Spain [...] in the late 1930s

      Notably, Barcelona 1936 - 1937.
      Orwell was there for the Spanish Civil War.
      He wrote about this stuff in "Homage to Catalonia" (the region that contains Barcelona).
      N.B. Catalan is currently attempting to break away from Spain.

      -- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]