The GM bankruptcy

[Hannah Bell]

- the closing of more than 1,000 dealerships
- cut 47,000 jobs worldwide, including 23,000 of its remaining 62,000 US hourly employees
- close between 12 and 20 more plants...
- freeze wages,
- eliminate cost-of-living increases
- reduce break time and holidays and
- strip retirees of medical benefits, including dental and optical care.
- expand the use of low-paid entry level and temporary workers and
- no right to strike or even to vote on the terms of the next labor agreement until 2015.


In the late 1970s, faced with growing competition from abroad, a falling rate of profit in basic industry and the militant resistance of workers determined to defend the gains won in past struggles, the American ruling elite embarked on a deliberate policy of deindustrialization.

Sections of industry deemed insufficiently profitable were starved of investment and then shut down in order to free up capital for increasingly parasitical forms of financial speculation. This coincided with a corporate-government offensive against the working class, involving union-busting, strikebreaking, labor frame-ups and the use of plant closures and layoffs to undermine the militancy of the working class and impose cuts in wages and benefits...

The government-dictated bankruptcy of GM marks a new stage... After this next round of restructuring, GM expects to have only 38,000 hourly workers and a maximum of 34 factories left in the United States, compared with 395,000 hourly workers in more than 150 plants at its peak employment in 1979.

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2009/jun2009/pers-j01.shtml

[AndyA]

1. Progress as planned?

Have they figured out who is going to buy cars when no one in America has a decent job?

It's a two way street. If the consumer doesn't have a good job and decent pay, they don't go out and buy new cars. Therefore, few are sold and the company doesn't make any money.

Seems there's a rather obvious gap in this circle.

[notadmblnd]

2. And all these harvard grads can't figure it out.

I said years ago when they stared eliminating jobs, who do they think will continue to buy their products? the Chinese? The Indians? The Mexicans? No! those people will not buy their products because they can't afford to since they are essentially cheap labor slaves. America can not compete with countries who are allowed to exploit their own citizens by using them as slave labor.

[earth mom]

4. Exactly right. It's cutting the nose off to spite the face.

:argh:

[Greyhound]

5. The gap is to be filled with 2+ billion Chinese and Indians. Sure, they don't have the

purchasing power right now, but remember that we will continue to buy (less, but still in great numbers) for years while they continue to expand.

Folks, they're leaving. They've been packing their Louis Vuitton bags for 30 years and the trucks are in the driveway. We will soon find that many of these huge corporations are nothing but paper and subcontractors with no real assets and operations beyond the reach of US law.

[Hannah Bell]

6. and us taxpayers are funding the exit.

[Greyhound]

7. You bet. IBM got a huge grant from the Ford administration to begin setting up

operations in China. We heard about the first McDonald's franchise in all the papers, but IBM and other giants were there years earlier.

The 60s, especially JFK and RFK, scared the shit out of the parasites and they began moving right away, of course you really had to be paying attention and looking to see it. This has been underway for a long time, and you are right, we've paid for almost all of it.

[blindpig]

3. k&r n/t

[Rex]

8. More joining the unemployment rolls.

Which the pundits are saying is slowing down, so the economy must be getting better. :dunce: