Socialist Equality Party Newsletter
This past week, Detroit's emergency manager sent the city into bankruptcy, making Detroit the largest city to file for bankruptcy in US history. The move is a prelude to the escalation of the attack on working people and will be used as a precedent for similar actions throughout the country and internationally. The SEP is running D'Artagnan Collier for mayor of Detroit to mobilize the working class in opposition to the bankers' dictatorship. We urge SEP supporters throughout the country to follow and support this campaign. For more information, visit detroit.socialequality.com today.Contents:
- The Detroit Bankruptcy
- Public meeting: Mobilize the working class against the bankers dictatorship
- Detroit bankruptcy filing paves way for assault on workers
- Tenants facing eviction attend SEP meeting on crisis in Detroit
- Statement from D'Artagnan Collier: Workers must support the Griswold resident's fight against eviction
- From the WSWS archives: Obama declares war on auto workers
The Detroit bankruptcy
20 July 2013
The bankruptcy of Detroit, the former auto capital of the world, is a milestone in the historical decay of American capitalism. It is as well a new point of departure in the social counterrevolution being carried out by the ruling class to make working people pay for the failure of its system.Kevyn Orr, the unelected financial tsar, Republican Governor Rick Snyder, Democratic Mayor David Bing and the establishment media all point to the horrific conditions in Detroit--78,000 abandoned buildings, non-functioning streetlights, antiquated and understaffed fire protection--not to indict the politicians and corporate powers who are responsible, but to justify the destruction of the living standards and essential public services of workers who bear no responsibility for the disastrous situation.
By going into court, Wall Street bankruptcy lawyer Orr i ntends to secure repayment of the city's debt obligations to the big banks and bondholders by shredding union contracts; slashing pensions and health benefits of both active and retired city workers; gutting public services; privatizing public lighting, transit and sanitation; and selling off assets such as the water treatment plant, Belle Isle Park, Detroit Zoo animals, and the Detroit Institute of Arts' world famous collection.
As a consequence, hundreds of thousands of Detroiters will be thrown into conditions of social immiseration. Thousands of small businesses will be wiped out. At the same time, the city is handing over hundreds of millions of dollars in public funds to enable billionaire Detroit Red Wings owner Mike Ilitch to build a new arena and to subsidize real estate mogul Dan Gilbert's plans to gentrify a section of downtown Detroit.
In carrying out this agenda, Orr has the support of both big b usiness parties and the Obama administration, which has ruled out any federal aid to Detroit.
By throwing Detroit into bankruptcy, the ruling class has exposed the reality of class rule and the dictatorship of capital that lurk behind the trappings of democracy. The domination of the banks and corporations is embodied in the role of their agent, Orr, who operates outside of any democratic control.
All of the explanations that are being given for Detroit's descent into bankruptcy--inevitably centering on the supposedly exorbitant cost of city workers' pensions and health benefits--are false. Detroit has been bled dry as a result of a deliberate policy pursued by the auto companies, the banks and the ruling class as a whole over a period of nearly four decades.
The city has been decimated through a process of deindustrialization that began in the late 1970s. This was the respo nse of the American corporate-financial elite to falling profit rates in basic industry and the increasing global integration of production, which made it easier for companies to shift production to low-wage regions.
The dismantling of American industry went hand-in-hand with a shift to the most parasitic forms of financial speculation and the rise of a financial aristocracy. It was accompanied by an attack on social programs, tax cuts for corporations and the rich, and a wave of union-busting, strike-breaking and wage-cutting in the 1980s.
The assault on workers' living standards continued unabated through Democratic as well as Republican administrations in Washington, and under Democratic and Republican politicians alike at the state and local level.
It coincided with the promotion of racial and identity politics and the integration of an upper-middle class layer of Africa n Americans and other minorities into the political power structure, mainly via the Democratic Party. For decades, Detroit, like other US cities devastated by industrial decline, has been administered largely by African American politicians, who have proven no less ruthless and corrupt than their white counterparts.
The destruction of industry and with it the jobs, wages, working conditions and benefits of millions of workers, has been carried out with the full collaboration of the trade unions. The United Auto Workers (UAW), which arose out of explosive struggles by Detroit auto workers in the 1930s, isolated and betrayed every struggle against plant closures and wage-cutting in the 1980s and 1990s and integrated itself into the structure of corporate management.
The last major national auto strike called by the UAW occurred in 1970. Beginning with the Chrysler bailout of 1979-1980, the UAW has spent the la st three decades suppressing the class struggle and working to impose ever more onerous concessions on autoworkers. Since the financial crash of 2008, it has completed its transformation into a corporatist adjunct of the auto companies, becoming a major shareholder in the Big Three auto firms.
The response of the UAW and the rest of the unions in Detroit to the bankruptcy filing has been to order their members to keep working and do nothing to oppose Orr. They have criticized the emergency manager mainly for spurning their offers to collaborate in the imposition of new concessions on city workers.
The bankruptcy filing has national and international implications. Detroit will serve as a precedent for other cities across the country that have been financially crippled by the economic crisis. The use of the bankruptcy court to rip up pensions and health benefits will open the floodgates for similar attacks on millions of teachers, transit workers, sanitation workers and other municipal employees.
Just as Greece became the model for attacks on workers throughout Europe and beyond, the Detroit bankruptcy--which goes beyond even the brutal measures carried out in Greece--will set the pattern for the next stage in the attack on the working class in the US and internationally. At stake is every gain won by the working class through immense and often bloody struggle and sacrifice in the course of more than a century.
The working class in Detroit must implacably oppose the bankruptcy. Workers should reject all demands for concessions and sacrifices to protect the wealth of the financial aristocracy.
The starting point for a struggle is the recognition that the Obama administration, the Democratic Party and the unions are on the opposite side of the barricades.
The Socialist Equality Party is running its own candidate, D'Artagnan Collier, for Detroit mayor. He is fighting for the independent and united mobilization of workers and youth to force out Orr and carry out socialist policies in defense of jobs, wages, pensions, health benefits and all other social services.
We are calling for the formation of independent workers' committees in workplaces, schools and neighborhoods to oppose the bankruptcy. These committees should prepare demonstrations and industrial action against the bankers' conspiracy.
This struggle must be linked to a new political strategy. The claim that "there is no money" for workers' pensions and health care and basic social services is a lie.
The debts to the bankers must be repudiated and the auto companies, banks and major corporations nationalized under the democratic control of the working class so as to channel resources toward meeting social needs rather than private profit.
We urge all those who want to fight the attack on working people in Detroit to support the mayoral campaign of D'Artagnan Collier and join the SEP campaign to mobilize the working class in Detroit and across the country.
Barry Grey
D'Artagnan Collier end-of-election meeting in Detroit
No to bankruptcy! Mobilize the working class against the bankers dictatorship!
The campaign of D'Artagnan Collier, the Socialist Equality Party's candidate for Detroit mayor, is holding an end-of-election meeting on Sunday, August 4, at Wayne State University. The SEP calls on all workers and youth--in Detroit and throughout the area--who are seeking to fight the bankruptcy to make plans to attend today.The largest municipal bankruptcy filing in US history paves the way for sharp cuts in pensions and health care benefits of municipal workers, the further slashing of essential services in the already devastated industrial city and the selling off of public assets to pay the banks and large bond holders that hold the city's debt. What is happening in Detroit will be used as a model for a similar agenda in cities throughout the country and internationally.
Bankruptcy is the outcome of deliberate policies of both parties, at the local, state and national level s, acting on behalf of a small layer of the corporate and financial elite. While handing over trillions to the Wall Street banks, the Obama administration has rejected any measures to bail out Detroit or other threatened state and municipal governments.
The working class must fight back! There is no time to lose! The SEP calls on workers and young people to support Collier's campaign as part of the fight to mobilize the entire working class against the emergency manager and the bankers' dictatorship in Detroit.
Committees of action must be formed in every workplace, neighborhood and community by workers, retirees and youth, independent of the Democrats, Republicans and trade unions. Opposition, including demonstrations and industrial action, must prepared and organized.
What is needed above all is a new political perspective. At the meeting, Collier and other members of the S EP will explain the socialist answer to the bankruptcy of Detroit.
Meeting Details:
Sunday, August 4, 2:00 p.m.
Wayne State University
General Lectures 100
Corner of Warren Avenue and Anthony Wayne Dr. (3rd St.) Map
Detroit bankruptcy filing paves the way for assault on workers
By Shannon Jones
20 July 2013
Michigan Republican Governor Rick Snyder and Kevyn Orr, the
emergency manager overseeing the financial restructuring of Detroit,
defended their decision to force the city into Chapter 9 bankruptcy at a
press conference Friday. The bankruptcy of Detroit, a city of 700,000 people, is the largest municipal bankruptcy in US history. It sets the stage for draconian attacks on workers and pensioners, the gutting of what remains of city services, and the sell-off of public assets to pay creditors.
The events in Detroit are being watched by local governments across the United States and will set a precedent for a nationwide assault on the pensions of public sector workers. Orr, who was appointed by Snyder last March, is seeking a ruling from a US judge that bankruptcy proceedings can be used to abrogate pension agreements, even those, as in the case of Michigan, that are protected under t he state constitution. The city owes about $9 billion to its retiree pension and health benefit funds.
Shortly after the press conference, a Michigan Circuit Court judge ruled that the bankruptcy filing violated the state constitution by threatening to diminish the pension benefits of Detroit city workers. The governor's office is appealing the ruling, which will likely be put on hold while the bankruptcy case proceeds in federal court.
Snyder oozed pious hypocrisy in his opening remarks, feigning concern for the plight of Detroit residents. At the same time, he praised billionaires like Quicken Loans President Dan Gilbert and Little Caesar's owner Mike Ilitch who are buying up downtown property on the cheap in the hopes of turning a quick profit as developers pour money into the downtown area.
Both Snyder and Orr repeatedly cited "legacy costs"--that is, the pensions and health care benefits of the city's 31,000 active and retired workers--as a major factor in the decision to file for bankruptcy. Under a proposal that Orr advanced earlier this year, pension funds would receive just 10 cents on the dollar for billions in the city's unfunded pension obligations. Orr likewise proposed an immediate freeze on future pension payments and to shift retirees onto Medicare or privately-controlled health care exchanges under Obama's Affordable Care Act. Current employees would also see drastic cuts in health benefits and the loss of employer-paid pensions.
The Obama administration, while signaling its support for the bankruptcy filing in Detroit, has made clear there will be no federal money made available to assist the city. This despite the $85 billion a month that the Federal Reserve is pumping into Wall Street through its "quantitative easing" program.
When a reporter for the World Soc ialist Web Site asked Orr why the city was only offering pension funds 10 cents on the dollar while the banks holding Detroit's debt were being offered 75 cents on the dollar, the emergency manager defended his actions citing "the realities" of the situation.
Another reporter asked Snyder if city assets like Belle Isle and artwork from the Detroit Institute of Art would be put up for sale as part of the bankruptcy settlement. Snyder replied that "all the assets of city need to be considered as part of this process."
A WSWS reporter asked Snyder how he and Orr could claim that there was no money for pensions when hundreds of millions of dollars, including public money, are being poured into downtown development. In response the governor first cited years of waste and mismanagement of the pension system. He then cynically claimed to sympathize with the plight of the retirees.
For their part the city worker unions have refused to mobilize their membership to oppose the moves by Orr and Snyder, and only protested that the union leadership were excluded from the process of attacking worker's pensions. In a statement on the bankruptcy filing, American Federation of State County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) President Lee Saunders complained that the governor and the emergency manager had acted without first entering into negotiations with the unions. "Despite assurances from Snyder's hand-picked financial manager Kevyn Orr that AFSCME would have ample opportunity to discuss alternatives, they unilaterally embarked on this treacherous path without meaningful input from those who would be most affected."
Detroit city workers and residents responded to the proposal to rob them of their pensions with anger and disgust.
Ken, a worker contacted by the WSWS on Friday said, "By calling w orkers' pensions 'legacy costs, they are saying our lives have no value. Jones Day [Kevyn Orr's law firm] will make a killing off of this. They will handle the bankruptcy, no doubt, and the workers will be on the losing end."
"The decision to file for bankruptcy is unfair and biased," said Trandi, a former Ford employee and current city worker. "They are going after the workers but are protecting the businesses."
"It is pitiful," said Barbara, a retiree who has lived in the city for eleven years. "I have never seen anything like it. The reason they are doing the bankruptcy to me, boils down to the people who are running the city, the politicians and the rich business people. They are stealing the money."
She was especially angry about the contrast between the vast investments and public subsidies for upscale downtown development and the savage attack on working class living con ditions and city services. "They just take, take, take, take," she continued. "They never do anything for the city. They want to build up the downtown and let the rest of us starve. How can we stand it?. They have been doing the same thing for 60 years, but it is just now coming to a head."
"Coleman Young was doing the same thing and the white mayor that was in office before him. They all do it. They are just for the rich people-- white, black, or whatever. Race does not matter.
"They want Detroit to be just for the rich. They want us, the working people who have lived here all of our lives, to move out. That's all it is."
Tenants facing eviction attend SEP meeting on crisis in Detroit
By Shannon Jones
17 July 2013
SEP mayoral candidate D'Artagnan Collier addresses the meeting
The meeting, held near Wayne State University, featured D'Artagnan Collier, SEP candidate for mayor of Detroit, as the main speaker. Attendees included a delegation of tenants from the Griswold Apartments near downtown Detroit who are facing eviction.
The 120 mostly elderly and retired residents are being forced out to make way for upscale real estate development, including a new hockey stadium. They were given eviction notices in May after their building was sold to a real estate firm working closely with Detroit billionaire Dan Gilbert, who owns and controls some 30 properties in and around downtown.
Collier opened his remarks by condemning the verdict in the case of Tr ayvon Martin, the unarmed black teenager shot to death in Florida by George Zimmerman, a neighborhood watch volunteer. In a travesty of justice, a jury acquitted Zimmerman of all charges.
At the same time, he declared, "The trial and the outcome have been presented solely as a racial issue." While racism likely played a role in Zimmerman's attack on Martin, he said, the focus on race by the media and pseudo left groups was aimed at concealing the fundamental cause of oppression--that is the capitalist system. The "bigger issues," Collier said, "are the attacks on democratic rights and the growth of inequality. No one addresses the deplorable social conditions in this country, where one in six people are on food stamps."
Collier said Detroit was the focal point of this crisis. "Behind the backs of working people, the Wall Street bankers and their unelected hatchet man, emergency manager Kevyn Orr, are conspiring to destroy pensions, city services and sell public assets.
"To get an idea of the kind of revitalization they are speaking of, look at the treatment of ten ants in the Henry Street and Griswold Apartments. The agreement to expel low-income workers in both locations was approved by the city government, the emergency manager and billionaires."
"How do we see the revitalization of Detroit?" asked Collier. "Socialism is the only way forward, the reorganization of all economic life under the democratic control of the working class, to meet social needs, not private profit."
The next speaker, 2012 US presidential candidate Jerry White, reviewed the history of the crisis in Detroit. "The plans to 'revitalize Detroit' are being drafted behind the backs of working people," he said. "They are being drawn up in the interests of a financial elite," he said.
Jerry White speaking at the meeting
"As industry was shut down the American capitalist system was based more and more on debt. What happened in Detroit was far more criminal than what they did to the subprime mortgages. The city has been saddled with massi ve debt." White noted that $246 million a year goes to pay the city's debt service to the banks.
White contrasted the policies adopted by the ruling elite in the 1930s depression to the present economic crisis, pointing to the actions of the Roosevelt administration, which responded to the spread of mass unemployment and the explosion of social struggles by instituting a public works program, the Works Progress Administration or WPA, which hired 100,000 workers in Detroit alone.
"Today," said White, "under conditions of mass unemployment, any suggestion that there should be a public works program is laughed off by the corporate and political establishment." Instead, the program of the Obama administration was to force young people to work for poverty wages.
In conclusion, White declared, the problem was not a lack of resources, but who controlled those resources, noting that a tax on the 13 richest billionaires in Detroit would more than solve the entire debt problem of the city.
After the opening reports a lively and far ranging discussion ensued. Among the issues raised by those in the audience was the question of public works, urban farming, the export of jobs to China and other low wage countries and the plans advanced by the emergency manager to privatize the city's water department.
In response to the question of the export of jobs White explained that capitalism was a global system. "It is not our wealth or our money. We are not paid for what we produce." Workers in the US, said White, had more in common with their brothers and sisters in China and Mexico than with the owners of the US banks and corporations.
Lawrence Porter, SEP assistant national secretary, said that proposals for urban farming were utopian and could not possibly provid e the food, let alone the jobs, needed to sustain the population of Detroit. He noted that a section of environmentalists were endorsing urban gardening in alliance with organizations such as the Detroit Works Project that are seeking to shut down whole areas of the city, driving residents out by denying basic services.
Several Griswold tenants intervened in the discussion, expressing their determination to carry forward the fight against eviction.
Recardo, who heads the tenants association at Griswold
Later in the discussion John, the vice president of the United Tenants Council of Councils (UTCC)--a body that brings together tenants councils throughout downtown apartments--proposed a march on the offices of the department of Housing and Urban Development.
In response Collier replied, "We say yes, workers must resort to the kind of tactics they carried out in the 1930s and 1960s, but it must be part of an overall struggle and strategy against capitalism, whose aim is not to try to pressure the ruling class for reforms but to take political power in our own hands. The working class must advance its own solution because capitalism has failed."
Lawrence Porter said, "We would endorse shutting down Detroit. The fight for the maximum mobilization of the working class, he said, is only possible if you are prepared to fight the unions and break with Democratic Party. They work together with the Republicans to carry out the same policy against the working people.
"Workers should be engaged in strikes, demonstrations and rallies. But that must be connected to the struggles facing working people throughout the area--city workers, auto workers, the unemployed--to come together to come together and recognize that an attack against one is an attack against all."
Porter called on the meeting to endorse the open letter drafted by the Griswold tenants, with the assistance of the SEP, appealing to workers in the Detroit area to rally behind their struggles.
Speaking in support of the resolution, the president of the Wayne State University chapter of the International Youth and Students for Social Equality, the youth and student movement of the SEP, expressed the support of the IYSSE for the Griswold tenants. She pledg ed that IYSSE members would broadly distribute the open letter in neighborhoods and workplaces.
The meeting then voted unanimously to endorse the open letter and fight for its distribution to workers in the Detroit area. After the meeting informal discussion continued.
Several of those attending spoke to the World Socialist Web Site. Vanessa Hicks, a Griswold tenant, said, "My main concern is to bring humanity back to Detroit. Whatever happened to doing right? It has nothing to do with your color. We are letting the public know we are very much alive.
"D'Artagnan is the one who made me realize we have two parties claiming to be different, which are really the same. They all represent those with money.
"The SEP wants to do what is right. I think the IYSSE is giving young people a chance to open their eyes and see what is going on."
Sharon, an unemployed nurse and a Griswold tenant, said, "I think corruption is totally rampant in Detroit. A lot of the City Council has their fingers in the money pot. Who is Kevyn Orr in bed with? Detroit is up for sale. We have a wonderful art collection a few individuals would love to get their hands on. This is what is scaring me."
Workers must support the Griswold residents' fight against eviction
Statement by D'Artagnan Collier, SEP candidate for mayor of Detroit
10 July 2013
As the Socialist Equality Party's candidate for mayor of Detroit, I urge workers and young people throughout the Detroit Metro area to support the Griswold Apartment tenants who are fighting eviction and taking a stand against the "restructuring" of Detroit in the interests of the rich.On July 6, residents of the Griswold Apartments issued an "Open Letter to All Detroit Area Citizens" calling on working people to support their fight. The majority of the 120 residents of the downtown apartment building are senior citizens on fixed incomes. After working their entire lives in the city's auto factories, public schools and other work locations, they have been given until March 2014 to pack up their belongings and vacate homes where they have lived , in some cases, for decades.
This outrageous and inhumane act is part of a wider plan to evict low-income residents from the downtown and midtown areas and clear the way for an upscale housing and entertainment district, including a new hockey stadium, which is largely being subsidized with public money.
This plan has been endorsed by Emergency Manager Kevyn Orr. Orr is using the threat of bankruptcy to impose sweeping attacks on workers and essential social services. The aim is to pay off the big banks and wealthy investors who control the city's bonds and other forms of debt.
The Griswold tenants have made it clear they will not be pushed out like animals. They have appealed to the working class, writing, "What is happening to us is happening in different forms to every section of workers, seniors and youth throughout the city." Under Orr, they write, "Wages and pensions w ill be slashed, jobs eliminated, city assets sold off" and "large sections of Detroit shut down, with a small section (7.2 square miles) turned into an enclave for the rich."
The residents declare, in a statement I wholeheartedly support, that, "It is time to fight back!" This is a sentiment shared by workers throughout Detroit, the US and around the world, from Greece, to Brazil, to Turkey and Egypt.
Five years after the collapse of Wall Street firm Lehman Brothers and the beginning of the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression of the 1930s, the stock market has fully recovered, banking and other corporate executives are once again pocketing huge fortunes, and corporations, including the Detroit automakers, are making billions in profits.
But the corporate elite and their bought-and-paid-for politicians insist they will not give up a penny of their ill-gotten wea lth to alleviate the miserable conditions they have created. Trillions went to Wall Street and to fund criminal wars, but workers, young people and retirees are told there is "no money" to fund pensions, health care, public education or anti-poverty programs.
Detroit is being used as a model for the "new normal" in America. Public schools, social services, parks, the Detroit Zoo and even the masterpieces of the Detroit Institute of Art are to be put up for sale to private investors and venture capitalists. In violation of the state constitution, the emergency manager is reneging on the pension and health care obligations owed to hundreds of thousands of retired city workers and their dependents.
As part of this process, the city is removing "undesirables," i.e., low-income people, from downtown and shutting down entire working class neighborhoods. They aim to create a city that caters to the needs of the sup er-rich, not those whose labor produces society's wealth.
The open letter denounces the fact that "decisions that affect the lives of hundreds of thousands of working people in Detroit are being done behind our backs." It declares: "To advance our interests, we must organize independently, setting up committees in factories and neighborhoods throughout the city" and insists, "We cannot rely on any section of the political establishment, Democrat or Republican."
The letter concludes by calling for a mass conference of workers throughout the city and metropolitan area to "discuss a program to stop evictions and defend all the rights of the working class."
The open letter is an important step, which indicates the growing political understanding that workers ourselves must take the initiative if we are to defend our social and democratic rights.
After nearly five years of the Obama administration, tens of millions have come to realize that the candidate of "change" has gone even further than his Republican predecessor in attacking workers, waging criminal wars and spying on the American people, as the courageous actions of former NSA contractor Edward Snowden have revealed.
As for the local Democratic Party politicians, including my opponents in the mayoral race, they have no answers to the devastating social crisis in Detroit because they defend the capitalist system and the immense levels of social inequality that it inherently creates. The Griswold residents have boldly placed their fate in the hands of the working class instead.
A turn to the working class does not mean an appeal to the United Auto Workers, AFSCME or any other unions. These organizations have long abandoned the interests of the workers they allegedly represent and have become j unior partners in corporate exploitation, while blocking any attempt to break with the Democratic Party.
What do we mean by turning to the working class? In Detroit and the surrounding suburbs there are millions of auto workers, hospital workers, teachers, service workers, technology workers, high school and university students. All have a common interest, no matter what their race or ethnicity, to break the grip of the banks and corporations and reorganize economic and political life on a more rational, democratic and egalitarian basis.
The workers who create society's wealth have the greatest interest in making sure that wealth is used to lift the material and cultural level of all the people.
But this can only be achieved through a political struggle to unite every section of the working class and oppose all those, including the trade unions and pro-Democratic Party group s, that use race and identity politics to subordinate workers to the demands of the banks and big business.
In my election campaign I have called for the replacement of the City Council with a council of workers, a body that genuinely represents the interests of the overwhelming majority of the city's population. Only when workers take political power in our own hands can we put the banks and corporations under the control of working people, redistribute the wealth, and pour billions into the hiring of the unemployed to rebuild the city of Detroit--not for the rich, but for working people.
From the WSWS archives: Obama declares war on auto workers
31 March 2009
President Barack Obama's speech on the auto industry Monday was nothing less than a declaration of war against the working class. In a statement dripping with class arrogance and cynicism, he rejected the cost-cutting proposals of General Motors and Chrysler as insufficient and demanded more concessions from auto workers.No one could be unaware of the blatant double standard that has governed the administration's response to the economic crisis. Up to $10 trillion has been handed over to the giant banks and hedge funds. These sums have been turned over, with no restrictions, to institutions whose reckless speculation was a critical factor in creating the economic crisis.
These vast funds are not going toward the production of socially useful goods and real value, but rather to bolster the bank accounts and investment portfolios of the financial aristocracy. Just this past week t he administration came out in opposition to any attempt to reclaim bonuses to executives at AIG and other institutions bailed out by the government.
The sum of money involved in the bailout of the banks dwarfs the amount involved in the auto industry by a factor of several hundred. But when it comes to the auto industry, Obama declares that the companies must not become "wards of the state" and demands massive cost-cutting measures--all of which are directed against the workers.
When Obama declares that the proposals submitted by GM and Chrysler are inadequate, the principal object of his attack is the working class. To carry out a "fundamental restructuring," Obama said, "will require unions and workers who have already made extraordinarily painful concessions to do more."
The impact of these further concession demands on workers will be devastating. Already, 400,000 jobs ha ve been lost in the auto industry over the past year and tens of thousands more are on the chopping block. Workers will be thrown out of work amidst the worst job market in generations.
Wages will be slashed further; work rules will be gutted to increase exploitation; health coverage, pensions and other benefits will be slashed or eliminated. Immediately targeted are the medical benefits of hundreds of thousands of retirees.
Not only the Big Three companies, but a significant section of dependent industry, from suppliers to dealers, is threatened.
Before the assault is over, workers still employed in the industry will be subjected to sweatshop conditions, with virtually no benefits and no job security.
The administration has all but signed a death warrant for Chrysler and its 26,000 hourly workers, giving it a mere 30 days to reach a merger agreement with Fiat or forfeit further government aid. Obama is likewise pushing GM and its 62,400 workers toward the bankruptcy courts, which would be used as a "mechanism to help them restructure quickly and emerge stronger," he said. This is code language for shredding union contacts and imposing near-poverty wages by judicial fiat.
Obama concluded his remarks with an utterly cynical assurance of "support" for workers who are being devastated by his own policies. These declarations deserve nothing but contempt.
The measures announced Monday confirm once again that the Obama administration is a government of, by and for the financial elite which exerts a stranglehold over the economy and controls the entire political establishment.
The investment bankers represented by Obama are using the economic crisis as an opportunity to fundamentally restructure class relations in Ame rica. Culminating a three-decade offensive against working people, they are destroying whatever remains of the gains made by previous generations of workers so as to intensify the exploitation of the working class.
The attack on auto workers will become the spearhead for similar attacks against workers throughout the country and internationally, in every sector of the economy. Wage cuts, layoffs and cuts in benefits and social programs will be implemented across the board. The Obama administration has already made clear that it is targeting basic entitlement programs such as Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.
Obama's announcement once again exposes the bankruptcy of the United Auto Workers union. It has played a critical role in pushing through concessions year after year and suppressing opposition from the workers. In the process, it has ever more closely integrated itself with corporate management. Th ere can be no doubt that the UAW will capitulate once again. It is concerned solely with the perks and privileges of the bureaucrats who control the union.
After the auto companies received government loans last year, the UAW promoted the lie that the Obama administration would take a pro-worker position and the union bureaucracy enthusiastically backed his campaign. This, just as every other policy of the union, has proven to be a trap and betrayal of the workers' interests. In the naked instrument of Wall Street that is the Obama administration, one sees the culmination of the decades-long effort of the UAW and the entire trade union bureaucracy to subordinate workers to the Democratic Party.
If a disaster is to be averted, auto workers have no choice but to take matters into their own hands and assert their independent class interests. The Socialist Equality Party and the World Socialist Web Site propose the following steps:
1. Form independent rank-and-file committees to revive direct forms of working class struggle!
If further concessions are to be successfully opposed, workers must move to form organizations completely independent of the UAW. Rank-and-file factory, workplace and neighborhood committees should be formed to revive the militant traditions of the working class. Workers should prepare now for demonstrations, strikes and factory occupations to prevent plant closings. An appeal must be made to all workers to take up a common struggle in defense of their basic needs--for jobs, housing, health care and education.
2. Break with the Democratic and Republican Parties!
Industrial action must be infused with a new political strategy based on the independent interests of the working class. The actions of the Obama administration clearly show that if workers are to defend their interests, they must build their own political party.
3. Reject the capitalist system and revive an international socialist movement of the working class!
The economic crisis has exposed all claims that the "free market" is the highest form of social organization. Workers in the United States and throughout the world are facing the devastating consequences of the collapse of capitalism, an economic system based on the pursuit of private profit.
The Socialist Equality Party fights for the socialist reorganization of the economy. This includes the nationalization of the ma jor corporations and banks under the public ownership and democratic control of the working class. These productive forces must be organized on the basis of social need, not private profit. The world economy can no longer be subject to the blackmail of a money-mad financial aristocracy.
What is happening in the United States is a severe expression of conditions all over the world, and workers can defend themselves only through their international unity. The corporations and banks--together with their accomplices in the trade unions--will seek to defend their own interests by pitting workers of different countries against each other. These efforts must be rejected. Workers in Europe, Asia, Canada and Mexico are impacted by the crisis in the American auto industry, and there is no region of the world that is not suffering from the economic collapse.
Joe Kishore
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