On 7/14/2011 10:11 AM, Hinrich Kuhls wrote: > The real political problem as reported by the NYT > in its article on the new GM plant > http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/13/business/with-chevrolet-sonic-gm-and-uaw-reinvent-automaking.html > in a nutshell: > > "The radically revamped factory here operates > with fewer and cheaper workers, many of whom are > paid $14 an hour rather than the full U.A.W. wage of $28 an hour. [...] > The U.A.W.'s president, Bob King, said the union > considered the significance of a competitive > subcompact to G.M.'s overall product lineup. [...] > "We are committed to the success of the company," > Mr. King said recently. "We had to talk about a > business model that makes sense." > > Any thoughts on this constellation? > >
Leon Trotsky, "Trade Unions in the Epoch of Imperialist Decay" There is one common feature in the development, or more correctly the degeneration, of modern trade union organizations in the entire world: it is their drawing closely to and growing together with the state power. This process is equally characteristic of the neutral, the Social-Democratic, the Communist and “anarchist” trade unions. This fact alone shows that the tendency towards “growing together” is intrinsic not in this or that doctrine as such but derives from social conditions common for all unions. Monopoly capitalism does not rest on competition and free private initiative but on centralized command. The capitalist cliques at the head of mighty trusts, syndicates, banking consortiums, etcetera, view economic life from the very same heights as does state power; and they require at every step the collaboration of the latter. In their turn the trade unions in the most important branches of industry find themselves deprived of the possibility of profiting by the competition between the different enterprises. They have to confront a centralized capitalist adversary, intimately bound up with state power. Hence flows the need of the trade unions – insofar as they remain on reformist positions, ie., on positions of adapting themselves to private property – to adapt themselves to the capitalist state and to contend for its cooperation. In the eyes of the bureaucracy of the trade union movement the chief task lies in “freeing” the state from the embrace of capitalism, in weakening its dependence on trusts, in pulling it over to their side. This position is in complete harmony with the social position of the labor aristocracy and the labor bureaucracy, who fight for a crumb in the share of superprofits of imperialist capitalism. The labor bureaucrats do their level best in words and deeds to demonstrate to the “democratic” state how reliable and indispensable they are in peace-time and especially in time of war. By transforming the trade unions into organs of the state, fascism invents nothing new; it merely draws to their ultimate conclusion the tendencies inherent in imperialism. full: http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1940/xx/tu.htm _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
