The United Auto
Workers and the Big Three automobile
manufacturers – Ford, General Motors, and
Stellantis haven’t been able to come to
agreement about worker compensation, and no
wonder. The UAW leader, Shawn Fain, is
fiercely committed that workers should be
better compensated, and should recoup some of
the concessions they made to manufacturers
when the automobile industry was in trouble in
2009. On the other side, the CEOs of the big
three are touting their “generous” offer to
the union, claiming they’d be bankrupt if they
met union demands, and using terms like “class
warfare” to describe the current stalemate.
CNBC anchor Jim
Cramer was among the first to mention class
warfare when the UAW offered a set of
reasonable demands. He fails to understand
that when CEOs make hundreds of times more
than the average worker, there is indeed, some
kind of warfare. Predatory capitalists are
extracting surplus value from workers and
directing to shareholders, and also to
themselves. Thus the General Motors CEO, Mary
Barras, earns more than $30 million a year,
362 times the earnings of the average worker.
Stellantis CEO, Carlos Tavares, earns more
than $24.8 million, 365 times what the average
worker earns. And Ford’s James Farley, Jr.
earns $21 million, 281 times as much as the
average worker.
Mary Barras
defended her high salary by indicating that
her pay is “performance based.” She would not
have performance were it not for worker
productivity, but there is a gap between
worker pay and worker productivity. Predatory
capitalists are capturing the benefits of both
worker productivity and worker concessions,
resulting in record profits among auto
manufacturers. President Joe Biden was spot on
when he said that record profits ought to mean
record contracts. In other words, just pay the
people whose labor contributed to the record
profits.
While the Big Three
CEOs saw their compensation rise by at least
40 percent in the last four years, they’d deny
similar pay increases to their workers.
Indeed, the average auto worker earns $28 and
hour, just a dollar, or less than four
percent, more than last year. Those who were
hired before 2007 earn $33 an hour, but those
hired after 2007 make only $17 an hour, the
two tier compensation that the UAW is fighting
to eliminate. How fair is it that two workers,
standing side by side have such a pay
differential, one earning about half of what
the other is earning. That’s called worker
exploitation. The UAW agreed to it under
exigent circumstances, and those circumstances
don’t exist anymore. By the way, the lower
paid workers also get fewer health and pension
benefits, and the union proposal is partly
about equalizing some of these benefits. The
quest for fairness is something that CNBC’s
Cramer describes as “frightening.”
What is frightening
is the increasing poverty in our nation. It’s
frightening that predatory capitalists are
getting away with extreme exploitation. It is
frightening that CEOs make so much more
compared to labor, and that they find nothing
wrong with this. And it is empowering to see
UAW President Shawn Fain fight fearlessly for
workers in the face of CEOs that whine about
bankruptcy.
If they don’t come
to an agreement, the consequences can be dire.
If the 150,000 workers in the UAW all strike
at the same time, the union has enough in the
strike fund to keep them out for three months.
Meanwhile, the auto industry may loose more
than $5 billion and a strike may push the
economy to the brink of a recession. Auto
workers aren’t the only ones at risk. Those
who supply auto manufacturers with parts will
probably have to lay workers off, if auto
manufacturing slows. There may be fewer
automobiles available, and the fourth quarter
is often a time when car sales go up. Fewer
cars may also mean inflationary increases in
automobile prices. If all auto workers go out
at the same time, it will be catastrophic for
the economy. Even if fractions go out, as
12,000 did on Friday, September 15, it will be
disruptive for the economy.
The auto strike
emboldens other workers to stand up for
themselves. Kaiser employees will strike by
the end of this month if they can’t come to
agreement with management. Others are
considering strikes, and labor unrest is at an
all time high. Workers just want to be paid
fairly. That’s not class warfare, that’s
survival. To the extent that predatory
capitalist resist paying fairly, there has
always been class warfare.
