Auto Annex:
The 2019 GM Strike

Nov 1, 2019

The following is from a speech that Gary Walkowicz, long-time UAW militant, gave at the November 2019 SPARK public meeting.

In the days since the strike by GM workers ended, we have seen articles written and posted that questioned whether the 6-week strike was worth it for the GM workers. The articles expressed doubts about what the strike achieved. They repeated claims that the strike was called by UAW leaders only to distract attention from the charges of corruption against some union leaders. They said that GM workers didn’t get enough to make up for what they lost.

Seeing these negative articles was not a surprise to GM workers, because during the strike itself they saw firsthand how some of the media and others tried to demoralize GM workers and weaken the strike. Some of the media went to the picket lines and tried to get GM workers to say that they didn’t want to be on strike, that they were suffering too much. But much as they tried, they had a hard time finding any GM workers to say this. Because that is not how most GM workers felt about their strike.

The Union Is NOT Corrupt!

We can expect that we will continue to see propaganda about the strike and about the union. Coming from the media, coming from politicians, coming from those trying to use right-to-work laws to convince workers to leave the union. They will continue to try to convince workers that the whole union is corrupt.

I say the union is not corrupt. A dozen corrupt union leaders are not the union. The union is all of us. The GM workers showed what the union is. We are not corrupt. And we can be the ones to police our own union.

If there are a few union leaders who put money in their own pocket, is anyone surprised? We live in a society filled with corruption. We see it every single day. Businessmen, bankers, politicians all the way to the White House are corrupt, pocketing money every day. And they are taking a lot more money than anything that happened in the UAW.

GM Strike: A Threat to All the Bosses

But people in the government and the media were using charges of corruption against UAW leaders in order to weaken the strike.

Why were they attacking the strike? They were attacking the strike because the strike was a threat to the interests of the corporate bosses and all those who defend the bosses.

The fact that workers themselves stayed on strike for 40 days was a threat to the whole capitalist class. It was something we haven’t seen in decades, a strike in auto, in heavy industry, which is still the center of the productive economy.

After years of concessions, the striking autoworkers certainly did not gain back all that they have lost. They did not put an end to all 2-tier pay and all temporary jobs.

But after 14 straight years of giving up major concessions and after almost 40 years of continued takeaways, the strike by GM workers stopped the company from taking even more. The GM workers didn’t give up anything major, including their health care, which is a big deal. And they gained a few things, small steps toward full pay and permanent jobs for 2-tier and temporary workers. Those gains might not seem like much, but they go against the tide of everything happening in the economy today. The strike took up issues important to the whole working class. And it meant something that many of the higher paid, higher seniority GM workers on the picket lines said they were fighting, not for themselves, but for the lower paid, younger workers. That’s the real meaning of solidarity. That’s why the strike was important.

A Strike that Challenged the Mood of Defeat

The GM strike was the longest companywide strike in the auto industry in 49 years. It comes after a long period in which workers throughout the economy have been quiet and have not been fighting for their own interests. The last decades have seen few strikes. And, as a direct result, the corporate bosses had a free hand as they set about to reduce the standard of living of the whole working class.

Every statistic shows how things have gotten worse over the past 40 years. But we don’t need statistics to look at our lives and those of our friends, family, neighbors, co-workers, and we can see how things have gotten worse. Lower-paying jobs, when you can get one. Schools, roads, infrastructure falling apart. More desperation, more crime.

After years of things getting worse and nobody fighting back, the mood in the working class has been that nothing can be done. Most believed that we can’t stand up for ourselves.

But the strike by the GM workers broke through that. They did something important. They showed that some workers are ready to fight. They acted because they believe that by fighting you can accomplish something.

And they did. They brought other workers out to join their fight.

Solidarity—Real Solidarity

Many other workers recognized the importance of this strike, and not only supported it, they joined the picket lines. Workers from Ford and Chrysler were on the picket lines. And so were workers from many other workplaces. They brought food, water and money. In some cases, this support was organized by union leaders from other workplaces. Many workers also just came on their own. They didn’t need to be told to go to the picket lines. They knew by class instinct that “Their Fight Is Our Fight.” This was a real example of workers’ “solidarity.”

If other workers looked at the GM strike and saw that “Their Fight Is Our Fight,” it is because millions of other workers are facing the same problems that the GM workers were fighting against: losing jobs; facing 2, 3, and 4-tier pay and temporary work; paying more for their health care. Other workers have a reason to fight, just like the GM workers did. The strike by the GM workers showed other workers that a fight is possible. So the question is, will other workers take up the same fight?

That’s the real issue. If no one else picks up the fight, we will continue to go backwards.

A Long-Term Economic Crisis

In the first decades after World War II, with American capitalism extending its tentacles around the whole world, the bosses preferred to pay a little more to labor in order to have labor peace in this country. In auto, and other heavy industry, annual wage increases, cost of living pay, pensions, health care, vacations, holiday pay were all instituted.

But such gains were not written in stone. Starting in the early 1970s, the capitalists’ economy went into a long-term crisis, which was made even worse by depressions they caused themselves, like the crisis of speculation on the U.S. dollar in 1970, the credit crunch in 1978, the savings and loan crisis in 1986, the high tech bubble bursting in 2000, and the mortgage crisis of 2008. The situation had worsened, and the relationship of forces became more unfavorable for the workers.

The bosses moved to take back whatever they were able to take. For over 40 years, the auto companies took back what had been won, one gain after another, then schemed to get rid of the slightly better-off workers. For years, the bosses have been outsourcing skilled trades work to low-paying job shops; they replaced higher paid workers in big factories with less well-paid workers at small plants; permanent workers with temporary workers; full-time workers with part-time workers.

The capitalists pushed to maintain and even expand their wealth by reducing the standard of living of the whole working class. The standard of living of the working class began to be steadily reduced, year after year. Low pay and lost jobs is now a cornerstone of the capitalists’ whole economy.

Needed: A Fight Against the Whole Capitalist Class

A fight by any group of workers is going to be a fight against, not only their own bosses, but it will be a fight against the whole capitalist class. It is going to take a bigger fight, many more workers fighting together, a fight of the whole working class, to start to solve these problems.

We will have to do what our parents and grandparents and great grandparents did before us, like in the 1930s, when the working class seemed to be fighting everywhere at the same time. A factory occupation by autoworkers in Flint spread not only to rubber workers in Ohio but to department store workers in Detroit.

We will have to do what we or our parents did in the 1950s and 60s, when movements of the black population for democratic rights spread throughout the South, from Montgomery to the Mississippi Delta to New Orleans to Memphis. When rebellions in the big cities spread from Los Angeles in 1965 to Newark and Detroit in 1967 to almost every city in 1968.

Workers will have to challenge the bosses’ assumptions that they should make a profit off our labor. We should take the fruits of our labor, every penny of it, to use for our needs, for the needs of everyone in the society. The greed of a few multi-billionaires should not come before the needs of the people who do all the work.

Workers fighting for their own needs can open the door for everyone. That’s why we saw all those small business people from restaurants and party stores bring support to the GM picket lines. They saw that they were dependent on what the workers did.

The working class has the power to make such a fight. But that fight doesn’t just spring up like that. It has to start somewhere. And it has to spread. The strike by GM workers does not automatically lead to a bigger fight. But they opened the door.

I likened it to a 15-round fight, and the GM strike was just the first round.

The GM workers took the fight as far as they felt they could. Now it is up to other parts of the working class to start Round Two.