the Voice of
The Communist League of Revolutionary Workers–Internationalist
“The emancipation of the working class will only be achieved by the working class itself.”
— Karl Marx
the Voice of
The Communist League of Revolutionary Workers–Internationalist
“The emancipation of the working class will only be achieved by the working class itself.”
— Karl Marx
Mar 14, 2022
They make it sound like profit-sharing is a bonus that we get on top of our wages, a little something extra. But the truth is that when our contracts are negotiated, profit-sharing is figured in. We get profit-sharing IN PLACE OF higher hourly wages. The auto companies would rather pay profit-sharing than higher wages. It’s cheaper for them. But for the auto workers, we never know how much we are getting. Depending on profit-sharing to pay our bills is like depending on hitting the lottery.
Workers are supposed to whoop and holler when we get profit-sharing. But the real profit-sharing goes toward CEO’s big-ass bonuses and big dividends to the wealthy shareholders.
Profit-sharing isn’t going to pay for all the price increases we are being hit with now. We’d rather get raises and get our cost-of-living back. And if we got our money in increased wages, it means that temps, who now get nothing, would see higher wages, too.
There is another reason the auto companies want us to get some of our pay through profit-sharing. They want us to believe that our pay should be based on how much or how little profits they are making and not the work we do. They try to use this psychology against us. When the auto companies cried broke, they came hard after us to give up concessions. That’s how we ended up with 2-tier wages, no cost-of-living and no pensions for new hires. But more and more workers are seeing through their psych game and we need to be ready to fight them when they try it again.