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 17, 2025
The leadership of the United Auto Workers (UAW) put out a statement supporting Trump’s tariffs against Canada and Mexico. They claim that Trump’s tariffs will save the jobs of auto workers in this country.
There is no doubt that many UAW auto worker jobs have been lost. The UAW once had a million and a half members, most of them working at the Big Three auto companies. Today there are less than 150 thousand UAW workers at Ford, GM and Stellantis. Where did the jobs go? The UAW leadership says the problem is that most of these jobs were shipped out of the country. They are not telling the truth. The truth is that many hundreds of thousands of UAW auto worker jobs have been lost to outsourcing INSIDE this country, as the auto companies moved much of their production to low-wage parts producers.
The truth is that hundreds of thousands more auto jobs have been lost to speed-up pushed by the auto corporations. UAW president Shanw Fain said that auto workers have been “bleeding jobs.” But what he doesn’t say is that auto workers are still “bleeding” jobs every single day right now as the companies continue to eliminate jobs and push more work on fewer workers.
Auto companies have always pushed speed-up to increase their profits. Auto workers often have had the reaction to resist this speed-up. But the UAW leadership is not proposing to save jobs by organizing a real fight against this speed-up. This is not new. This goes all the way back to the 1950s when UAW president Walter Reuther tried to stop auto workers who were organizing their own “wildcat” strikes against speed-up.
For many years since then, the union leadership has not proposed a fight against speed-up and outsourcing. Instead, the UAW leadership tries to shift the blame off of the corporations who are responsible for the lost jobs.
The UAW leaders, like leaders in other unions, want workers here to put the blame on workers in other countries for taking jobs. The union leaders want workers here to think we are in competition with workers in other countries. They want workers here to think workers in Canada and Mexico and other countries are our enemies.
No! Our enemies are those capitalist bosses who underpay us and overwork us. Over 150 years ago, Karl Marx said “the working men have no country.” That’s as true today as it was then.
When workers are ready to use our power to make a fight against our bosses, we will have no use for union leaders who try to cover up for the corporate bosses. When workers are ready to make a fight, we will have to find our own leaders who tell the truth and stand on our side.