Misreading the Historical Moment
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- Published on Monday, 31 October 2016 18:30
- Written by editor
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A Socialist Project e-bulletin .... No. 1323 .... November 1, 2016
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Misreading the Historical Moment:
A Response to Murnighan’s "Unifor and Big Three Bargaining"
Sam Gindin
Deep economic crises, as opposed to the regular ups and downs of capitalism, have played a special role in the history of autoworkers. Since the auto industry emerged as a mass production industry about 100 years ago, there've been three such economic crises and each, in different ways, both threatened and tested workers. The first was the Great Depression. In spite of the economic conditions, autoworkers found the courage and creativity to confront the largest corporations in the world and gave birth to the United Auto Workers (UAW). The second crisis occurred in the 1970s and was followed by a concerted assault by governments and corporations on the gains made... by the working class since the 1930s. That attack, dubbed ‘neoliberalism’, had a devastating impact on unions. Yet in auto, the refusal of the Canadians to accept the concessionary pattern coming from its U.S. parent led to a break and the formation of a newly energized and confident Canadian union, the Canadian Auto Workers (CAW).
The latest economic crisis pushed GM and Chrysler into bankruptcy. The companies were only saved by massive bailouts from the U.S. and Canadian governments and they used the crisis to further a radical restructuring of pay and pensions. In Canada, wages have been frozen for a near decade, cost-of-living clauses suspended, the union accepted a two-tier wage structure that defied its most basic principles, and a process was started of gradually (immediately for some) phasing out the union's long standing defined benefit pension plan.