Overproduction crisis mows down car workers

Vanguard December 2012 p. 3
by Bill F.

(Above: Ford workers get their scrap of paper: "You're sacked!")

Ford workers at the Broadmeadows and Geelong plants in Victoria are the latest to get the flick as the global capitalist crisis of overproduction slices through the manufacturing industry in Australia.

In November, 212 car workers were shown the door, another 118 took so-called ‘voluntary’ redundancy packages, while a further 110 were redeployed into other jobs. That’s the loss of 440 production line jobs at Ford within 5 months!

The local boss of Ford Australia, Bob Gaziano, hastened to say that the jobs of the remaining 2900 were secure, but nobody believes that, and perhaps he should be worried about his own job. And it won’t be the working class that threatens his immediate future, but the corporate owners/bosses in the United States who will decide how long Ford continues to operate in Australia.

These sackings come on top of the loss of 300 Toyota jobs in April and 170 GMH jobs last month. As well as the loss of direct car manufacturing jobs, there have been a spate of bankruptcies and sackings in the automotive parts industry, as well as cutbacks in the number of workers in car dealerships and the car trade business. CMI Industrial dismissed 117 workers in July, while parts maker APV Automotive tossed out another 170 in August.

International

Car workers are well aware of the fact that their industry is dominated by a handful of powerful multinational corporations operating in their own international ‘globalised’ economies. They invest where the profits are greater and cut back where the profits are less.

These monopolies have no loyalty to the workers whose ‘loyalty’ they insist and rely upon. They prefer cheap labour, non-union workers in countries with fewer labour laws and inferior working conditions, fewer environmental regulations, less government ‘red tape’ standing in the way of their profit-making. They export the jobs of workers in the western industrialised countries to places where the level of exploitation is greater and easier to maintain.

In countries such as Germany, Italy, Belgium, Britain, Canada and the United States, in the last few years there have been many strikes and sit-ins by workers defending their jobs. Now they are being joined by car workers in Japan, South Korea, China, and India as they too find they have to take a stand against speed-ups and intensified work-loads as the various companies scramble to sell more cars than their competitors. In the end, the old problem of capitalist overproduction catches up with all of them.

What solutions?

Certainly, the capitalist system has none. The federal government has handed over more than $1 billion in assistance to the car industry in the last financial year, on top of the many billions pumped in over the decades. Not loans to be re-paid with interest, not shares to return to taxpayers some of the profits, but outright freebie handouts! Nothing in return, not even secure jobs for Australian workers!

At the same time, government policies have pandered to international monopoly capital and dismantled industry protections (unlike the US and Europe) leading to a flood of imported cars dominating car sales – 86% of the local market.

The Australian Manufacturing Workers Union has proposed that all federal, state and local government agencies source their fleet car purchases from the Australian-based vehicle makers. This is one small step that could and should happen, although the imminent TPP free trade deal would probably knock it off anyway.

The best solution is to nationalise the car industry and use the economies of scale to produce a range of fuel efficient vehicles and electric cars, and public transport rolling stock and vehicles suited to Australian conditions. That can only happen when the interests of US imperialism no longer dominate our politics and economy. In the meantime, workers will fight to defend their livlihoods.