Singing the Camaro blues

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10 SOCIALIST ACTION JANUARY 2013 Vice-President of CAW Local 199, and V.P. Niagara Regional Labour Council (writing in a personal capacity)

General Motor’s mid-December an­ nouncement that the next generation of its Camaro will be produced in Lansing, Mich., and not in Oshawa (30 minutes east of Toronto), is cause for serious re­ flection by Canadian autoworkers. GM is consolidating its rear-wheel-drive car production in one location, with the ex­ ception of the Corvette.

Such restructuring events are hardly new. Some 20 years ago GM did a similar thing in St. Catharines (an hour south of Toronto) by closing its large foundry op­ eration, which employed 1800 workers, and consolidated its foundry operations in Defiance, Ohio. GM realizes such de­ cisions yield big savings and simultane­ ously put the boot to the Canadian Auto Workers’ union. The free trade agree­ ments, which gutted the 1965 Auto Pact’s domestic production requirements, facil­ itate unimpeded corporate restructuring and capital mobility.

Corporate restructuring is intrinsic to global capitalism. It defines the context for the Oshawa decision. And it reveals the theatrical nature of the CAW leader­ ship’s show of anger and indignation in response to it. GM similarly blindsided the CAW by suddenly announcing the GM St. Catharines Foundry Division closure.

The similarities don’t end there. That decision raised serious questions about the long-term viability of the GM St. Catharines operations. It set in motion their dramatic downsizing and continu­ ing vulnerability. Likewise, ending Os­ hawa’s Camaro production will mean the loss of nearly one third of current vehicle production and endanger the remaining operations by making them more cost­ ly. This underlies the CAW’s demand that GM compensate for the lost Camaro pro­ duction with new equivalent work.

But the CAW demand is problemat­ ic. GM has repeatedly said it has no plans for new investments in Canada. These statements, coupled with the Camaro decision, beg the question: is GM is com­ mitted to sustaining its Oshawa opera­ tions? Even if GM changes its mind and al­ locates new work to Oshawa, experience strongly suggests that any new work will be more capital intensive and employ far fewer workers. Furthermore, we know that GM will exact a heavy price for new replacement work. Since the mid-1990s GM has successfully demanded substan­ tial CAW contract concessions, particu­ larly at the local level in return for new investment.

The longstanding practice of tying new investment to contract concessions has decimated the union’s strength and gut­ that regression—and weren’t even tied to new investments.

In effect, the Camaro decision shows that the CAW leadership’s endless con­ tract concessions have hardly secured a future for GM workers here, and raise the specter of future concessions. Conse­ quently, the immediate question facing GM workers in Canada is whether we will give more.

A bigger political question is posed by GM’s use of the public funds it got in 2008 and 2009 to avoid bankruptcy, and by the prospect of the Canadian government’s selling its GM stock at a huge loss, entire­ ly at taxpayers’ expense. (According to a Dec. 20 article in the Toronto Star, “GM to buy back stock from U.S.”, the U.S. Trea­ sury will be left “about $21 billion short of recouping its investment.”)

Isn’t this a powerful reason for workers taking control of the means of production in order to meet human needs? n