Capitalism, Technology, Labor by Greg Albo;Leo Panitch;Alan Zuege;

Capitalism, Technology, Labor by Greg Albo;Leo Panitch;Alan Zuege;

Author:Greg Albo;Leo Panitch;Alan Zuege;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Lightning Source Inc. (Tier 3)
Published: 2020-11-03T16:00:00+00:00


*This essay was first published in Socialist Register 2001 (London: Merlin Press, 2001).

A TALE OF TWO CRISES: LABOR, CAPITAL, AND RESTRUCTURING IN THE US AUTO INDUSTRY

Nicole Aschoff

Much of the global auto industry went into a well-documented free fall following the 2007 financial meltdown.* The US market was hit particularly hard. The collapse in credit for dealers and consumers combined with skyrocketing fuel prices and wary consumers led to an evaporation of demand. US assemblers saw sales drop 50 percent and foreign assemblers 40 percent in 2009 to settle at an almost thirty-year low of 10.4 million vehicles in the United States.1 Chrysler and General Motors’s bankruptcy filing that year seemed to signal the long-prophesied downfall of Detroit. Citing the negative economic repercussions of the industry’s collapse, the US state threw the assemblers a lifeline, trading financial assistance for reorganization. GM and Chrysler emerged from bankruptcy with fewer plants, dealerships, and brands; a new ownership structure; and a mandate to produce smaller, “greener” vehicles. In the process unionized autoworkers became partial “owners” of the “new” automakers and agreed to sweeping concessions in wages and benefits that put them on par with nonunion assembly workers in the US.

While the financial crisis and ensuing auto crisis did force significant change upon the industry, these changes do not represent a fundamental break from the past. Instead, the primary consequence of the crisis has been to accelerate and reinforce ongoing processes of capitalist restructuring, largely at the expense of autoworkers. In fact, GM, Chrysler, and Ford have benefited from the recent crisis. It allowed the Detroit Three to rapidly regroup after their competitive strategy of the last two decades failed. This pattern of crisis followed by restructuring is endemic to the auto industry, particularly in big, competitive markets like the US. Assemblers have enacted multiple waves of restructuring in the US since the 1980s that, combined with increasing foreign investment, have resulted in a constantly evolving industry. The recent crisis represents a continuation of these dynamics. Thus, from the perspective of capital, the present crisis can be largely situated within the ongoing process of restructuring occurring in the industry.

The same cannot be said for unionized autoworkers in the US. The Detroit Three in partnership with the US government exploited the doomsday atmosphere surrounding the crisis to push through concessions that fundamentally undermine the power of the United Auto Workers (UAW) to protect and improve the working lives of its members. While US autoworkers’ fortunes have oscillated in synch with the booms and busts of the industry, their overall trajectory during the past three decades has been one of decline and disorientation. Long-term trends of de-unionization, concessions, and isolation have paved the way for unprecedented concessions. The recent crisis has essentially erased the postwar gains of unionized autoworkers in the industry.

Hence, the crisis has had divergent consequences for capital and labor. For capital it has triggered a rapid restructuring and the restoration of profits, while for workers it has compounded the precarious position of unionized autoworkers by reversing decades of hard-won gains.



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