The announcement of 2,450 layoffs at Stellantis’ truck assembly plant in Warren marks a new phase in the global battle for jobs.
The cuts, which affect two-thirds of the plant’s workforce, threaten to close a key factory at the heart of the U.S. auto industry. They will also have significant knock-on effects, triggering layoffs across all suppliers.
There is no doubt that Warren Truck workers are being targeted because of their militancy. The plant employs a large number of mostly young extra workers struggling to survive, as well as people moving in from other factories already facing layoffs. In the election for president of the United Auto Workers union, socialist autoworker Will Lehman won 8.4 percent of the vote at the plant, and many workers have joined action committees to fight the sellout by management and the unions.
The plant was also the first in the United States to participate in a global wildcat strike in early 2020 to force the shutdown of the industry during the first wave of the pandemic – a worker initiative that saved countless lives.
The attack on Warren Truck is part of a global bloodshed in the auto industry. Since the beginning of the year, more than 8,000 workers at the “Big Three” in the US have lost their jobs. Stellantis has cut its Fiat workforce in Italy by thousands, Volkswagen is cutting jobs across Europe and General Motors has announced massive cuts in its Chinese business.
UAW President Shawn Fain could barely hide his indifference when he recently told workers at the Mack plant in Detroit that the auto industry simply “has its ups and downs.” In fact, the UAW has contributed to the elimination of hundreds of thousands of jobs over the past 50 years.
This has now reached a new level, with automakers using electric vehicles and automation to cut entire swathes of the workforce. As Stellantis CEO Carlos Tavares put it, “The race to electric vehicles has become a race to cut costs.”
This is part of a global attack on jobs across all industries, including delivery workers, technicians, actors, entertainment workers and others. Paramount has also announced it will close its eponymous television studios and lay off 15 percent of its workforce, in an effort to break working-class resistance, which is being expressed in growing calls for strikes.
The capitalist class wants to push the costs of the growing global crisis onto workers. The rise in unemployment and the persistently high cost of living have led to a decline in new car sales, which were already barely affordable. At the same time, US corporate profits exceeded $2.8 trillion in the last quarter of 2023, the highest in history. Stock markets also remain at historic highs, but increasing volatility and the threat of a new downturn have only increased the need for companies to cut costs.
Furthermore, funds must be freed up for war. The layoffs were announced as Ukraine launched a major offensive against Russia using American and German armored vehicles, and the United States, backing its Israeli proxy, is preparing for a Middle East-wide war with Iran. These trillions thrown out the window on military spending must ultimately be recouped through greater exploitation of the working class.
The Autoworkers Rank-and-File Committee Network recently stated: “Warren Truck is now a critical battleground in the global fight for jobs. Autoworkers must make this the start of a broad counteroffensive, pitting workers’ rights to work and a decent standard of living against management’s so-called ‘right’ to profit.”
This campaign must be international, the statement says. In the age of globalized production, “there are no longer ‘American’ auto companies… Our real allies are not ‘loyal’ American businessmen, but auto workers in every country.” For decades, the auto companies have pitted workers in every country against each other, but this was only possible because auto workers remained divided by national boundaries. United worldwide, the working class is far more powerful than the bosses.
This requires a fight against the union bureaucracy. The auto companies rely entirely on the bureaucrats of the UAW and their counterparts in other countries to nip resistance to layoffs in the bud.
The Fain administration in the UAW was elected on a 9 percent turnout while suppressing mass votes. This was part of a White House operation to promote a seasoned bureaucrat as a so-called “reformer” to push through the massive cuts currently underway. This means that workers fighting to defend their jobs must take up the demand for a new union election overseen by the rank and file.
All of the recent cuts have come since last year’s toothless “standup strike,” which was followed by a collective bargaining agreement that they – like President Joe Biden – falsely portrayed as a victory.
But UAW-Stellantis Vice President Rich Boyer has admitted that they knew about the impending layoffs but did not tell the workers. The Warren Truck local president also admitted to the press that they knew about the planned layoffs. But the UAW refused to even inform the workers, let alone organize a campaign against them.
Union bureaucrats have been active partners in job cuts for decades. A key turning point came in the late 1970s, when UAW chairman Doug Fraser joined Chrysler’s board and helped close dozens of plants.
They have helped reduce factory conditions to the levels that existed before the UAW was formed in the sit-down strikes of the 1930s. The union’s assets have now grown to over a billion dollars, and hundreds of officials “earn” six-figure salaries, boosted by bribes and corruption.
The bureaucracy relies on its ties to capitalist politics, particularly through the Democratic Party. Biden views union bureaucrats as war partners. Last month he declared that the AFL-CIO was his “internal NATO.” But this is a single conflict, with fronts raging not only in Ukraine and Gaza, but also at home against the working class.
To prepare public opinion and divert attention from the responsibility of American capitalism for the layoffs in the US, the bureaucracy promotes “America First” nationalism and scapegoats foreigners. In one of the few statements on the layoffs at Warren Truck, Fain condemned Portuguese CEO Tavares for destroying a “formerly great American Companies (emphasis added)” and condemns the relocation of production to Mexico in order to pit U.S. workers against their Mexican colleagues.
The UAW is also raising millions of dollars for a campaign to get Kamala Harris elected. Hundreds of thousands of autoworkers, many of whom never received a UAW ballot, are being inundated with UAW emails expressing support for the bureaucracy’s preferred candidate. The UAW Twitter account has not acknowledged the Warren Truck layoffs, but is promoting a “national call to members” for the union’s “campaign to defeat Trump and elect Kamala Harris.”
The UAW has also filed a cynical lawsuit against fascists Elon Musk and Donald Trump over their recent interview on X in which the two billionaires gloated about the threat to jobs. This is a maneuver to divert attention from the Warren Truck cuts and present Harris as a “worker-friendly” campaign.
In fact, the firings were announced shortly after Fain met Harris at a rally in Detroit where she condemned protesters criticizing the government’s role in the Gaza genocide. This is just the latest in several incidents in which UAW bureaucrats aligned themselves with Harris/Biden against anti-war protesters, exposing their “ceasefire” resolution as hot air.
“The central strategic issue facing workers is to throw off the burden of the union bureaucracy,” concluded the Autoworkers Rank-and-File Network statement. “It has no legitimate claim to leadership.” That is certainly true.
The struggle for control of the working class is also linked to the struggle for the political independence of the working class. The struggle for jobs is fundamentally a struggle against the capitalist system that subordinates the lives of billions to the selfish pursuit of profit.
