United States - September 19, 2023

150,000 workers on strike in “the big three” auto industries: Ford, Stellantis and GM 

A main batallion of the world proletariat stands up in the heart of the imperialist beast

We are all USA workers!

One single enemy, one single class,
one single struggle from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego!

Since September 15, after months of negotiations and with the collective wage agreement expired, 150k American autoworkers, affiliated to UAW (United Auto Workers) came out to the strike in the “Big Three”: Ford, General Motors and Stellantis (merger of Fiat, Chrysler and Peugeot).
The demand of a new contract includes the request of a 46% wage increase per hour, 32 hours of working week and the end of tiers, which means the end of an escalated wage system that distinguishes full-time workers from so-called part-time workers (although they work more than the fulltimers), which implies a wage difference in spite they doing the same work, and different working conditions too. So one of the main demands of the strike is “equal pay for equal work”.
The workers are also demanding the restoration of the COLA (which is a cost of living adjustment clause) that was taken away from them in 2009, when the Obama Democratic government granted this enormous benefit to these transnationals with the excuse of “bankruptcy”. This allows inflation to take the workers wages day by day, while the employers fill their pockets. Another achievement that was taken away from them during the Obama administration was health care for retirees and defined benefit pensions for all workers, demands that are also included today in the list of demands.

But the workers' demands start from denouncing the skyrocketing profits of these transnational companies in recent years, i.e. in the last decade, the “Big Three” got 250 billion dollars, and 21 billion only in the first half of 2023. While in the last four years the profits of these automakers increased by 65%, the CEOs' income increased by 40%, whereas inflation increased by 20%, but workers' wages only increased by 6%! As workers report, a CEO earns more than $20 million a year, 300 times more than autoworkers. Workers manufacture cars with very high prices in the market, however the worker's wage represents between 4% and 7% of the value of the car.
The UAW autoworkers have show crystal clear that under Obama, Trump and Biden, American workers have been imposed the same working conditions or worse than those of any semi-colonial country. Temporary workers work 60, 70 and even 80 hours a week without dayoffs or leaves, and earn around 16 dollars per hour (while permanent workers earn twice as much). They may be in this situation for years.

The demands of the workers of the “Big Three” are the same demands of all the autoworkers of Nissan, Toyota, etc.!
Recently the Teamsters, UPS transport workers in the US, the largest carrier in the world, have obtained in their struggle the end of the differential wage system...
The fact is that the demands of the UAW workers are those of the entire American workers movement! We must surround this strike with solidarity and join it to fight for these same demands! Such a great struggle needs the unity of all the forces of the workers to achieve them!

Let's Recover proletarian internationalism in the world working class!

The bosses that UAW workers face today are the transnationals and they exploit workers around the world. On the other side of the border, in Mexico, workers at General Motors in Silao work in the same or worse conditions for wages of $40 a week. In Brazil, General Motors produces its cars in São Jose dos Campos. These companies organize internationally to better subjugate and exploit workers and obtain their sky-high profits!
American workers will not be able to improve, not even maintain their wage, as long as the transnational companies in the semi-colonial world continue to over-exploit workers for peanuts in the same maquila companies in Mexico, Argentina, Brazil, Eastern Europe, Africa and even as with the Suzuki and Toyota, in China and India.
The demand for “Equal pay for equal work!” also for the workers of Latin America and the entire semi-colonial world becomes decisive in this struggle.
The workers of Dacia-Renault in 2009 in Romania went out for a huge struggle stating "We want to earn like the French workers!”. This struggle was betrayed and the workers' bureaucracies and aristocracies turned their backs on the Romanian workers, and the Romanian working class paid dearly for it, but so did the French working class, which saw in the following years how the bosses took away not only their wages, but also their pensions, the 35-hour week and all their conquests. The fact is with slave labor and starvation wages in the colonies and semi-colonies, the transnational corporations lower the value of the labor force also within the imperialist countries. The limit with which the working class finds itself at the international level is that of the divisions imposed on it by its own leaderships, so it cannot succeed, or the partial triumphs that are won, are quickly snatched away by the bosses.

"Let the workers of Mexico, Argentina, Brazil and the whole colonial and semicolonial world earn like the U.S. workers!" This is the demand that taken in the firm hands of U.S. workers becomes necessary and immediate. There would be no Latin American, Eastern European or African worker who would not want to go out to struggle alongside the workers of the United States. Thus the enormous struggle of the American workers would be surrounded by strength and solidarity.

A call for the struggle of the American workers, with the demand of "Equal work, equal pay across all borders!" would push into combat all the workers of the semicolonial and colonial world, who would see there, in the struggle being waged in the streets of Detroit, the key to victory. The great ally of the oppressed peoples has stood up. It is one and only one struggle at the international level!
This single demand would break all the divisions that the workers bureaucracies at the world level impose on the proletariat and that only lead to defeat.

Capitalism has imposed on the working class the conditions of slavery of the 19th century. These can be confronted and defeated only as the 8 hours of work were achieved: WITH THE INTERNATIONAL STRUGGLE OF THE PROLETARIAT.

From San Jose dos Campos, the workers of General Motors have already sent their messages of solidarity to the American workers on strike, and the same has been done by workers in Mexico. This is a step forward. Now the most concrete and effective solidarity is the struggle!
CONLUTAS, the trade union center that gathers 4 million workers in Brazil, and that leads the workers of the General Motors plant in São Jose dos Campos, has in its hands the possibility to launch right now a call for unity and struggle with the US American workers. From the Trade Union Network that CONLUTAS is part of -which brings together more than 80 trade union centers and unions from all over the world- it could promote right now a concrete and effective solidarity with the methods of struggle of the working class to surround with solidarity the workers of the United States and fight together with them.
We must stop production at all the automakers' plants and hit them where it hurts the most, in their profits, so that, as the workers of the U.S. say, "we will earn what we are worth"!

The workers of the semicolonial world have our greatest ally in struggle, the workers who fight the capitalist octopuses inside the U.S. imperialist beast. It is time to recover proletarian internationalism in the working class!
The head of the U.S. Fourth Fleet Command, who was recently in Peru, has already said that she wants lithium, water and all the riches of Latin America. A few days ago a Biden advisor also traveled to Peru to meet with the murderous dictator Dina Boluarte to negotiate the plundering of the nation. The IMF is strangling Latin American countries like Argentina, plunging the workers and poor people into misery. The workers of the colonial and semicolonial world have in the workers of the U.S. our fundamental ally! There is the key to end the imperialist latrocracy of the oppressed nations!

Long live the struggle of U.S. workers! We are all U.S. workers!

From Alaska to Tierra del Fuego, one class, one same struggle!

Eliza Funes and Nadia Briante