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FLINT, MI — A strike against General Motors is but one battle in what is a much bigger class war waged against “US” by owners of society. To paraphrase Walter Reuther: What we gain at the bargaining table can be taken away from us in legislative halls BUT it is also being taken away by the gradual whipsawing of one section of the working class against another. Like a saw blade pendulum, corporations move work from one plant to another across the globe in a race to the bottom. They sow the seeds of hate and nativism in our minds to keep us divided and weak, pitting worker against worker in a death spiral for lower wages, benefits and working conditions.
International solidarity is necessary to fight international corporations. The bigger the bargaining unit the greater the power we have. . . .We should be aggressively organizing across borders instead of investing massive funds into phony and corrupt “joint” programs. [It] is different [today]from the past when we were unified by geography. Companies like GM would envelope an entire city. With workers living so close to one another they could develop a culture of solidarity that was strong enough to break the chains of bondage.
Now the workforce is global, split up over invisible lines in the dirt and superficial nationalistic thinking. If our goal is to regain the power we once had, the power that birthed the labor movement in the first place, we need to broaden our vision and see the global class struggle.
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If unions only exist in a single nation we will simply be undercut by companies who offshore our jobs and exploit workers elsewhere. This puts downward pressure on our standard of living while the parasitic corporate class laughs all the way to the bank. To put the genie of globalization back in the bottle at this point is a fantasy.
We need to unify with our working class brothers and sisters across borders in a collective effort to win what is fair and right: the fruits of our labor.
Sean Crawford is a UAW member and GM autoworker in Flint. This article was reprinted with the authors permission.
UAW member Sean Crawford, from Flint, Michigan, currently works at a Detroit auto plant.
