Just saw on Davey D that Eminem is planning on flying out 200 laid off autoworkers to the Jimmy Kimmel show on May 19. I guess the point is to publicize the layoffs (and his new album) which is cool, after all Em was a factory worker himself for a brief period (which was dramatized in the film 8 Mile), but can we get these folks who gave us proof that workers can be self-governing a little more than that? Damn.Detroit and other rust belt cities have been the frontlines for restructuring which will put the finishing touches on the ruling class's attack on the concessions wrested from them by working folks. The next generation of Big Three (or is it the Big Two now?) autoworkers can expect to make $12 to $14 an hour which puts them on par with workers in Southern auto plants like Toyota. And while that might seem a lot for those of us making minimum wage, it comes with a larger cost with little to no healthcare and a racist union that won't do shit. Back in 1970, General Baker of the League of Revolutionary Black Workers said, "UAW means 'U Ain't White.'" But today it might as well stand for U Are Worthless (they're still racist cracker motherfuckers, of course).
Some folks are hating hard on UAW workers, calling them spoiled and all that. A lot of that is because they confound the UAW leadership with the rank and file when the union is essentially an extension of plant management and State bureaucracy. The average folks and the ones who came before them are partially responsible for not only improving living standards among the working class, standards now in sharp decline, but for creating some of the most revolutionary forms of working class organization, like the sit-down strike, but also other informal types of struggle that bucked the UAW and the company-instituted work speed-up. This self-organization reveals the workers' capacity to run the plants (and hence society) independent of management. We can't hate on them because we are them. And we're going to share in their fate.
0 comments:
Post a Comment