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How To Break a Strike

Posted by Todd Tucker, Eyes on Trade at 5:01 AM on May 28, 2008.


How companies use NAFTA to break the backs of strikers and unions.

Advocates of NAFTA argued that they pact would help keep consumer prices low and move the economy towards a more efficient allocation of resources. Just one serious drawback: such permanent tariff reductions remove political uncertainty from firms' cost-benefit calculation. Put differently, the price attached to risk was reduced. And manipulating risk levels is one of the few weapons that the working class has to gain concessions from the rich: think strikes, for instance.      

When firms can be certain that they will never have to pay tariffs on the reimportation of their products produced offshore, strikes matter a wee bit less, as this story over the weekend from the NYT summed up:

The auto industry’s longest strike in more than 40 years, a walkout at a parts supplier that disrupted production at 32 General Motors plants, will end within days if the picketing workers ratify a tentative agreement reached late Friday with their employer, American Axle and Manufacturing....

People involved in the negotiations have said they expect the agreement to call for closing two or three plants, offering buyouts worth as much

as $140,000, and drastically reducing the wages and benefits of workers who remain with the company...

American Axle has said it needs to cut wages nearly in half, from about $28 an hour to as little as $14, to remain competitive with rivals that have squeezed similar concessions from the U.A.W. During the strike, the company threatened to permanently close the plants where workers were picketing and shift work to Mexico instead.

This is capping off nearly 15 years of NAFTA being used to break labor's back. Our friend Kate Bronfenbrenner did a study for the North American Commission on Labor Cooperation showing that after passage of NAFTA, as many as 62 percent of U.S. union drives faced employer threats to relocate abroad, and the factory shut-down rate following successful union certifications tripled. Such defeats provide the institutional backdrop to a generation of wage stagnation and corporate takeover of government.

Digg!

Tagged as: nafta, strike, auto workers


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View:
The Golden Rule and Money Talks
Posted by: Trainer12 on May 29, 2008 8:30 AM   
Current rating: 5    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
Here we see another example of the "Golden Rule" at work. "Them that has the gold, write the rules" or as my high school social studies teacher used to tell me, "money talks, b.s. walks and we are all running a close third."

When will the labor movement and the American people wake up and take back their unions, their rights and their government? When will they "feel the heat" if they can't "see the light" and join together to take back the control of our government from the corporations?

I am doing all I can to organize and speak out. What are the rest of you doing? Don't just blog, organize. Get out of the blogisphere and talk to and listen to the unconverted, disillusioned and deranged citizens and stop preaching to the choir.
We are running out of time and loosing ground fast.

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so will we be seeing a reduction in the cost of automobiles?
Posted by: Bearzerker on May 30, 2008 1:32 AM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
...or does all these labor savings going to line the pockets of CEO and/or other executives pockets?

is sad that NAFTA is blamed for all the manufacturing woes that affecting our economy when the real culprit is when there is a dramatic decline in innovation in manufacturing due to offshoring menial job tasks which no one in America willing to do!...

which explains why their is so many illegal immigrants working in the US...
if US citizens cant afford to work the 10$ per hour job... and refuse to do so, then the company will fill it somehow someway.

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