US carmaker General Motors Holden is pressuring its vehicle assembly plant workers at Elizabeth in South Australia to take a wage cut of around $200 per week as it plunges into further financial difficulties.
The US giant plans to put a series of proposals to reduce production costs to workers and ask them to vote on them.
"This is about giving Holden employees a direct say in their future," managing director Mike Devereux, a US citizen, said in a statement on Tuesday June 15.Of course, such noble sentiments of workplace democracy were never raised by management in earlier and more profitable times.
"We made $100 million in profits this year - better call the workers to a meeting and let them vote on how much they want to take out of that."
The company in recent times has cut shifts and reduced working hours, putting workers on reduced pay via a four day week.
It has also received millions of dollars in state and federal government assistance.
Never was there a more cynical example of privatising the profits and socialising the losses.
Well, if we’re going to have to socialise the losses, let there be no hesitation in raising the demand that the whole operation be socialised.
Auto manufacturing should be possible in Australia.
With Ford shutting down, and Holden teetering on the brink of closure, it’s time to nationalise the whole industry, rationalise the whole industry and concentrate on advanced technologies and processes to support green energy car, commercial vehicle and public transport production in line with market requirements.
Planned production, not market anarchy.
Nationalise the auto industry in Australia!
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