"The World Socialist Web Site Autoworker Newsletter has received many statements of support in the last few days for the Saturday, February 9 demonstration in Detroit called by the Autoworker Newsletter and the Steering Committee of the Coalition of Rank-and-File Committees. The demonstration is aimed at mobilizing opposition to the plans by General Motors to close five plants in the US and Canada, including major assembly plants in Detroit, Michigan, Lordstown, Ohio and Oshawa, Ontario, and the elimination of the jobs of more than 14,000 production and salaried workers.
The United Auto Workers (UAW) and the Unifor union in Canada have opposed any industrial action to fight the plant closings and mass layoffs. Instead, the unions have ramped up their anti-Mexican nationalism in an effort to prevent a unified struggle between autoworkers in the US and Canada and their brothers in Mexico who have been waging a determined battle against poverty wages paid by multinational auto parts producers in Matamoros.
The demonstration is fighting for the formation of rank-and-file factory and workplace committees, independently of the UAW and Unifor, to unite autoworkers in the US, Canada and Mexico, along with other sections of the working class to fight the attack on jobs by GM and other global automakers.
The urgency of the demonstration is underscored by the start of the jobs massacre today with 4,250 engineers, IT workers, marketing employees and other salaried workers being marched out of the GM Tech Center in Warren, Michigan and other locations. “I will be trembling at my desk, just waiting for HR or my director to say: ‘I’m sorry sir, it’s time for you to leave,’” one global marketing worker wrote on the web blog thelayoff.com last night.
The job cuts come in advance of the company’s 2018 report due out Wednesday that is expected to show a decline in profits from the $11.9 billion the company made in 2017. The aim is to reassure Wall Street investors that the company is stepping up attacks on its workforce in order to drive up its earnings in 2019."
