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TruckElectric
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Seems unions are outdated now.....Look
WSWS attacks IG Metall:
Break with the unions
Major class struggles are inevitable. But to win, workers must break with the unions. Over the past four decades, these have transformed themselves from reformist workers organizations into paid lackeys of capital.
The IG Metall unreservedly represents the interests of German corporations in the global trade war. It supports the corporate attacks on wages and jobs, as well as the preparations for military rearmament and war. With its army of 50,000 works council representatives and 80,000 shop stewards, it is pushing through the elimination of tens of thousands of jobs and the closure of entire plants against the resistance of the workers.
For example, the Opel plant in Bochum, which once employed 22,000 workers, could not have been closed without the active support of IG Metall (IGM). At Volkswagen, IGM works council representatives agreed five years ago to cut 30,000 jobs in a “ pact for the future .” Works council head Bernd Osterloh has been rewarded for this with a board position at truck subsidiary Traton, where he earns two million euros a year, more than an assembly line worker earns in a lifetime.
Now, IG Metall is responding to the growing willingness to fight in the factories by clinging even more closely to the corporate boards and the government. That is the reason behind the rallies “for fair, socio-ecological change in industry” it is calling in more than 50 cities on October 29.
IG Metall is not mobilizing to defend jobs but for “fair burden sharing.” As if the burden could be “fairly shared” between a BMW worker who loses his job and the billionaires Quandt and Klatten! In reality, the demand for “fair burden sharing” is merely the form in which IGM offers the corporations its support in cutting jobs.
While the large corporations have already received billions in government money during the 2009 financial crisis and the coronavirus pandemic, IG Metall is now demanding on their behalf a further cash injection of 500 billion euros in the form of “public investments in the future.”
IG Metall is also offering its services to the incoming German federal government. Through these rallies, it wants to involve itself with “effective publicity in the current coalition negotiations,” it says. In this context, the incoming coalition government, which will likely consist of the Social Democratic Party (SPD), Green Party and the Free Democratic Party (FDP), stands unreservedly in the camp of capital. The SPD and Greens, which initiated a comprehensive social counterrevolution under Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, are allying themselves with the FDP, the lobby group of the financial oligarchy and the super-rich.
Build independent rank-and-file committees
The class struggle is international. No matter how hard IG Metall and the media try to suppress information about labour disputes in other countries, workers follow the struggles of their international colleagues with solidarity and enthusiasm. They face the same multinational corporations and financial interests around the world. That is why they must not allow themselves to be divided. They can only defend their jobs, rights and achievements if they coordinate their struggles internationally.
Workers of the Dana subsidiary GWB in Essen show solidarity with their American colleagues
This requires a break with the trade unions and that workers establish independent rank-and-file committees. These committees must organize the struggle against plant closures, layoffs and social cuts, and build links with workers at other sites and in other countries.
In May, the International Committee of the Fourth International and its affiliated Socialist Equality Parties initiated the International Workers Alliance of Rank-and-File Committees (IWA-RFC) to create, as we wrote, “new forms of independent, democratic and militant rank-and-file organizations of workers in factories, schools and workplaces on an international scale.”
Now, it is a matter of building rank-and-file committees in numerous workplaces that will make the defence of jobs a matter of principle. The right to work is a fundamental right. Technological progress must not be subordinated to the profit interests of shareholders and investors. It is a matter of defending the livelihoods of the working class, the only progressive class that can resolve the world’s social problems.
The building of independent rank-and-file committees is directly linked to the struggle for a socialist perspective. Without breaking the power of the financial aristocracy, not a single problem can be solved. Only the expropriation of the corporations and banks without compensation creates the conditions for democratic control over production. Only then is it possible to develop production according to a plan, in the interests of the working class and social needs.
To all workers who want to fight against the attacks of the corporations, we invite you to contact the Sozialistischen Gleichheitspartei (Socialist Equality Party), read the World Socialist Web Site and subscribe to the Autoworker Newsletter. We fight daily for a working-class perspective on the most important political events and inform workers about struggles happening around the world. We will help you form rank-and-file committees and develop international contacts. And we are building the Fourth International as the leadership of the international socialist movement.
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2021/10/28/igme-o28.html
