{"id":1322175,"date":"2023-11-10T06:52:09","date_gmt":"2023-11-10T06:52:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.counterpunch.org\/?p=304198"},"modified":"2023-11-10T06:52:09","modified_gmt":"2023-11-10T06:52:09","slug":"the-global-significance-of-the-uaws-victory","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2023\/11\/10\/the-global-significance-of-the-uaws-victory\/","title":{"rendered":"The Global Significance of the UAW\u2019s Victory"},"content":{"rendered":"\"\"<\/a>\n
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Photograph Source: Elvert Barnes – CC BY-SA 2.0<\/a><\/p><\/div>\n

Working people the world over have celebrated the first of May as \u201cInternational Labor Day\u201d since 1886, when workers in the United States struggling for an eight-hour day staged a May 1 national protest.<\/p><\/div>\n

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Thanks to the new deal America\u2019s auto workers have signed with Detroit\u2019s Big Three \u2014 Ford, GM, and Stellantis \u2014 that day could have new global significance. Their watershed new contracts all set April 30, 2028 as their expiration date.<\/p>\n

If May 1, 2028 arrives without signed contracts for America\u2019s unionized auto workers, UAW president Shawn Fain has made plain, these workers don\u2019t plan on walking out alone.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe invite unions around the country to align your contract expirations with our own so that together we can begin to flex our collective muscles,\u201d\u00a0says<\/a>\u00a0Fain. \u201cIf we\u2019re going to truly take on the billionaire class and rebuild the economy so that it starts to work for the benefit of the many and not the few, then it\u2019s important that we not only strike but that we strike together.\u201d<\/p>\n

But that May 1 day is clearly inviting coordination\u00a0beyond<\/i>\u00a0the national level.<\/p>\n

The May Day that workers worldwide have so long honored, Fain\u00a0notes<\/a>, has always been \u201cmore than just a day of commemoration, it\u2019s a call to action.\u201d And the labor movement worldwide is showing real signs of acting more in strategic concert.<\/p>\n

Within the global auto industry, no corporation more embodies the inequality of our corporate world than the non-union Tesla. Under CEO Elon Musk, the world\u2019s\u00a0richest<\/a>\u00a0single individual, Tesla pays wages that run substantially below those of Detroit\u2019s Big Three, and that gap will only widen after the new UAW contracts go into effect.<\/p>\n

The new UAW contracts,\u00a0predicts<\/a>\u00a0German Bender of the Swedish think-tank Arena, could well \u201cboost union interest among Tesla workers.\u201d<\/p>\n

That interest already seems to be growing. On the final Friday of the UAW walkout in the United States, workers at Tesla-owned servicing shops in Sweden went out on strike \u2014 after five years of fruitless attempts to get Tesla\u2019s Swedish subsidiary to reach a bargaining agreement. That strike has now spread to all auto shops in Sweden that do work on Tesla cars.<\/p>\n

This Swedish walkout\u00a0represents<\/a>\u00a0the first formal strike against Tesla anywhere in the world. And the challenge to Tesla may be spreading. Germany\u2019s largest union,\u00a0Bloomberg<\/i>\u00a0reports<\/a>, is hoping to organize a 12,000-worker Tesla plant near Berlin.<\/p>\n

Tesla\u2019s over 120,000 workers worldwide will see plenty to like in the new UAW contracts in the United States. At Ford, workers who started as temps making $16.67 an hour will automatically move to permanent status and an hourly wage rate of at least $24.91. That rate\u00a0will hit<\/a>\u00a0$40.82 by the contract\u2019s end, and any inflation between now and then will kick that rate higher.<\/p>\n

Workers in major American industries haven\u2019t seen gains that stunning since the middle of the 20th century, a time when the chief executives of America\u2019s largest corporations averaged only just over 20 times the compensation of their workers. That gap today, the Economic Policy Institute\u00a0calculates<\/a>, is now running nearly 350 times.<\/p>\n

But the greatest significance of the new UAW auto industry contracts may be the impact these bargaining triumphs will have on the future. These agreements could become the single most important step to a more equal world that any of us have ever seen.<\/p>\n

The giants of American auto manufacturing, as Fain puts it, \u201cunderestimated\u201d their own workers\u2019 capacity to unite and fight together.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have shown the companies, the American public, and the whole world that the working class is not done fighting,\u201d headds<\/a>. \u201cIn fact, we\u2019re just getting started.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

The post The Global Significance of the UAW\u2019s Victory<\/a> appeared first on CounterPunch.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n

This post was originally published on CounterPunch.org<\/a>. <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Working people the world over have celebrated the first of May as \u201cInternational Labor Day\u201d since 1886, when workers in the United States struggling for an eight-hour day staged a May 1 national protest. Thanks to the new deal America\u2019s auto workers have signed with Detroit\u2019s Big Three \u2014 Ford, GM, and Stellantis \u2014 that More<\/a><\/p>\n

The post The Global Significance of the UAW\u2019s Victory<\/a> appeared first on CounterPunch.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":55,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1322175"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/55"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1322175"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1322175\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1322176,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1322175\/revisions\/1322176"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1322175"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1322175"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1322175"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}