by Marian Kramer, General Baker, and Claire McClinton
Editor’s note: As we go to press, the conditions in Michigan have grown even more dire. General Motors announced it will close 12 plants, four in Michigan alone, and layoff 30,000 workers. Delphi has announced it will lay off 24,000 workers. Ford will announce plant closures and layoffs in January, but already has said that over 4000 salaried workers will lose their jobs by the end of 2006.
Michigan was once the magnet that attracted workers from across the land to the industrial capital of the world. In Highland Park, Michigan, Henry Ford unveiled the moving assembly line, the benchmark for the mechanical method of production. This was a process by which, instead of human labor moving from station to station, the product moved past a mass of human labor at a stationary post.
That was in 1913. It set the backdrop for the $5-a-day wages that were advertised from coast to coast. The moving production line grew all over the globe. This became the underpinning of the auto industry in Detroit, Flint, and Lansing, and of the appliance industry in Benton Harbor and the furniture industry in Grand Rapids.
This period witnessed the New Deal administration that – among other things – established General Assistance, pushed through the Social Security Act, and later, in most states, set up single welfare programs for individuals to sustain themselves during economic down turn. The New Deal programs were consolidated during the tremendous expansion of capitalism after World War II.
For the capitalist class, the welfare state guaranteed the support of the American people for foreign policies which allowed profits from across the globe to flow into this country. It also gave the capitalists control over the growing social movement and an ideological weapon to use against the ideas of socialism that were spreading. These lessons are a guide as revolutionaries enter a historically new period.
Today new labor-replacing technology, in the form of robots and computers, is destroying the industrial economy and the society built around it. Workers throughout the state of Michigan, this country, and the world are being discarded from the capitalist system and left with no means to survive. This new class of the poor that is in formation has the potential, if conscious of its historic mission, to lead society toward a whole new world, one where the abundance that the new technology makes possible is distributed to all based on need.
This article will discuss the lessons that revolutionaries in Michigan are learning as we fight for the political unity of this new class and a vision of a new, cooperative world.
From industrial to electronic production
The post-World War II years saw a boom in the auto, appliance, and furniture industries which grew along with the housing boom which had been made possible by the G.I. Bill. With every cyclical crisis of overproduction in the 1960s and 1970s, new
labor-saving devices were introduced into production. Electronic production with robots and computers was made possible by the semiconductor and microchip that began to be introduced into production after World War II.
The 1980s marked a rapid increase in the use of labor-saving devices, with devastating social effects. One of the first concessions resulting from this period was that welfare recipients in the 1980s did not receive an annual increase in their welfare grants. There were massive plant closures across Michigan. Housing, neighborhoods, hospitals, clinics, and local grocery stores were destroyed. There was a wholesale rise of homelessness, and a flight of employees from the state of Michigan to further lower the standard of living of the workers.
As the crisis deepened in the 1990s, due to more automation and the use of robotics, and as a globalize labor market developed, it became clear that the government would not provide social programs for workers when the capitalists no longer needed them.
The government of Michigan responded to the growing poverty with the elimination of the General Assistance program, throwing thousands of people into the streets, and closing mental health facilities and other state-sponsored services. This destroyed entire cities.
The welfare reform program of Michigan acted as a model for passing the national welfare reform program under President Bill Clinton. This signaled the beginning of the end of government responsibility to the poor. The Michigan program laid the foundation for eliminating safety net programs (such as the ineffective “Work First” program). The average person on the program was forced deeper into poverty. The majority of the recipients became part of the permanent army of the unemployed. They ended up without medical care and with their utilities shut off. They were afraid to go into the welfare department to request emergency help because their children could be taken by Protective Services. As the number of people thrown off welfare increased, more and more children joined the foster care and adoption rolls.
The beat goes on. Since the year 2000, the state of Michigan has lost 313,600 more jobs, of which 234,400 were in manufacturing, an employment drop of 26 percent (against 18 percent nationally). The state will lose thousands more in 2005 and 2006. Michigan still remains the leading auto-producing state, building 2.5 million automobiles last year, but with only a fraction of the work force of previous years. Unemployment in Michigan is the highest in the nation. The state is over $1 billion in debt. Its revenue sharing from the federal government has been reduced from 27 percent in 1980 to six percent in 2005. Schools are closing and programs are being slashed at universities. When the means of production change, so go the social programs and the infrastructure that rest on that production and protect it.
Destruction of Michigan cities
The electronic revolution is destroying Michigan cities. For example, a once-thriving industrial city – Benton Harbor – now has an unemployment rate of 70 percent. With a population of 12,000, it is 92 percent black, separated by a river from the wealthy St. Joseph, a city that is 90 percent white (and has an unemployment rate of two percent). More people are in jail per capita in Benton Harbor than anywhere else in the world, and they are mainly young. Benton Harbor is like so many cities in America’s Rust Belt that are being devastated economically and socially as labor-replacing technology and globalization force companies to leave to chase cheaper labor. No matter what color you are, no job is safe today.
Ruled by the Whirlpool Corporation, Benton Harbor sits on prime lakefront property. Whirlpool and real estate developers are implementing a $500 million investment project which aims to take over Benton Harbor, displacing the residents in much the same way that the poor are being abandoned in New Orleans and elsewhere. The community has struggled courageously, trying to unseat Whirlpool’s people on the City Council. Leaders who fight for justice have been viciously attacked by the state.
In Flint, the steady attack by General Motors and Delphi on jobs has reached crisis proportions. In the late 1970s, GM employed 80,000 workers in Flint. In 1998, this number shrunk to 27,000. Today, GM employs 14,500 with 3,100 workers at Delphi. Fifteen short years later, the Flint workers were the highest paid in the nation. Today, household income in Flint is below the national average.
Now, as a result of the changes in the economy, GM and Delphi are putting the squeeze on a shrinking work force, asking for unprecedented cuts in wages and benefits. “We’re building a high-quality product, and they’re telling us we’re worthless,” declared one worker. The corporations are telling American workers to settle for a steadily declining living standard or a life in the streets.
In reality, these formerly secure workers are heading that way anyway. Delphi workers in China work for $3 an hour. Delphi has filed for bankruptcy while demanding unprecedented wage and benefit cuts from the United Auto Workers. Even before it filed for bankruptcy, retirees from Delphi were horrified to receive notices in the mail that Delphi pension funds were not solvent and their pensions may be radically reduced. Active workers were asked to give up as much as 63 percent of their pay (down to accepting wages of $10 per hour), along with long standing benefits, such as health care and vacation days.
At a recent UAW meeting of Delphi workers, a shocked, angry and confused membership was told that their union would stand tall. However, the union leadership offered no specifics on how they would deal with the situation. Since then, many employees at a Delphi facility have been crowding into the plant hospital with elevated blood pressure from the stress.
If trying to deal with Hurricane Delphi wasn’t enough, GM and UAW just announced an agreement on how to cut health care costs 25% for active employees, a sizable blow to retiree health benefits (something UAW President Gettlefinger promised he would not touch). It’s a bitter pill that some UAW members must now swallow – in the new global economy, battles cannot be won at the bargaining table. More and more, the workers are standing alone against a government that cares only about accommodating the national and international needs of global capitalism.
The shameful reduction of the safety net continues. What is new is that today more and more formerly secure workers are being thrown into the social revolution. Though unaware of the cause of the problem or the solution, a growing class of destitute workers is forming that has nowhere to turn. There is no way to go back to what once was, only forward. But this requires that the people become conscious of the entire process and their role in making the political changes that are possible today.
Changes in the State
The state of Michigan is changing to adjust to the needs of global capital and private property. Its response to the economic and social crisis is to offer tax breaks to corporations that promise jobs they cannot deliver, to privatize more services, and to impose new laws such as Public Act 72, the Local Physical Responsibility Law of 1990.
This Public Act 72 allows the state Treasury Department to take over any governmental unit within the state, whether it is a county, city, village, town, or even a school district when such an entity is declared insolvent by state overseers. Under this act, the governor can send in an emergency financial manager to seize control of the affairs of the entity being seized. The appointed emergency financial manager is responsible only to the governor. Three Michigan cities — Hamtramck, Flint, and Highland Park — have been taken over.
Between July 1, 2001 and June 30, 2002, although the economy was changing, and a new class of destitute people was emerging, the Detroit City Council continued to grant the Detroit Board of Water Commission a price increase for water. That same year, some 40,000 Detroit residents had their water shut off. In Highland Park, Michigan, one-half of the population of some 16,000 people had their water turned off. Because of these actions on the part of the state, an organized fight was launched, headed by the Michigan Welfare Rights Organization. This gave rise to the formation of new organizations such as the Highland Park Human Rights Coalition.
Actions were called against the utility companies and hundreds of people responded. The demand from the masses was “No shut-offs!” and for the Detroit City Council to turn the water back on and “Stop the shut-offs.”
In Detroit, the struggle grew into a grassroots campaign to elect Maureen D. Taylor to the Detroit City Council. This campaign gained many victories: the Call ‘Em Out and the No Vote/No Takeover organizations, the Detroit Metropolitan AFL-CIO and many other organizations and churches endorsed the campaign.
The struggle around health care has escalated. Given that the lack of health insurance has reached crisis proportions, the Michigan United Methodist Conference passed a resolution to support “universal health care with a single payee.”
Lessons for revolutionaries
We as revolutionaries have gained knowledge in the above struggles. We proceed from the understanding that America is heading toward a class confrontation. In that light, the first lesson is that the strength of the grassroots campaign was that it based its program on the needs of those who have the least, and it began to educate and draw workers into the political struggle against their class enemy. The grassroots campaign was then able, through legal pursuits, to expose the election fraud of the Detroit City Clerk. The City Clerk has now been voted out and faces prosecution and an FBI investigation. Although Maureen Taylor was not even on the ballot in November, over 8,000 people voted for her as a write-in candidate.
The second lesson is that such successes would not have been possible in past periods. Raising the issue of water and utilities as human rights has pushed revolutionaries into the base of the developing class and allowed us to offer a vision of a new society, one in which the abundance of water, utilities, and other necessities of life are distributed on the basis of need rather than for profit.
The third lesson is that, for the process to reach fruition, in a new society, a great deal of education has to take place from within the developing struggle. An economy based on competition and private property created the situation. Revolutionaries guided by a vision of a new, cooperative society must be bold in advancing the strategic goals of the new class toward a new world where people’s needs are met. We must move to the level of pursuing political tactics that can unite the class in a struggle for political power, which is the only way this crisis can be resolved.
Today it is possible to create a cooperative society based on public ownership of the giant corporations, but revolutionaries must bring this vision to to the people.
Marian Kramer has been in the forefront of the welfare rights movement since its origin in the 1960s and is a founder of the National Welfare Rights Union. General Baker is an internationally known labor leader, a leader of the 1960s Detroit uprising and the first to refuse the Vietnam military draft. Claire McClinton, an auto worker, is a labor and community activist. She has been involved in the struggles of auto workers for over twenty years.
January.2006.Vol16.Ed1
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