GM assault on the working class

On June 7th General Motors, the American automobile manufacturing giant announced that due to rise of healthcare costs and a $1.1 billon market loss in the first quarter of 2005, they plan on eliminating 25,000 American jobs by 2008. The cuts will reduce GM workforce from the present 111,000 to 86,000, a drastic reduction from it’s workforce in the 1970’s of 600,000 American workers. General Motors is also attacking their present contract with the UAW in hopes to implement further healthcare cuts to the remaining workers who avoid the lay off axe.

It is simply amazing that these corporate giants, who wield enormous pressure in Washington to lobby in their interests, don’t use that power to relieve themselves of the burden of paying their workers healthcare insurance by supporting a national healthcare program. It may seem idiotic to even propose that capitalist giants even consider such an option as a socialist reform. However it makes pure economic sense. A national healthcare program would shift the burden of providing essential benefits such as healthcare to their workers if through a national healthcare program, that burden was shifted to the Government.

I find it amusing how the corporate media in this country express how U.S. auto manufacturers compete with Japanese and German manufacturers that do not provide these benefits to their employees. However they fail to mention that the reason Japanese and German companies are relieved of this burden is due to their extensive national healthcare programs.

Instead however, we see a corporate attack on the American working class by companies like General Motors, US air and United Airlines, and supported by the Bush administration, Republicans and Democrats alike. The for profit capitalist system is in dire crisis and the only way these money driven swine see fit to patch the holes in their sinking ship is to take back every gain the working class in this country has made in the last 100 years.