#automake

[mostlysignssomeportents]

"Efficiency" left the Big Three vulnerable to smart UAW tactics

Tomorrow (September 22), I'm (virtually) presenting at the DIG Festival in Modena, Italy. Tomorrow night, I'll be in person at LA's Book Soup for the launch of Justin C Key's "The World Wasn’t Ready for You." On September 27, I'll be at Chevalier's Books in Los Angeles with Brian Merchant for a joint launch for my new book The Internet Con and his new book, Blood in the Machine.

It's been 143 days since the WGA went on strike against the Hollywood studios. While early tactical leaks from the studios had studio execs chortling and twirling their mustaches about writers caving once they started losing their homes, the strikers aren't wavering – they're still out there, pounding the picket lines, every weekday:

https://www.cnbc.com/2023/08/09/how-hollywood-writers-make-ends-meet-100-days-into-the-writers-guild-strike.html

The studios obviously need writers. That gleeful, anonymous studio exec who got such an obvious erotic charge at the thought of workers being rendered homeless as punishment for challenging his corporate power completely misread the room, and his comments didn't demoralize the writers. Instead, they inspired the actors to go on strike, too.

But how have the writers stayed out since May Day? How have the actors stayed out for 69 days since their strike started on Bastille Day? We can thank the studios for that! As it turns out, the studios have devoted so much energy to rendering creative workers as precarious as possible, hiring as little as they can getting away with and using punishing overtime as a substitute for adequate staffing that they've eliminated all the workers who can't survive on side-hustles and savings for six or seven months at a time.

But even for those layoff-hardened workers, long strikes are brutal, and of course, all the affiliated trades, from costumers to grips, are feeling the pain. The strike fund only goes so far, and non-striking, affected workers don't even get that. That's why I've been donating regularly to the Entertainment Community Fund, which helps all affected workers out with cash transfers (I just gave them another $500):

https://secure2.convio.net/afa/site/Donation2?df_id=8117&8117.donation=form1&mfc_pref=T

As hot labor summer is revealed as a turning point – not just a season – long strikes will become the norm. Bosses still don't believe in worker power, and until they get their minds right, they're going to keep on trying to starve their workforces back inside. To get a sense of how long workers will have to hold out, just consider the Warrior Met strike, where Alabama coal-miners stayed out for 23 months:

https://www.thenation.com/article/activism/warrior-met-strike-union/

As Kim Kelly explained to Adam Conover in the latest Factually podcast, the Alabama coal strikers didn't get anywhere near the attention that the Hollywood strikers have enjoyed:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UvyMHf7Yg0Q

(To learn more about the untold story of worker organizing, from prison unions to the key role that people of color and women played in labor history, check out Kelly's book, "Fight Like Hell," now in paperback:)

https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Fight-Like-Hell/Kim-Kelly/9781982171063

Which brings me to the UAW strike. This is an historic strike, the first time that the UAW has struck all of the Big Three automakers at once. Past autoworkers' strikes have marked turning points for all American workers. The 1945/46 GM strike established employers' duty to cover worker pensions, health care, and cost of living allowances. The GM strike created the American middle-class:

https://prospect.org/labor/2023-09-18-uaw-strikes-built-american-middle-class/

The Big Three are fighting for all the marbles here. They are refusing to allow unions to organize EV factories. Given that no more internal combustion cars will be in production in just a few short years, that's tantamount to eliminating auto unions altogether. The automakers are flush with cash, including billions in public subsidies from multiple bailouts, along with billions more from greedflation price-gouging. A long siege is inevitable, as the decimillionaires running these companies earn their pay by starving out their workers:

https://www.businessinsider.com/general-motors-ceo-mary-barra-salary-auto-workers-strike-uaw-2023-9

The UAW knows this, of course, and their new leadership – helmed by the union's radical president Shawn Fain – has a plan. UAW workers are engaged in tactical striking, shutting down key parts of the supply chain on a rolling basis, making the 90-day strike fund stretch much farther:

https://prospect.org/blogs-and-newsletters/tap/2023-09-18-labors-militant-creativity/

In this project, they are greatly aided by Big Car's own relentless pursuit of profit. The automakers – like every monopolized, financialized sector – have stripped all the buffers and slack out of their operations. Inventory on hand is kept to a bare minimum. Inputs are sourced from the cheapest bidder, and they're brought to the factory by the lowest-cost option. Resiliency – spare parts, backup machinery – is forever at war with profits, and profits have won and won and won, leaving auto production in a brittle, and easily shattered state.

This is especially true for staffing. Automakers are violently allergic to hiring workers, because new workers get benefits and workplace protection. Instead, the car companies routinely offer "voluntary" overtime to their existing workforce. By refusing this overtime, workers can kneecap production, without striking.

Enter "Eight and Skate," a campaign among UAW workers to clock out after their eight hour shift. As Keith Brower Brown writes for Labor Notes, the UAW organizers are telling workers that "It’s crossing an unofficial picket line to work overtime. It’s helping out the company":

https://labornotes.org/2023/09/work-extra-during-strike-auto-workers-say-eight-and-skate

Eight and Skate has already started to work; the Buffalo Ford plant can no longer run its normal weekend shifts because workers are refusing to put in voluntary overtime. Of course, bosses will strike back: the next step will be forced overtime, which will lead to the unsafe conditions that unionized workers are contractually obliged to call paid work-stoppages over, shutting down operations without touching the strike fund.

What's more, car bosses can't just halt safety stoppages or change the rules on overtime; per the UAW's last contract, bosses are required to bargain on changes to overtime rules:

https://uaw.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/Working-Without-Contract-FAQ-FINAL-2.pdf

Car bosses have become lazily dependent on overtime. At GM's "highly profitable" SUV factory in Arlington, TX, normal production runs a six-days, 24 hours per day. Workers typically work five eight-hour days and nine hours on Saturdays. That's been the status quo for 11 years, but when bosses circulated the usual overtime signup sheet last week, every worker wrote "a big fat NO" next to their names.

Writing for The American Prospect, David Dayen points out that this overtime addiction puts a new complexion on the much-hyped workerpocalypse that EVs will supposedly bring about. EVs are much simpler to build than conventional cars, the argument goes, so a US transition to EVs will throw many autoworkers out of work:

https://prospect.org/labor/2023-09-20-big-threes-labor-shortages-uaw/

But the reality is that most autoworkers are doing one and a half jobs already. Reducing the "workforce" by a third could leave all these workers with their existing jobs, and the 40-hour workweek that their forebears fought for at GM inn 1945/46. Add to that the additional workers needed to make batteries, build and maintain charging infrastructure, and so on, and there's no reason to think that EVs will weaken autoworker power.

And as Dayen points out, this overtime addiction isn't limited to cars. It's also endemic to the entertainment industry, where writers' "mini rooms" and other forms of chronic understaffing are used to keep workforces at a skeleton crew, even when the overtime costs more than hiring new workers.

Bosses call themselves job creators, but they have a relentless drive to destroy jobs. If there's one thing bosses hate, it's paying workers – hence all the hype about AI and automation. The stories about looming AI-driven mass unemployment are fairy tales, but they're tailor made for financiers who get alarming, life-threatening priapism at the though of firing us all and replacing us with shell-scripts:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/03/09/autocomplete-worshippers/#the-real-ai-was-the-corporations-that-we-fought-along-the-way

This is why Republican "workerism" rings so hollow. Trump's GOP talks a big game about protecting "workers" (by which they mean anglo men) from immigrants and "woke captialism," but they have nothing to say about protecting workers from bosses and bankers who see every dime a worker gets as misappropriated from their dividend.

Unsurprisingly, conservative message-discipline sucks. As Luke Savage writes in Jacobin, for every mealymouthed Josh Hawley mouthing talking points that "support workers" by blaming China and Joe Biden for the Big Three's greed, there's a Tim Scott, saying the quiet part aloud:

https://jacobin.com/2023/09/republicans-uaw-strike-hawley-trump-scott/

Quoth Senator Scott: "I think Ronald Reagan gave us a great example when federal employees decided they were going to strike. He said, you strike, you’re fired. Simple concept to me. To the extent that we can use that once again, absolutely":

https://twitter.com/American_Bridge/status/1704136706574741988

The GOP's workerism is a tissue-thin fake. They can never and will never support real worker power. That creates an opportunity for Biden and Democrats to seize:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/18/co-determination/#now-make-me-do-it

Reversing two generations of anti-worker politics is a marathon, not a sprint. The strikes are going to run for months, even years. Every worker will be called upon to support their striking siblings, every day. We can do it. Solidarity now. Solidarity forever.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/21/eight-and-skate/#strike-to-rule

[blueiskewl]

[acob]

The year is almost over.... and honestly guys this has been my biggest year yet #epic so why don't we go down and count down and look down the craziest moments of 2023... are you ready for this epic nostalgia filled tour, cause I sure am argagagagaga

-

1) Ya

[climatecalling]

Biden’s decision to join the strike would be remarkable on its own. Beyond the obvious symbolism, his presence there lends tangible material support to workers’ demands, handing the union leverage over companies that might otherwise reasonably assume he’d have their backs. It could also usher in a broader shift in the way he and other Democrats talk about climate policy. Impressive as the IRA is, its most direct benefits accrue largely to companies and consumers with enough cash on hand to afford up-front payments for big-ticket items like solar panels and heat pumps. ... Targeting climate policy at corporations and affluent consumers doesn’t make a great counterargument to Republicans eager to frame it all as elitist virtue signaling, and win elections accordingly. What the Republican party can be reliably expected to do, though, is side with the bosses. That’s where even self-professed “car guy” Joe Biden might be able to set himself apart – by being willing to offend the automakers so that the rewards of America’s green industrial policy aren’t hoarded at the top.

[fuckyeahmarxismleninism]

By Stephen Millies

The huge corporation saw how UAW’s successful strikes last year against General Motors, Ford and Stellantis (Chrysler and Jeep) brought the Big Three automakers to their knees. The week before, workers at Volkswagen’s Chattanooga, Tennessee, plant voted three to one to join the UAW.

What made the Daimler and Volkswagen victories all the more important is that they happened in the U.S. South.

[awesome-casuallyfamouscollector]

Deese: Risk of US Automakers Falling Behind on EVs

Brian Deese, MIT Innovation Fellow and Former National Economic Council Director says that the demise of the vehicles are "greatly exaggerated," but cautions that legacy US automakers risk falling behind on the technology needed to compete on EVs.

P.S. A bit of a misleading title, because in fact, America's "leading" legacy automakers have been hopelessly behind in the field of electric car technology for a long time ago, already in 2017/2018, (That was the last time the old companies had any hope of saving themselves! Now you've completely missed everything!!!) and the old companies with their current strategy do NOT and WILL NOT have any chance to overcome this backwardness...

The specificity of the structure of the American car market is that almost no one outside of America needs huge pickup trucks and SUVs. For the rest of the car world already, the big three American car manufacturing companies are almost completely unimportant...

Ford ICE vehicle sales are already slowly "dying" in Europe and elsewhere. GM has fled the European market because it was unable to produce competitive ICE vehicles. In the field of electric cars, the fate of Eastman Kodak awaits the old American legacy automakers...!

Customs barriers will not save you because you do NOT have a competitive product - a good electric car at a reasonable price... Tesla - the only American car company worth paying attention to...!!!

[parasolids]

today my boss, who seemed to be as confused by the whole situation as i was, had to have a one on one meeting with me because apparently the plant manager does not like my dads car and my boss figured he should give me a heads up that the plant manager was complaining

[angryisokay]

Every month or so, some Tesla-stan youtube account makes a clickbait video about how Elon is definitely going to buy GM. TOTALLY REAL! A deal is in the works now! Just you wait!

If his dumbshit antics, online hysterics, and people generally waking up to Tesla being a shit automaker, really does send the stock price into a death spiral, GM should offer to buy the company off him.

[chaitanya]

Shaping the Industry: Automakers' Green Initiatives Driving Sustainability

In a bid to steer the automotive industry towards a more sustainable future, automakers worldwide are fervently adopting green initiatives. From hybrid vehicles to electric powertrains, the landscape is rapidly evolving. The push for sustainability isn't merely a trend; it's a necessity. JATO, a prominent automotive intelligence provider, reports a significant uptick in eco-friendly vehicle sales, indicating a shifting consumer mindset.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Actually, the President of the United States is powerful

US Presidents have lots of things they can do beyond signing or vetoing legislation. Their administrative agencies have broad powers that allow them to act without dragging Congress behind them.

For example, Jennifer Abruzzo, the ass-kicking superhero that Biden appointed as National Labor Relations Board General Counsel, has used her powers to establish a rule that companies that break labor law during union drives automatically lose, with the affected union gaining instant recognition.

For a followup, Abruzzo is using a case called Thrive Pet Care to impose a “duty to bargain” on companies. If a company won’t bargain in good faith for a union contract, Abruzzo’s NLRB will simply force them to adhere to the contractual terms established by rival companies that did bargain with their unions, until such time as a contract is signed.

But wait, what about the dastardly Supreme Court? What if those six dotards in robes use their stolen seats on the country’s highest court to block Biden’s administrators?

Well, Biden could do what his predecessors have done. Like Lincoln, Biden could simply ignore the court, embracing popular policies he was elected to enact, revealing the Supremes to be toothless, out-of-touch, undemocratic and illegitimate.

(Andrew Jackson was a monster, but when he ignored his own Supreme Court, he proved that the Supremes’ only leverage came from their legitimacy; recall the (likely apocryphal) quote, “[Chief Justice] John Marshall has made his decision; now let him enforce it!”)

Like FDR, Biden could threaten to pack the court, creating a national debate about the court’s illegitimacy, which would add fuel to the court’s plummeting reputation amidst a string of bribery scandals.

-Joe Biden is headed to a UAW picket-line in Detroit: “I want to do it, now make me do it.”

Image: Fabio Basagni https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/:Sahara_desert_sunrise.jpg

CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.en

[blueiskewl]

1959 Porsche 718 RSK Werks Spyder

[automotiveamerican]

Forgotten Automakers: ReVere Motor Car Corporation - Brett Berk @Car and Driver

The innovative Indiana carmaker that turned out to be (mostly) a scam. The ReVere Motor Car Corporation of Logansport, Indiana, may have been one of America’s first supercar makers. The marque was founded 100 years ago by Adolph Monsen, who toured the streets of Logansport in the first bare chassis on August 25, 1917. Monsen was a vehicular obsessive who got his start in the Chicago bicycle…

[arjunvib]

KPIT has made it into the Top 10 of Fortune's Next 500 List!

KPIT ranks in the Top 10 of Fortune's Next 500 List: The auto-focused software and engineering firm catapults to the top 10 in The Next 500 list as it bets on end-to-end architecture for global automakers – Team Fortune India

Here's a quick summary from the publication that was originally published by Fortune India

In 2019, KPIT Technologies underwent a significant restructuring, transitioning away from its IT business to focus solely on automotive engineering and mobility solutions. Since then, KPIT has experienced remarkable growth, increasing its revenue from $71 million in Q4FY19 to $149 million in Q3FY24.

"We made a strategic move, banking on the transformations within the automotive sector, with a targeted focus on the top 25 OEMs worldwide," Stated Patil.

Led by CEO and MD Kishor Patil, KPIT, made strategic decisions to align with its new focus, targeting the top 25 global OEMs in the automotive industry. The company's workforce has expanded to nearly 12,000 employees, with a notable increase in core staff. KPIT's EBITDA margin has also seen substantial improvement, rising from 15.2% in FY21 to 20.6% in Q3FY24.

Key revenue drivers include architecture consulting and middleware practice, accounting for over 50% of KPIT's revenue. KPIT collaborates with major global OEMs such as Renault, BMW, Ford, and General Motors, focusing particularly on the passenger car segment, which constitutes approximately 40% of its vertical revenue.

KPIT has strategically acquired companies to enhance its offerings, including SOMIT Solutions in the UK and QORIX, a subsidiary formed from its tie-up with the German-based ZF group. In addition, KPIT has entered the car gaming industry through a stake acquisition in N-Dream, and it has also introduced Sodium-ion battery technology as an alternative to lithium-ion batteries in EVs.

KPIT's focus on automotive engineering and mobility solutions, coupled with strategic acquisitions and technological innovations, positions it for continued growth and success in the evolving automotive industry.

Read The Article more about the Latest media interactions by Mr. Kishor Patil

[awesome-casuallyfamouscollector]

It’s also true that not everyone wants a Tesla. Even when affordable, many people just don’t want a barren, brutalist interior. People often want things like a turn signal stalk, a few buttons for the most commonly used systems, and *GASP!* a gauge cluster display that’s in front of them while facing forward. Some of us don’t want to use a touchscreen to aim the AC vents when we could just do that with our hands like we’ve always done, and more quickly. Some of us also aren’t impressed with Elon Musk’s edgy behaviour(..)

P.S. All this could be true, but GM is not able to sell the Chevrolet Bolt in large volumes, nor is it able to export this electric car to Europe. At its heart conceptually, the Chevrolet Bolt was a compliance electric car that GM made only because it had to. Tesla and the Chinese electric car manufacturers are still completely safe, especially in Europe, where there is absolutely NO "competition" from GM...

Basically, GM has completely lost the European car market and there is very little chance that they will be able to come back. Most likely, Ford will also lose the European car market (Ford will no longer make the Fiesta). It's hard for them to go here. Americans are not good at producing compact and subcompact cars and crossovers...