Wall Street celebrates the destruction of workers’ jobs and wages

[Hannah Bell]

A little more than a year after the US automaker emerged from the “quick and surgical” bankruptcy ordered by the Obama administration, GM is expected to file papers this week for an Initial Public Offering (IPO) of stock later this fall. Wall Street experts say GM’s share value and earning potential have risen exponentially, and the IPO is expected to be one of the largest stock sales in history. The New York Times set the celebratory tone last week, declaring, “After a dismal period of huge losses and deep cuts that culminated in the Obama administration’s bailout of General Motors and Chrysler, the gloom over the American auto industry is starting to lift.”

The return to profitability at GM has been accomplished through brutal cuts in labor costs, included the shuttering of dozens of plants and the elimination of 50,000 jobs—20 percent of GM’s global workforce—including 30,000 hourly and salaried positions in North America....The reduction of US auto workers’ wages to the near-poverty level of $14 an hour represents a historic retrogression to the levels of exploitation that existed in the darkest days of the Great Depression, prior to the mass struggles that established the United Auto Workers.

The end of so-called “middle-class” wages in auto was the centerpiece of the bailout of GM and Chrysler engineered by the Obama administration’s Auto Task Force last year. It established a new benchmark for the permanent slashing of wages across the entire economy and the lowering in US workers’ living standards towards those of super-exploited workers in Asia and other parts of the “emerging world.”

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2010/aug2010/pers-a17.shtml

[Angry Dragon]

1. As long as we bailed out the auto industry

and slashed wages, why were the wages of bankers and wall street not slashed??

[laughingliberal]

3. +1000 for a very good question. nt

[leftstreet]

5. Excellent question!

[Skink]

2. I'm sure many of the new hires were intially part of the layed off.

[leftstreet]

4. (wrong spot)

K&R though!

[The_Casual_Observer]

6. They are coming after the public sector jobs & pensions next.

This time it's starting with talk of bankrupt cities & counties & states. It's all about the bond ratings, the workers are just so much expendible shit.

[amborin]

7. the early IPO is ill-advised; pushed by Obama for pol expediency, opposed by many

http://upload.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x8937020

[Angry Dragon]

9. posted wrong place

[asdjrocky]

8. The banksters own us.

The game became so clear and so obvious over the last couple of years.

[Angry Dragon]

10. This country is going backwards for 95% of us