Eduardo Parati
On Saturday, GM announced the summary firing of 1,200 workers in Brazil at three plants in the state of São Paulo in the cities of Mogi das Cruzes, São Caetano do Sul and São José dos Campos. It took place after the majority of workers rejected the proposal for voluntary dismissal programs (PDV) at the three plants.
To the surprise of the company and the unions, the announcement was met with explosive opposition. Assemblies held on Sunday and Monday approved indefinite strikes, immediately putting 11,500 workers in struggle against GM’s measures.
On Monday, the union bureaucrats published a joint letter pointing out the obvious contradiction between the auto giant’s financial prosperity and the massive job cuts, stating: “All the cuts are unjustifiable. The automaker claims a drop in sales, but on the contrary, it recorded an 18.18 per cent increase in Brazilian sales between April and June this year... In addition, it made a net profit of 2.57 billion dollars (R$12.94 billion) in the second quarter of this year, an increase of 51.6 percent year-on-year.”
A month ago, the company sent letters to workers in the São Paulo plants proposing to “discuss” their “voluntary dismissal.” Such letters were also sent to workers at GM’s Gravataí plant in the southern state of Rio Grande do Sul, with management stating that workers would suffer cuts from that moment on. However, even faced with the prospect of a widespread attack, the unions did not organize any kind of response.
On September 19, after the PDV proposed by GM suffered a mass rejection, news emerged that the company had started laying off employees at the São Caetano plant. However, the president of the São Caetano do Sul Metalworkers Union, which is affiliated to the Força Sindical union federation, Aparecido da Silva, known as Cidão, played down the threats, saying: “So far [only employees who had already retired] have been fired.”
The fact that workers in São Paulo went on strike in direct opposition to their own layoffs has forced the union to adopt a false rhetoric in favor of keeping their jobs while waiting for more favorable conditions to impose the layoffs demanded by GM. However, due to their widespread discrediting among workers, the unions’ ability to deflect the huge opposition seems to be increasingly in check.
In their joint letter, right after the union bureaucrats lament that “GM has failed to comply with layoff agreements signed with the unions,” they state that “the three unions are seeking negotiations with the automaker to reverse the layoffs and guarantee jobs.” In other words, even though GM’s management has clearly shown its indifference to the agreements signed with the unions, the bureaucracy has no other response than to repeat this maneuver, which is widely distrusted by the workers.
The reality is that the announcement of the layoffs directly exposes the union bureaucracy itself, which in recent years has promoted the claim that it would be enough to submit to the “agreements” between the union and the company to guarantee “job stability.”
In March 2020, at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, GM announced 15,000 layoffs that would cut wages and benefits. The union in São Caetano, under the leadership of Cidão, immediately worked to force the layoffs through an “online vote” that never took place. The layoffs did not prevent further cuts in the negotiation of the collective bargaining agreement in 2021, with the union abandoning the workers’ 13-day strike in deference to a court decision, stating that “Obviously the union respects the position of the assembly, but the court decision must be followed.” At the beginning of 2022, even as Ford closed its plants and left the country, violating all the agreements made with the union, the bureaucracy forced the workers to remain on the production line until the last day.
A decisive role in the suppression of auto workers has also been played by the São José dos Campos Metalworkers Union, which is affiliated to the CSP-Conlutas union federation, controlled by the Morenoite Unified Socialist Workers Party (PSTU). While presenting itself as an “opposition” union, it oversaw the dismissal of 12,000 workers between 2010 and 2020.
Today, amid the biggest inflationary crisis in decades and after years of job and wage cuts in the automotive plants, the explosive opposition of GM workers in Brazil against yet another round of layoffs threatens to break the unions’ straitjacket, also putting the upper echelons of the bureaucracy of the trade union federations and the government of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (Workers Party – PT) on alert.
This week, the major union federations produced a joint note repeating the points of the local unions’ letter, and the president of the ABC Metalworkers Union, affiliated to the CUT, the PT-controlled union federation, Moisés Selérges, visited the São Caetano plant to give a speech in “solidarity.” Selérges’ history of betrayal and his visit to striking workers should be taken as an indication of the betrayal being prepared in the plants with the help of the PT’s union apparatus.
Selérges assisted Mercedes-Benz in imposing a PDV at the São Bernardo do Campo plant exactly one year ago. During the strike, which was sparked by huge opposition to the cuts, the union authorities blamed the Chinese workers, essentially adopting the same fascistic rhetoric as then-president Jair Bolsonaro, and sought to cultivate illusions that a new Lula government would mean a new period of improved living conditions and increased employment. Meanwhile, they sought to pit outsourced workers against permanent ones, insinuating that the mass layoffs were an opportunity for new temporary contracts.
The unions also appealed to the Lula government and to the governor of São Paulo and former minister in the Bolsonaro government, Tarcísio de Freitas. In their letter, they called for “immediate intervention by the Federal Government, the Ministry of Labor, the Government of the State of São Paulo and the Labor Attorney’s Office.”
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