US and German-sponsored union at Volkswagen Mexico imposes sellout contract, blocking a global struggle.
The Independent Union of Volkswagen Workers (SITIAVW) in Mexico rammed through a sellout agreement last Friday at the company’s massive complex in Puebla, blocking a scheduled strike.
The 7,200 workers at the plant had rejected the contract on August 30 by a majority of 55.7 percent. The union leadership postponed the strike deadline and had workers vote on essentially the same contract on September 14, which included a meager 7 percent wage increase and a 3.59 percent raise in benefits, compared to the initial demand by the union of a 21 percent raise in pay.
The union spent the weeks between the votes attempting to demoralize workers. Hugo Tlalpan Luna, the recently elected general secretary of the union, told workers that there was no strike fund, which he blamed on corruption from the previous leadership, and argued that a struggle for a significant improvement in pay would have to wait.
Seeing that the new union leadership would act no differently from previous ones and instead would isolate any strike, starve workers on the picket lines and refuse to fight for significant improvements, 63 percent of the workers allegedly voted in favor on Friday. However, no confidence can be placed in the validity of the vote count overseen by bureaucrats eager to impose the contract without impacting the flow of dues money.
The new contract includes a promise to hire 321 new workers, which Tlalpan described as a sign of “job security.” This is a lie to cover for the unwillingness of the union apparatus to truly safeguard workers’ jobs and fight the massive increase in the workload for the existing workforce.
The first semester of 2024 saw a 30 percent increase in production to over 1,100 units per day, which includes the Jetta, Taos and Tiguan models. But, at the same time, a transition first announced in 2022 to the production of electric vehicles, which require a fraction of the labor hours compared to gasoline cars, could be used as an excuse for mass layoffs and increasing the workload even more.
The sellout of workers in Puebla exposed the treachery of not only SITIAVW, but also of the German and US union bureaucracies that have long sponsored its activities and those of the rest of the so-called “independent” unions in the country.
While Tlalpan sat on his hands and blamed a lack of funds, IG Metall in Germany and the United Auto Workers (UAW), who have hundreds of millions of dollars in funds, turned a blind eye.
On Thursday, IG Metall made no mention of Puebla as it announced the start of contract talks with Volkswagen a month ahead of schedule after the company ended a supposed “job security scheme.”
The UAW waited until the morning after the sellout contract was ratified in Mexico to announce that it would begin negotiating its first contract ever with Volkswagen after workers at the assembly plant in Chattanooga, Tennessee voted to join the union earlier this year.
These talks are taking place amid an upsurge of struggles by workers in the company that could set the basis for a major counteroffensive in defense of jobs and for a massive improvement in conditions.
On September 4, workers at Audi, a Volkswagen subsidiary, in Brussels, Belgium, launched wildcat strikes to oppose threats to end production there of the Audi Q8 e-tron electric vehicles, to shift production to the plant in Puebla.
Earlier this year, in Puebla, the Independent Union of Audi Workers (SITAUDI) which belongs to the same federation and is closely tied to SITIAVW, sold out a three-week strike as well by having workers vote on essentially the same contract repeatedly. There was no effort to expand the struggle to the Volkswagen plant less than one hour away.
The unity of Volkswagen workers across Europe, North America, and beyond would cripple the efforts of the company to pit them against each other in a race to the bottom. At the same time, it would help undermine the promotion of chauvinism the ruling elites employ to advance their agenda of war and attacks on democratic rights.
For decades, the union bureaucracies of the United States, Canada, and especially Germany have maintained close ties with SITIAVW, but the relationship has been entirely exposed as merely a means of doing the bidding of corporations and imperialism.
The history of these ties at the plant in Puebla provides a case study of how the state, management and the union bureaucracies have worked to block workers from developing genuine fighting organizations of the working class.
Source: El Financiero
