“We don’t want to be cheap labor,” was a rallying cry of striking auto workers in Kragujevac, Serbia. They returned to work after a three-week strike when the union accepted a 9% wage increase.
The Serbian government, which owns a 1/3 stake in the plant, of course backed Fiat. It’s not hard to relate to that story wherever you live.
Before the strike, workers earned about $362 per month. It was the same last year. The difference between then and now is that at the end of last year 700 workers were laid off and now the remaining 2,500 still produce the same 400 cars per day!
Intense speed up on top of cheap labor! Again, the details differ but the story is the same the world over.
No-one should be forced to live like that. The workers were demanding a raise to about $476 a month, better transportation to work and a functional health and safety system.
Who is the enemy?
But workers are only striking against the company. They are only waging a trade union battle. They are not fighting against the wage system. Fiat didn’t create the bleak conditions in Kragujevac, although it certainly took advantage of them.
Capitalism cannot function unless masses are forced to work for wages. And under the system no-one gets a wage unless it makes a profit for the capitalist
The desperation that drove thousands of industrial wage workers to offer themselves as the cheapest of cheap labor to the billionaires of Fiat-Chrysler was the deadly rivalry between Russian and US-European imperialism.
In 1999, during the war against what was then Yugoslavia, NATO bombed the Kragujevac auto plant. Almost overnight thousands lost their $500 a month jobs with perks like no-layoffs. Their union contract was useless against the predatory forces of capitalism. The details differ but the story is the same the world over.
Who is the victim?
The bombs rained down on Yugoslavia but they were aimed at the whole of Eastern Europe. From now on, the war announced, US and European (not Russian) imperialists were going to exploit the workers of the region.
The billionaires at Volkswagen, Ford, Fiat, General Motors and Toyota swarmed in. Between 2000 and 2011 the region’s auto production doubled. Now one in every four cars sold in Europe is made in Eastern Europe.
The (cheaper) wage work that went to East Europe was lost to the (higher) wage workers in Western Europe. Their union contracts were just useless against the predatory forces of capitalism. Within a year of the war, Ford announced plans to close a plant in Belgium and two in England, while GM planned to cut 6,000 jobs.
One set of workers were played off against the other. Different details, same story.
Communism is the answer
And the story we have to painfully relearn is that we, the international working class, are the creators of all wealth but are we not the masters of our lives. We don’t decide what should, or should not, be built The bosses even own what we produce!
“Abolish Wage Slavery” should be one of the slogans of our strikes. We aim to turn labor disputes into political strikes against imperialism and the capitalist wage system. That is the revolutionary logic of the communism that Red Flag is promoting.
In communism, without money, nothing will be bought or sold. Without wage slavery, we will collectively decide what, where, and how to produce everything, and distribute it to satisfy everyone’s needs.
Capitalism will never do this. For example, the auto industry is the single greatest engine of economic growth in the world. It puts over $2 trillion annually in the hands of a few hundred billionaires yet the auto workers in Kragujevac, Serbia, only make $362 per month (and in that they are not alone).
They are not alone in being exploited, but they are isolated. Capitalists, even while locked in bitter rivalry, have built a layered network of institutions that unite their control of the world. The working class has institutions like the unions that defend the wage system (with the lie that good wages can set you free) and build disunity among workers of the world.
Whatever unity we get, we will build ourselves and Red Flag is spearheading that movement. We are cementing communist ties across continents. “Workers of the world, unite! We have nothing to lose but the chains of wage slavery!”
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