“When [American Axle CEO Dick] Dauch bought this place he took a risk. We built this place up for him, now they want to cut our wages in half. This place looked horrible 14 years ago. The quality here is incredible compared to what it used to be. We built this place up and he got paid.“We have families, cars, homes, a certain standard of living we are used to and now he wants to take it away. That is ridiculous. The stockholders and CEOs are greedy. If we don’t fight to retain at least what we have now, it is going to get worse.”American Axle workers strike against massive wage cut
American Axle is also proposing to close four facilities, including a forging operation in its Detroit plant and two New York-based plants near a now-idled plant in Buffalo, a move that would cut over 700 jobs. The UAW said it has “made comprehensive proposals that would reduce AAM’s labor costs significantly and grant it operational flexibility,” but that the company has threatened to shift production to low-wage plants in Mexico if its demands are not met.
Kevin Stein told the WSWS, “Basically they are threatening us. They say if we don’t accept this they will close by 2011. They are not even offering buyouts. They want to lower pay from $23 an hour to $14 an hour without a buyout. What are they going to do with the extra money? It will go into the pockets of the CEOs and wasteful spending. Dauch pocketed $100 million when he made this company public; that seems a little extreme.“We haven’t had a pay increase in eight years. It is the death of the blue-collar worker, and it is snowballing now. The blue-collar worker is no longer middle class. If you don’t have a college degree you will be making $14 an hour whether your work at Wal-Mart, GM or American Axle.
“In addition they are taking away our pensions, as though it is no big deal. They expect you to put money into a 401(k), when you have just taken a pay cut?”
Ain't Capitalism grand! We, the workers build a business up and create a profit and the money whores who added not one bead of sweat to the company pocket the profit and ditch those who built the business and leave us without a future for our selves and our families. They'll just send our jobs to Mexico. Oh yeah, NAFTA was a really GREAT deal!
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