General Motors wants to become a tech company, but it will mean making thousands unemployed
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I once saw an interview with director Michael Moore of Roger & Me fame where he juxtaposed two images. One image depicted a destroyed building which had been hit by a U.S. smart bomb somewhere on the other side of the planet. In the other image wereGeneral Motors wants to become a tech company, but it will mean making thousands unemployed
I once saw an interview with director Michael Moore of Roger & Me fame where he juxtaposed two images. One image depicted a destroyed building which had been hit by a U.S. smart bomb somewhere on the other side of the planet. In the other image were buildings in similar states of destruction here in the United States, except these structures had not been destroyed by any weapon. They were the aftermath of abandoned factories and businesses in a community. Moore’s point was purely economic decisions can have costs in lives and suffering just as destructive as any explosive dropped out of the sky. But we drive past those empty storefronts and broken buildings every day and accept it as normal. One of the big questions presented in Roger & Me is whether a company or corporation owes anything to its workers and the places where it resides beyond payment for services rendered? The auto industry, and General Motors in particular, have been steeped in the symbolism of the American economy and ideas surrounding the “American Dream.” But if a business exists to make a profit and sustain those profits, should we really be outraged (or surprised) when that entity makes decisions which go against the interests of American workers just to make a little more? An interesting aspect of the reaction to the film is a lot of people are more disturbed by skinned rabbits than poor people being thrown out of their homes and into the streets. And in the 30 years since the documentary, the things which were shocking in 1989 have become commonplace in our day-to-day lives. A globalized world with offshoring and outsourcing, where Amazon treats its workers like dirt, has slid more and more towards the absurdities of Reaganomics greed that then General Motors Chairman and CEO Roger Smith embodied as he quoted Charles Dickens and espoused the Christmas spirit while laying waste to the Michigan economy. Smith’s tenure as the head of GM, as well as those of his immediate successors, were defined by questionable decisions, periodic respites where the company would claim/ to have turned their bad fortunes around, only for the consequences of years of mismanagement to take their toll. The auto manufacturer’s ups and downs eventually culminated in bankuptcy filings and government bailouts after the corporation found itself extremely vulnerable at the turn of the 21st century with a stock market downturn when the tech bubble burst, the economic impact of the September 11 attacks, rising fuel costs, massively underfunded pensions and benefits, and finally pushed to the edge of the abyss by the global financial crisis. The billions in taxpayer funds used to bailout the auto industry was a very controversial decision, where the attempt save American manufacturing jobs resulted in much griping and allegations of socialism run amok by the usual suspects, and the moniker of “Government Motors” being thrown around to deride GM’s continued existence. One of the General Motors production facilities highlighted as being part of the auto industry being “retooled and reinvented itself for the 21st century” in the wake of the bailout was the Lordstown, Ohio assembly complex. President Obama visited Lordstown in September 2009 and touted the “survival” of the workers as part of the success of the American economy. Today, the Lordstown plant is in the process of being idled. The doors closed after the final vehicle, a white Chevy Cruze, was assembled in March. The reasons for why General Motors decided on this course, which include decreased demand for new passenger cars, Uber and Lyft ride-sharing services—which have labor issues of their own—affecting car ownership, and investment in driver-less electric vehicles, are fascinating to contemplate. However, the result in the here and now is a lot of people forced into touch choices. Read more