PSTU-LIT DECLARES VICTORY AS GENERAL MOTORS LAYOFF 630 WORKERS OF SAO JOSE DOS CAMPOS-BRAZIL.

PSTU-LIT DECLARES VICTORY AS  GENERAL MOTORS LAYOFF  630 WORKERS OF SAO JOSE DOS CAMPOS-BRAZIL.

 The Metalworkers Union of Sao Jose dos Campos, affiliated to central trade union CSP-Conlutas and has directed by CONLUTAS/PSTU-LIT FOR several years , celebrates the decision of the General Motors factory, among other things, do lay off more than 600 workers.

 Negotiations between the union and factory dragged since the middle of last year. GM threatened with the closure of the factory, a real blackmail of the employer to actually facilitate the greatest possible number of layoffs. The leadership of the union at no time called the the true mobilization of the workers  in at least declare an indefinite general strike to prevent these attacks.

 The truth is that the bosses of GM felt very comfortable with that  attitude because the Metalworkers Union of Sao Jose dos Campos, in 2009, with that  same  leadership has allowed the dismissal of four thousand workers of  the aircraft  factory-Embraer- after months of fruitless negotiations with employers, with useless marches to  the capital Brasilia demanding President Lula da Silva to prevent  the layoffs, and while they do  marches and strikes of only a  day, a shameful attitude to walk to the church to ask the Catholic bishop of the region for his intervention.

 The agreement reached between the union and the bosses allows:

- In addition to the ordinary working  journey, plus 02 hours overtime.

- The new workers to be hired will have lowered the minimum wage to R $ 1,800.00 (900,00 dolars), while before the workers had R $ 3,100.00 (1.600 dolars).

- The PLR ​​(Profit and Results) will be linked to productivity targets.

 Clearly, this type of agreement by GM was objectively to fire workers, reduce wages and labor rights and increase their  profits. All this in a context in which the auto companies in Brazil receive federal and state grants generous tax exemption. In practice, governments Lula / Dilma from PT (Workers Party) are  funding through these kind of grants increasing the  unemployment in the country.

 It is no coincidence that Brazil had a 75% drop in the supply of jobs in January this year compared with January 2012. The global economic crisis hit  Brazil last year with slow  industrial production  and reduction of GDP to less than 2%. Even the increase of sales over Christmas could not resist the entry of the new year. Added to this, the increase in inflation, which is now officially 5%, forcing the federal government to increase the interest rate. The result is  low economic growth with high inflation, a well-known story of the recent history of Brazil.

 The PSTU is considered by the media as a radical leftist, and in fact, is the largest left party in the country and is said to be  Trotskyist, but reformist. Therefore this agreement with GM of St. Joseph is an extraordinary weight for its symbolic meaning. The PSTU increasingly adapts to bourgeois democracy and increasingly resembling the Workers Party of Lula / Dilma. This adaptation is achieved when  abandon the methods of direct struggle of the working class , as the indefinite strike, and  when they turns to parliamentary pressure, and make appeals to governments to intervene and  finally ,useless marches to the bishops.

 There must  have a  real policy with the  layoffs and reductions of rights of workers  at GM. Employers and the government does not retreat  with the pressure of public opinion or by  negotiations, they will do it with the struggle of workers, in other words, with  the strike and the unit of the workers, that's the only way to put workers in a good position to negotiate. Everything else is betrayal.

- Not to layoffs!

- Fight against layoffs!

- Not to agreements with layoffs!

- For assemblies  and plenary sessions with delegates and rank-and-files workers  on all sections of the metalworkers union!