Socialist Presidential Candidates: Autoworkers’ livelihoods should not be sacrificed for the sake of the new Cold War
Claudia De la Cruz and Karina Garcia, presidential and vice-presidential candidates of the Party for Socialism and Liberation, weigh in on Ford’s decision to halt construction of a major battery plant in a move to simultaneously appease war hawks and punish workers for going on strike
This week, Ford announced it was “pausing” plans to build a new battery plant for electric vehicles in Michigan that would have employed 2,500 workers. This comes amid mounting pressure from war hawk politicians who have created a controversy over the participation of a Chinese firm that is providing technology for the project, but was justified by the company on the false basis that UAW autoworkers are demanding pay that is too high. Claudia De la Cruz remarked, “Once again, workers are the victim of the anti-China witch hunt. 2,500 good union jobs are in peril because the so-called ‘Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party’ has chosen to turn its sights on the proposed plant. It is ridiculous to suggest that the use of technology from the Chinese firm CATL poses a threat to the security of the people of the United States, but the greed and callousness of politicians and corporate executives certainly does.”
Karina Garcia added that, “This is also an example of the kind of blackmail tactics that corporate giants so often resort to in their fight to keep wages low.” Ford is attempting to play off this decision as being motivated not by political pressure but by uncertainty that it could ‘competitively operate’ the new factory. Garcia argued that, “The only competition Ford is interested in is having workers race to the bottom. This massively profitable corporation is effectively saying to workers that they need to accept an unfair contract or find themselves out of a job altogether. But the UAW autoworkers are bravely standing strong.”
De la Cruz elaborated on how this episode shows the need for peace not confrontation with China, “This episode clearly illustrates the need for cooperation between China and the United States – the 2,500 people in the United States who would be employed at the planned factory can’t get to work without technology from China. But because the political elite are obsessed with dominating the whole planet, they’d rather see those jobs destroyed. A just transition to electric vehicles that preserves union jobs is essential to tackling the climate crisis, and the new Cold War is getting in the way.”
