A significant step forward: Detroit meeting of autoworkers resolves to form rank-and-file committees
13 December 2018
On Sunday, more than 80 autoworkers and other workers and youth from throughout the US Midwest resolved at a meeting in Detroit to form rank-and-file factory committees, independent of the unions, to fight against plant closures, layoffs and other attacks on the working class.
Following the meeting, a steering committee was established to carry forward the struggle against plant closures.
The action taken at the meeting, organized by the World Socialist Web Site Autoworker Newsletter and the Socialist Equality Party, is a major step forward. With mounting signs of a renewed economic downturn, the capitalist ruling elites are going on the offensive. The announcement by General Motors that it will close five plants in the US and Canada and eliminate at least 15,000 jobs is part of a global restructuring aimed at making the working class pay for the funneling of ever larger sums into the financial markets.
There are growing expressions of working class opposition to this social counterrevolution. In every country, however, the working class confronts trade unions that are actively collaborating in plant closures, layoffs and other attacks by the ruling class. The past year has seen a significant increase in working class struggles in the United States, including strikes by teachers and the rejection of a national contract by UPS workers, with the unions functioning as strikebreakers.
Now, in the center of world capitalism, the working class is beginning to establish the necessary organizational and political framework for a counter-offensive.
The attendees at the meeting included delegations of autoworkers and other workers from Michigan, Indiana, Illinois,…