"The class divide between US auto workers and the UAW"

[WhiskeyGirl]

10 February 2010

Late last month, in an incident that revealed the irreconcilable conflict between the working class and the trade union apparatus, hundreds of workers clashed with officials of the United Auto Workers (UAW) at a meeting in the Bay Area, California town of Fremont.

The episode, which was captured on video by rank-and-file union members (See YouTube video), was an expression of the class antagonism between the workers and the UAW, which functions as an industrial policeman for the corporations and the government.

The fate of the factory—the last remaining auto assembly plant in California—was sealed last June, when General Motors liquidated its share in the joint GM-Toyota operation as part of the forced bankruptcy and restructuring of GM at the hands of the Obama administration.

While giving the US auto company a free ride, the UAW launched a chauvinist campaign against Toyota, including a petition drive calling for a boycott of the company and protests in front of the Japanese embassy in Washington urging the White House to launch trade war measures against Asian automakers.

The degeneration of the UAW and its transformation into an adjunct of the corporations and the government are rooted in the union’s defense of the capitalist profit system and its promotion of nationalism. The alternative for auto workers and the American working class as a whole is to unite workers in the US and internationally in the struggle for socialism.

The profit system has failed, and so have all “labor” organizations that subordinate the working class to that system and the modern-day plutocrats who preside over it.

more here - http://wsws.org/articles/2010/feb2010/pers-f10.shtml

Why is the tsunami of taxpayer money continuing to flow to bankers?  Wall Street?  Hedge funds?

AIG?  IndyMac?