UAW, meet FAW--your replacement

CORPORATE NEWS: "GM Launches Truck Venture in China: Agreement with FAW Is Part of Auto Maker's New Focus on a Growing Market," by Norihiko Shirouzu and Patricia Jiayi Ho, Wall Street Journal, 31 August 2009.

Very ouch! We're talking 100k vehicles assembled per year by next year. The total joint venture now approaches 200k vehicles per year.

But no choice: light trucks in China represent half the global market.

Comments

[stuart abrams]

The future of the American labor movement is in China. The logical alternative to protectionism is to shrink the wage differential between American and Chinese workers. This will also help to build the Chinese middle class and will lead to increased levels of Chinese consumption, which in turn, benefits US industry. In the vein of "everything you need to know about globalization can be learned in US history", the key to the reform of rapacious 19th century capitalism was the development of a strong union movement, which ultimately provided the political muscle for the New Deal. The ACFTU (the official Chinese union) probably can't do it alone, just as the old AFofL didn't really become a major force until it allied with the more aggressive CIO, and there will have to be some pushing of the envelope of Chinese tolerance for independent unions, which will undoubtedly get ugly. Instead of concentrating so much on promoting protectionism, it seems to me that the American labor movement should put more energy to building ties with Chinese unions. The new leader of the AFL-CIO has made some statements in this direction - after all, multinational unions are the logical response to multinational corporations.

[Joe Michels]

The labor movement should build better ties with their companies investors and and company management. Union members need to better understand why it is important for them to work with and not against the companies that employ them.

Corporate big shots get paid too much by orders of magnitude more then they are worth. They are out of touch with the working class.

If both come together to build competitive business entities then together they can weather the storm of globalization.