REPORT: Wall Street Pressure Prompted GM Plant Closures

A view of the entrance to the West Plant at the General Motors Lordstown Complex, assembly plant in Warren, Ohio, U.S., November 26, 2018. Reuters

By Filiberto Nolasco Gomez, Workday Minnesota
March 26, 2019

WASHINGTON, D.C.
Wall Street pressure, particularly hedge funds and their managers, prompted the General Motors plant closures that will throw at least 14,000 United Auto Worker members – and countless other workers in GM’s supply chain – out of jobs, a new report (link is external) says.

The report, commissioned by the American Federation of Teachers(AFT), is from the non-profit Hedge Clippers campaign, an organization dedicated to investigating, exposing and reining in the hedge funders’ financial machinations.

It added the moneyed interests have been pressuring GM ever since 2013, after the “new GM” returned to profitability following the Democratic Obama administration’s rescue of GM and FiatChrysler from collapse, bankruptcy and closure due to the financier- and GOP-caused Great Recession. The UAW helped in the rescue by agreeing to wage cuts and a controverisal two-tier wage system.

The pressure has come in the form of financiers’ threatened takeovers accompanying demands that GM send profits to stockholders and stock buybacks, rather than investing to modernize its factories. The recent plant closures are just the latest symptom of company yielding to Wall Street, the report adds.

FULL story: https://www.workdayminnesota.org/articles/report-wall-street-pressure-prompted-gm-plant-closures