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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsLordstown Ohio is feeling the MAGA today
Link to tweet
I wonder how many of the workers in that plant voted for Trump? I bet it was more than half.
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gopiscrap
(24,733 posts)voted for trump also...as far as I am concerned, let them wallow for a while in their unemployment. Maybe next time there's a presidential election, they'll wise up.
yortsed snacilbuper
(7,947 posts)Demsrule86
(71,542 posts)So no...Youngstown is not Trump country. You should delete as your facts are incorrect.
rownesheck
(2,343 posts)That's a sad picture. Even if several of those folks voted for trump. Sometimes I can't bring myself to hate them when I know they are about to potentially be hurt terribly by this. I can only hope they understand who caused it and learn from it.
appal_jack
(3,813 posts)Last edited Thu Mar 7, 2019, 01:30 PM - Edit history (1)
At this moment of economic and political decline of the USA, the fact that the Republican Party and candidate successfully leveraged enormous resources of propaganda and power is not the fault of even one of those plant workers.
If we want progress and justice to win, Democrats need to better leverage our own propaganda and power toward the ends of a more just and equitable society. We need to present all workers with both society-wide goods (healthcare, education, criminal justice reforms, etc.) and also a narrower "what's in it for them?" component as well (wages, union rights, a genuine respect for the Second Amendment and other individual liberties, etc.)
Blaming voters is a one-way ticket toward failure.
-app
LanternWaste
(37,748 posts)"Blaming voters is a one-way ticket toward failure..."
As is appeasing idiocy and excusing poor choices.
You stick with the propaganda you champion, I'll stick with the convictions I hold.
I realize how convenient the former is. 
DontBooVote
(901 posts)and the welfare and well-being of those in that plant who were smart enough to not vote for tRump. And they are DIRECTLY responsible for that plant being closed!
Power 2 the People
(2,437 posts)
blueinredohio
(6,797 posts)I retired from a G.M. plant in 2013. We had a lot of dems who really rallied when an issue came up and were big union supporters but the majority of people I worked with and talked to were all about republicans and anti union yet reaped all the rewards we worked hard for.
MichMan
(17,151 posts)They didn't buy enough Cruze to make operating the plant viable.
Automotive assembly plants are very expensive to operate. Once sales dropped and it went to one shift only, it couldn't be sustained. Only Mary Barra can explain why another product isn't being allocated there
watoos
(7,142 posts)for Chevy to move out of the country.
fescuerescue
(4,475 posts)I'm not challenging you.
Im just trying to understand what aspect of the tax plan that would make it easier to move out of the country.
Heck GM has been doing it for years. It's always been easy and in fact it's been done to avoid paying taxes in the US.
I'm just not following why lower taxes would make it easier.
atreides1
(16,799 posts)It's simple, the new tax cuts passed last year were designed to encourage companies like GM to invest at home, but the lower tax rates are not enough to offset rising expenses.
The cost of materials like American made steel has gone up, and those steel companies know that they have a captive audience, with the current tariffs on foreign steel, and can charge pretty much what they want!
machoneman
(4,128 posts)to make them responsible for their own misery. I'm sorry, but if they can't take full responsibility for their actions, repent their grievous error in judgment and resolve to vote out that orange bastard, they can all rot in Hell as their families starve, for all I care!
Fuck-em, I say!
Demsrule86
(71,542 posts)And Mahoning went for Hillary...Youngstown is in Mahoning county...many Lordstown workers live there. Folks here opining on our situation should read up on the facts before announcing breathlessly that Youngstown went for Trump because it didn't....but go ahead play the Republican game of trashing workers and unions...after all the people in these states don't matter (sarcasm). These were good paying jobs that are now gone and it is a god damned shame. I worked with union out of Lordstown in union halls...and I must say as politely as I can, I have never seen such posts with so many facts that were wrong. I guess union hating isn't limited to Republicans. By the way Ohio sent Tim Ryan who represents both Mahoning and Trumbull (gerrymandering) and Sherrod Brown back to Congress.
fescuerescue
(4,475 posts)and it doesn't make sense to people who can't vote.
keith sw
(45 posts)People have to learn, elections have consequences. And a union person should NEVER under any circumstances vote republican.
lunamagica
(9,967 posts)ETA: Please, don't tell me that they believed MAGA was about the economy...
LuvLoogie
(8,815 posts)I didn't vote for someone who I knew was going to demonize and fuck over a lot of people, someone who ran an overtly bigoted campaign, who is a business cheat, who denigrates women, minorities, and immigrants, someone who mocks the disabled like an adolescent punk would.
Who else can you blame? Nobody held a gun to their head and told them what to watch/listen to, who to vote for. To these people, trumps bigoted nihilism is a feature, not a flaw.
yortsed snacilbuper
(7,947 posts)
allgood33
(1,584 posts)workinclasszero
(28,270 posts)Trump bent those idiots over and......right in the shorts!
Damn how can Americans be sofa king STUPID!?
keithbvadu2
(40,915 posts)Yep. A tariff is a tax under a different spelling.
Botany
(77,324 posts)... the closing of Lordstown. Thanx Donny.
marble falls
(71,927 posts)RKP5637
(67,112 posts)those out to do them in.
Demsrule86
(71,542 posts)RKP5637
(67,112 posts)marble falls
(71,927 posts)From Lordstown to Vietnam and Back
By David North
7 March 2019
In the early 1970s, the Lordstown plant was the center of militant struggles. A large portion of its work force consisted of young workers who had been radicalized by the mass civil rights struggles and the war in Vietnam. Many were Vietnam war veterans, and their experiences profoundly affected their view of American society.
Something of the mood of the time found expression in an interview with a 23 year old Lordstown worker, published in the February 12, 1973 issue of the Bulletin, which was then the weekly organ of the Workers League (forerunner of the Socialist Equality Party). The interview was conducted by David North.
<snip>
Its worth five minutes to read.
Demsrule86
(71,542 posts)socialist in any of the plants...sure they want health care and such...but as for history...I have been involved for 30 years...so spare me the anti-union stuff...it simply isn't true...lack of union are not costing us a middle class.
marble falls
(71,927 posts)bolts are too smart to work in an auto plant. That's what you just said. Shame on you.
You may know about a union but I think your learning regarding unions as agents pf positive social change might need a little more base.
You and I are not going to agree on any degree this topic. If I hadn't lived there and worked around it and had friends who worked there and at Twinsburg, if I hadn't been a member of the UAW concurrent to the times and for a whole bunch of progressive reasons my mind might have been more open.
Blame it on me.
Demsrule86
(71,542 posts)Unions gave us a middle class...college degrees were not needed...back in the day you could become a superintendent without a degree...so your entire premise makes no sense to me. I don't care....sadly unions were destroyed in this country pretty much...and those who bought foreign shit will live to regret it.
DBoon
(24,987 posts)but here it is
https://www.democraticunderground.com/100211900977 Lordstown Ohio's history of modern labor militancy
Brother Buzz
(39,900 posts)and the rest is history. Go figure.
marble falls
(71,927 posts)Last edited Thu Mar 7, 2019, 02:48 PM - Edit history (1)
taxes six out of eight years and left the White House with the largest federal government ever.
Go figure is right!
Brother Buzz
(39,900 posts)was a load of hokum. I got my pie, Baby, now fuck off.
One could make the argument the Reagan years were the beginning of the decline of the middle class; while Reagan was attacking the Welfare Queen, he was robbing Joe Six-pack.
marble falls
(71,927 posts)Brother Buzz
(39,900 posts)The best I can figure, Linda Taylor's only mistake was setting her sites to low.
Had she set her sites higher and practiced her trade on Wall Street, she would have been the darling of the business world. Go figure.
marble falls
(71,927 posts)who posted really great stuff you wouldn't see anywhere else. Not a day I don't learn something good on DU!
malaise
(296,114 posts)all across the planet
Blue_true
(31,261 posts)RKP5637
(67,112 posts)wasupaloopa
(4,516 posts)Those folks get lied to and fucked over and still shout USA.
Demsrule86
(71,542 posts)
llmart
(17,622 posts)Ohio went for Trump, so I'm not crying any tears.
Demsrule86
(71,542 posts)Hillary... as for Trumbull county where the plant is located...it went for Trump by 2%. Most union worked their tails off for Hillary. I did too...but some here bashing unions didn't I bet.
Demsrule86
(71,542 posts)yourself...losing jobs like those in Lordstown will further erode the middle class and endanger us all. When Delphi (parts) took the pensions from their workers...my neighbor went into his garage and hung himself. My daughter saw him walk into the garage that day and was so upset, I had to take her to a therapist. The lack of compassion on this thread for people in a state that sent multiple Democrats to Congress and for the millions that did vote Hillary is duly noted.
llmart
(17,622 posts)FYI - My roots run very, very deep in Ohio and several of my siblings all still live there. I was married to an automotive engineer for many, many years. This decline in the auto plants began long before now - back in the 80's. We left. Sometimes you just have to do what you have to do to feed your children and put a roof over your head and pay the bills whether you like it or not.
I went back in 2016 for a 50th class reunion and what do you think I saw in the small, rural town I grew up in? Trump yard signs everywhere. This is the NE Ohio area - suburbs of Cleveland which has historically been liberal and Democrat. I rarely go back but this time what I saw was a whole group of people so stuck back in the '50's and '60's that I was so glad I left immediately after high school and never looked back.
Demsrule86
(71,542 posts)I live in Cleveland...and there was not one Trump sign near my house. I am putting you on ignore...I rarely do this but you don't even live here and obviously...you left many years ago.
Demsrule86
(71,542 posts)Democrats. Seriously, this post makes me sick.
scheming daemons
(25,487 posts)The majority of the people in and near Lordstown were Trump voters.
IronLionZion
(51,269 posts)Your state of PA also voted Trump
scheming daemons
(25,487 posts)My state has many of the same kind of idiots that Ohio has.
And of course, the 45% shouldnt be punished... they are victims of their Trump-voting neighbors as we all are.
fescuerescue
(4,475 posts)It's unlikely that any of them will even read this thread.
It's just a discussion.
IronLionZion
(51,269 posts)and it's wrong to gloat. A good many of the impacted people are Democrats
fescuerescue
(4,475 posts)No one HERE is punishing them.
Never implied that this was painless.
We are just bystanders from afar.
Demsrule86
(71,542 posts)went for Hillary Clinton...Tim Ryan was reelected out of both Trumbull and Mahoning. And PA went for Trump too as you point out...Trumbull only went for Trump by 2% (NAFTA was a big issue).
Demsrule86
(71,542 posts)keep Lordstown open...UAW guy mostly were not fooled.
Bradshaw3
(7,964 posts)I wish some would listen instead of having knee jerk reactions based on revenge.
marble falls
(71,927 posts)The shutdown of GM’s Lordstown plant
7 March 2019
March 5 was the last day of production at the General Motors Lordstown Assembly Plant, a giant 6.2 million square foot industrial complex located halfway between Cleveland, Ohio and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. On Tuesday, after more than a half-century of operation and the production of more than 16 million vehicles, the last 1,400 workers walked out of the factory, which once employed 13,000 workers on three shifts.
GM, which made $11.8 billion in 2018 profits, is shutting five plants in the US and Canada this year, including in Detroit, Baltimore and Oshawa, and eliminating 14,000 jobs as part of a global restructuring to boost returns to its wealthiest shareholders. The companies, driven by the demands of Wall Street, are carrying out a ruthless attack on workers.
The closure and the ripple effects on suppliers and local businesses will produce a social catastrophe in a region already devastated by decades of deindustrialization and facing collapsing school systems and an escalating opioid crisis.
The closing of the Lordstown plant is a historical verdict on the United Auto Workers (UAW) and all the unions and their policies of nationalism and the defense of capitalism. It is the product of decades of betrayal by the UAW and its transformation into a junior partner of the auto companies in the exploitation of workers and the suppression of the class struggle.
The closure has met with no resistance from the UAW, which has spent the last four months since the GM announcement holding prayer vigils, filing worthless lawsuits and joining Trump and Ohio Democrats in blaming Mexican and Chinese workers for the shutdowns. As it has done for the last four decades, the UAW has signaled its willingness to impose any concessions demanded by GM in upcoming contract negotiations to convince the automaker to “save” the plant.
The Lordstown factory, built in 1966 just outside of the steel-making town of Youngstown, Ohio, occupies an esteemed place in the history of the American working class. In the early 1970s, it was the site of a series of militant labor struggles that were part of the 3,619 major work stoppages, involving 16.6 million US workers, that swept across every industry between 1968 and 1977. The strike wave in the US was a component of an international upsurge of resistance to efforts to force workers to pay for the world capitalist crisis, including the mass strikes by British coal miners that brought down the Tory government in 1974.
In an effort to combat its Japanese competitors, GM sought to use new technology, including robotic welding machines, to drastically increase output at Lordstown for its new Chevrolet Vega car. After laying off 300 workers in the early 1970s, GM increased the line speed from 60 to 101 cars per hour—the fastest rate of any factory in the world—giving workers only 36 seconds to complete their tasks instead of the standard 60.
The workforce, whose average age was 24 and included many ex-soldiers who had been radicalized by the horrors of the Vietnam War, revolted. In March 1972, the UAW was forced to call a strike. After isolating the 22-day strike, the UAW signed a deal that did not address the central issue of speed-up.
Opposition, including wildcat strikes, open defiance of managers and the deliberate sabotage of vehicles, continued. So rebellious were the workers that BusinessWeek magazine coined the term “Lordstown syndrome” to define the militancy of an entire generation of industrial workers determined to fight exploitation.
The Workers League, the predecessor of the Socialist Equality Party, was intensely involved in the Lordstown struggle and many other struggles of autoworkers in this period. In a 1973 pamphlet, From Sit-Down to Lordstown, the Workers League pointed to the “virtual state of civil war” between autoworkers and GM and noted that “the most volatile and militant section of the UAW represented by the youngest workers” had “forced the reluctant UAW leadership to call a strike.”
In November 1973, the party’s newspaper, the Bulletin, mounted a defense of the “Lordstown Four,” who were framed up by GM and local authorities and jailed on bogus charges.
During this period, although workers consistently clashed with the union leadership and their corruption and collaboration with the auto bosses, workers still looked at unions as their organizations. Despite the bureaucratized character of the unions, workers could still make gains during this period of relative economic boom and US industrial dominance.
The basic political mechanism through which the UAW and AFL-CIO subordinated the working class to capitalism and American imperialism was the unions’ alliance with the Democratic Party and their opposition to a politically independent movement of the working class. That is why the Workers League, in its fight to build a new revolutionary leadership in the unions, placed at the center of the fight against the labor bureaucracy the demand that the unions break with the Democratic Party and establish a Labor Party based on socialist policies. This tactic lost its viability as the unions evolved into direct arms of the corporations and the state in suppressing the class struggle.
By the end of 1970s, the American ruling class responded to the increasing loss of its global economic dominance by ending its policy of relative class compromise and unleashing an all-out war to claw back all the gains workers had achieved through decades of struggle. Exploiting advances in telecommunications and transportation, US-based corporations shifted production to low-wage countries, while plant closings and mass layoffs were used to extract huge wage and benefits concessions from workers in the US. The 1979-80 Chrysler bailout was followed by Reagan’s smashing of the PATCO air traffic controllers’ strike in 1981 and a decade of violent strike-breaking and union-busting.
The globalization of capitalist production and the growth of transnational production completely undermined the unions, which were based on the protection of the national labor market. However, the catastrophe that befell American workers, like their counterparts around the world, was not the inevitable outcome of economic processes.
At every turn, the efforts of autoworkers and other sections of workers to resist the attack on jobs and living standards were sabotaged by the UAW and other unions, which isolated and defeated strikes and colluded with the employers in the closing of plants, the imposition of mass layoffs and the framing-up and victimization of militant workers.
In the early 1980s, the UAW officially adopted the corporatist policy of “labor-management partnership” as its guiding principle. Rejecting the class struggle as outmoded, the UAW set out to crush any resistance to the US-based automakers in the name of making them more competitive against their Asian and European rivals. This went hand-in-hand with the promotion of racism and national chauvinism, which led to the 1982 murder of Chinese American Vincent Chin by a Chrysler foreman and his laid-off stepson.
UAW Local 1112 at Lordstown became the model for labor-management collusion. As a January 2010 New York Times article, titled “A once-defiant UAW now focuses on GM’s success,” approvingly noted, “United Automobile Workers’ leaders in Lordstown, Detroit and other cities where clashes with management were once common said they have since decided that their only chance to survive in a global economy is to work with, not against, their employers.”
“Everyone has come to the realization that management is not the enemy, and the union is not the enemy,” Jim Graham, president of Local 1112, told the Times, adding, “The enemy is foreign competition.”
The endless concessions imposed on workers never saved a single job. Since 1979, the number of UAW members employed by GM, Ford and Chrysler has fallen from 750,000 to 150,000. In exchange for its betrayal of the workers, however, the UAW has received billions of dollars from the auto bosses, funneled through joint training centers, and the UAW-controlled retiree health care trust owns 100 million GM shares, valued at around $4 billion.
Fiat Chrysler executives paid millions in illegal bribes to UAW negotiators who agreed to contracts over the past decade that halved the wages of new hires, abolished the eight-hour work day and drastically expanded the number of temporary part-time workers who pay UAW dues but have no rights.
The closing of the Lordstown plant is the tragic outcome of nearly a half-century of endless betrayals. The unions long ago ceased to be working class organizations and have been transformed into avid participants in the exploitation and impoverishment of the working class.
As autoworkers prepare for the battles ahead, including to resist the plant closings and the contract fight this summer, they must review this history and draw the appropriate conclusions. They must take the conduct of the struggle out of the hands of the corrupt right-wing unions. New organizations of struggle, rank-and-file factory committees, must be built, independent of the UAW and based on an entirely different perspective and strategy.
The only answer to the global assault on jobs and living standards by the transnational auto giants and their Wall Street investors is the forging of the unity of autoworkers all over the world and the rejection of the race to the bottom promoted by the corporations and the unions. The upheaval by the maquiladora workers in Matamoros, Mexico, who rebelled against slave-labor wages and sweatshop conditions enforced by the unions, shows that workers in Mexico, China and other countries are not the enemies of US workers, but their allies and brothers in struggle.
The broadest industrial mobilization of autoworkers, including the organization of strikes, plant occupations and mass protests, and the fight to unite with all workers across the US and internationally, must be fused with a new socialist political strategy. The working class must reject the “right” of the capitalist exploiters to shut plants and destroy the lives and communities of workers. Instead, giant corporations like GM must be transformed into public enterprises collectively owned and democratically controlled, as part of the reorganization of the world economy to meet human needs, not corporate profit.
The author also recommends:
The fight to defend jobs and the lessons of the 1972 Lordstown strike
[8 August 2018]
oasis
(53,694 posts)
Demsrule86
(71,542 posts)Demsrule86
(71,542 posts)From now on...they will be made in Korea and Mexico.
roamer65
(37,953 posts)Later this month, they will end production of the model at the Ramos Arizpe plant in MX. It has happened in Korea as well.
Ramos Arizpe workers will be shifted over to production of the new Blazer. End result is no jobs for Lordstown workers, nor South Korean ones.
http://gmauthority.com/blog/2018/11/gm-to-also-end-chevy-cruze-production-in-mexico/
Demsrule86
(71,542 posts)The car will go to Europe and it is made a number of other places as well which you article fails to mention.
workinclasszero
(28,270 posts)The ones who didn't bother to vote at all, voted for tRump too, indirectly.
Wear those redhats with pride in your new jobs at Walmart, idiots.
Hillary had plans to help you but you fell for a lifelong lying con man criminal cause Fox noise and Rush told you it was okay...SUCKERS!
Itchinjim
(3,183 posts)A major reason why some of my fellow union guys vote Republican is because the unions and the Democratic party allowed them to earn enough money for them to start believing they were Republicans.
It's times like this when they learn the hard lesson that they aren't. Some of them learn it, anyway.
MicaelS
(8,747 posts)Many of my fellow union guys had an obsession about guns. They really believed "the Democrats are going to take my guns away."
I asked them: "is having guns more important than having a job?" Many said "YES, I can always get another job."
DBoon
(24,987 posts)and they may find out that jobs can vanish and not come back.
Bradshaw3
(7,964 posts)ComradeFunk
(21 posts)IronLionZion
(51,269 posts)The ones who didn't vote for Trump are still victims and don't deserve this punishment. UAW have historically voted Dem and don't feel threatened by undocumented immigrants stealing their jobs away.
Most of them have publicly appreciated what the Obama/Biden administration did to save their jobs during the great recession when the American auto industry was about to collapse with Michigan-born Romney encouraging bankruptcy.
https://uaw.org/uaw-endorses-hillary-clinton-president/
Only the absolute dumbest ones would have voted for Trump. I shouldn't have to defend union workers on DU.
TheRealNorth
(9,647 posts)Just because the county broke for Trump, it doesn't mean a majority of the UAW workers did.
VOX
(22,976 posts)Excellent reality-check. 
DBoon
(24,987 posts)nt
irisblue
(37,512 posts)Voted for republican state level representatives & senators, those elected state & local level officials kept cutting education spending and community centers where there were free/minimal cost educational computer classes. The lack of up to date high speed internet services is also a huge factor in the decline of educational ability in that part of the state.
I've watched the slow subtle decline of Ohio over the last 25 years. It will & can stop only if the voting public get their act together and demand better from their selves and government officials. I have thin sympathy for the adults, much for the kids & late teen almost adults.
Demsrule86
(71,542 posts)And I would remind you that Ohio went for President Obama twice. Did things get better then? I would also remind you that Sherrod Brown is our Senator...we kept the ACA by one vote without Ohio's senator, we would have lost the ACA... I find your post pretty disturbing on a number of levels.
irisblue
(37,512 posts)You recall Gov Bob Taft?
He was Ohio Gov Jan 99 to Jan 07.
I am speaking of that area of Ohio in the 1995-2007 era. Not Obamas time. The slowly increasing presence of the RW in Ohio syate level politics was increasing during his term.
Do you recall the Ohio State Supreme Ct 2002 decision on school funding?
My contention is that, the slow -radical republican authoritarian political positioning & philosophy was being brought to bear in the mid/early 90s & bore it's poison fruit in the apricot hellbeasts getting the majority of the Mahoning Valley votes in 2016.
I am very interested in your take on this.
Demsrule86
(71,542 posts)union and on both of the Obama campaigns. Ohio was always a swing state. That doesn't change the fact that many who voted for Hillary, Sherrod and Tim...are losing their jobs right now as we speak and find this entire thread underwhelming I terms of knowledge of Ohio (not saying yours although I disagree) and compassion. Youngstown went for Hillary.
irisblue
(37,512 posts)Was from a long slow growth. Ohio was the most red of the purple states , pre 2016, IMO.
I live in urban Franklin county. The urban areas & rural/suburban tension-dynamics, are a seriously overlooked fact here. I'm afraid it is a slow case of 'What is the Matter With Kansas' occurring area by area. I do not know how to stop or change this slide into 21st c. Americanized feudal city state. The lack of education funding in the 90s & forward, as well as the failure to expand high speed internet access is going to be an highly educated/less well educated split in this state.
fescuerescue
(4,475 posts)
liberalhistorian
(20,905 posts)area of Ohio, I'm at the point now of just saying fuck 'em, they voted for it. That may not be nice, but I've had enough of people constantly voting against their own economic interests while trashing the only party that actually tries to help.
lunatica
(53,410 posts)I feel sympathy for them, but I also hope they learn from this. I won’t hate people in misery, even as I can see that they put themselves in their circumstances. It isn’t lack of willingness to work their asses of that put them there. It’s Trump’s policies.
Blue_true
(31,261 posts)But they will keep voting republican whenever they can.
captain queeg
(11,780 posts)Hates Trump. You have to remember most of those guys are union workers and can see who Trump represents.