#General Motors Company

[stone-cold-groove]

From the car files: ad for the 1937 line of GMC trucks and trailers.

[chicagotimesmagazine]

GM Defense Canada Wins CAF Contract

By Chicago Times Magazine – July 24, 2024 GM Defense Canada, a subsidiary of GM Defense, has secured a $35.8 million (Canadian) contract from the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) for the supply of 90 Light Tactical Vehicles (LTVs) with an option for an additional 18 LTVs. The LTVs, based on the Chevrolet Colorado ZR2 architecture, will allegedly beef up the CAF’s capabilities, particularly in…

[if-you-fan-a-fire]

"Cabinet Men, Motor Leaders at Ceremony," Windsor Star. June 21, 1943. Page 10. ---- CANADA'S half-millionth unit of motorized equipment, a battery charger lorry, was completed in Oshawa on Saturday. Above, left to right: Defence Minister J. L. Ralston, Munitions Minister C. D. Howe, Mr. R. Campbell, president of the Ford Motor Company of Canada, Limited; Mr. R. S. McLaughlin, president of General Motors Company of Canada, and Mr. C. W. Churchill, president, Chrysler Corporation of Canada. ///

"Ten More C.W.A.C. Girls Enlisted Here," Windsor Star. June 21, 1943. Page 10. --- TEN more recruits for the Canadian Women's Army Corps, six of them Canadians, are shown above as they left for Induction at London. Left to right, front row, are E. J. Scratch, Amherstburg: Sybil Speakman, Detroit; A. J. Conlish, Munroe, Mich.; Patricia Scholey, Windsor, and Tilly Skolsky, Ottawa. Back row are Anne Danowich, Detroit; Shirley Bastien, Windsor: Mrs. Harry R. Nobles, honorary president of the C.W.A.C. Mother's Auxiliary; Colleen LeFave, Windsor: Betty Schmidt, Detroit; Agnes Thibert, Riverside, and Corporal G. M. Becker, of the Windsor recruiting staff. (Staff Photograph.)

[apieinvestavimapaprastai]

General Motors Company Shares

General Motors Company is a global company engaged in the development, design, and sale of automobiles, trucks, and their spare parts. #generalmotors #auto #GM #investing #investmentideas #ev #gmfinancial #money

General Motors Company is a global company engaged in the development, design, and sale of automobiles, trucks, and their spare parts. It also provides financing services through its division, GM Financial. Continue reading Untitled

[carsthatnevermadeitetc]

Nissan Cherry X-1R Coupe, 1973. The E10 first generation Cherry had been in development by the Prince Motor Company at the time of the Nissan takeover. Nissan continued with the development of the E10 Cherry and it became Nissan's first front-drive model. The X-1R featured a twin-carburetted A12T 1.2 litre engine with dual-sidedraft Hitachi carburettors. The X-1R came with "fender flares"

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Stellantis wants to make scabbing woke

I'm coming to Minneapolis! Oct 15: Presenting The Internet Con at Moon Palace Books. Oct 16: Keynoting the 26th ACM Conference On Computer-Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing.

I know, I know, it's weird when the worst people you know are right, even when they're right for the wrong reasons: like, the "Intelligence Community" is genuinely terrible, pharma companies are murderous crooks, and Big Tech really does have a dangerous grip on public debate. The swivel-eyed loons have a point, is what I'm saying:

https://locusmag.com/2023/05/commentary-cory-doctorow-the-swivel-eyed-loons-have-a-point/

When conspiratorialists and reactionaries holler about how the FBI are dirty-tricking creeps who are framing Trump, it's tempting to say, "well, if Trumpists hate the FBI, then I will love the FBI. Who cares about COINTELPRO and what they did to Martin Luther King?"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FBI%E2%80%93King_suicide_letter

It's a process called "schizmogenesis": forming new group identity beliefs based on saying the opposite of what your enemies say, and as tempting as that is, it's extraordinarily foolish and dangerous:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/12/18/schizmogenesis/

It means that canny reactionaries like Steve Bannon can trick you into taking any position merely by taking the opposite one. Bannon's followers are even more easily led, so it's easy for him to convince them that we have always been at war with Oceania. The right has created an entire mirror world of "I know you are but what am I?" politics.

Anti-vax co-opts "bodily autonomy." Climate denial becomes environmentalism ("wind turbines kill birds"). Transphobia becomes feminism ("keep women-only spaces for real women"). Support for strongmen becomes anti-imperialism ("don't feed the war machine in Ukraine"). These are the doppelgangers Naomi Klein warns us against:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/05/not-that-naomi/#if-the-naomi-be-klein-youre-doing-just-fine

The far right has even managed to co-opt anti-corporate rhetoric. Culture warriors rail against "woke capitalism," insisting that when big businesses take socially progressive positions, it's just empty "virtue signalling." And you know what? They've got a point. Partially.

As with all mirror-world politics, the anti-woke-capitalism shuck is designed to convince low-information right-wing pismires into buying "anti-woke pillows" and demanding the right to pay junk fees to "own the libs":

https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/04/owning-the-libs/#swiper-no-swiping

But woke capitalism is bullshit. Corporations – profit-maximizing immortal transhuman colony organisms that view workers and customers as inconvenient gut-flora – do not care about social justice. They don't care about anything, except for minimizing compensation for workers while maximizing the risk those workers bear; and locking in and gouging customers for products that are as low-quality as can be profitably sold.

Take DEI, a favored target of the right. It's undoubtably true that diversity, inclusion and equity initiatives have made some inroads on correcting bias in hiring decisions, with the result that companies get better employees who would have been excluded without this explicit corrective.

However, corporations don't value DEI because they abhor their history of hiring bias. Instead, DEI is how corporate management demonstrates to workers that their grievances are best addressed by trusting corporate leadership to correct their error of their ways – and not by forming a union.

Before the passage of the National Labor Relations Act in 1935, corporations would create fake "Company Unions" whose leadership were beholden to the company executives. These were decoy unions: they looked and sounded like unions, but when they negotiated with management, they were actually working for the bosses, not the workers.

This is more mirror-world tactics. They're the labor equivalent of the "crisis pregnancy centers" that masquerade as abortion clinics in order to fool pregnant people and trap them with endless delays until it's too late to terminate their pregnancies. Company unions get workers to trust in negotiators who are secretly working for the bosses, who emerge from the bargaining table with one-sided, abusive contracts and insist that this is the best deal workers can hope for.

Company unions were outlawed 90 years ago, and for decades, labor had a seat at the table, with wages tracking productivity gains and workers getting protection for discrimination, unsafe labor conditions, and wage-theft. Then came the neoliberal turn, and 40 years of wage stagnation, increased inequality, and corporate rule.

Anything that can't go on forever will eventually stop. Finally, finally, we have reached a turning point in labor, with public approval for unions at levels not seen since the Carter administration and thousands of strikes and protests breaking out across the country:

https://striketracker.ilr.cornell.edu/

It's not just the Writers Guild and SAG-AFTRA, either. For the first time in history, the UAW is striking against all the major automakers, and they are winning:

https://arstechnica.com/cars/2023/10/striking-uaw-workers-win-key-battery-plant-concession-from-general-motors/

The automakers are getting desperate. Stellantis – Chrysler's latest alias, reflecting the company's absorbtion into corporate-human-centipede of global carmakers – has mobilized its DEI programs, trying to get marginalized people to believe that scabbing is a liberatory activity:

https://theintercept.com/2023/10/10/uaw-auto-strike-stellantis/

Stellantis calls each of its DEI silos a "Business Resource Group" (BRG): there's a "Working Parents Network," an "African Ancestry Network," "Asians Connected Together," a "DiverseAbilities Network," a "Gay & Lesbian Alliance" and more:

https://blog.stellantisnorthamerica.com/2021/07/20/business-resource-groups-drive-inclusion-and-diversity/

The corporate managers who lead these BRGs have established a scab rotation for each subgroup, calling on members to cross a UAW picket-line at a Michigan Parts Distribution Center run by Stellantis subsidiary Mopar:

Each BRG will pick a specific day of the week/weekend to volunteer as a team. Help continue to be the RESOURCE the BUSINESS can count on! Stellantis needs your help in running the Parts Distribution Centers (PDC) to ensure a steady supply of parts to our customers while negotiations continue. Working Parents Network has identified Friday, October 13 as WPN’s BRG Day at the PDCs!"

Now, these BRGs weren't invented by marginalized workers facing discrimination in the workplace. They come from literal union-busting playbooks produced by giant "union avoidance" firms that charge bosses millions for advice on skirting – or breaking – the law to keep workplace democracy at bay. All the biggest anti-union consultancies love BRGs, from Littler Mendelson to Jackson Lewis. IRI Strategies touts BRGs as a way to "union-proof" a business by absorbing workers' grievances in a decoy committee that will let them feel listened to.

BRGs, in other words, are the Crisis Pregnancy Centers of workplace discrimination. They're a Big Store Con, a company union dressed up as corporate social responsibility.

Now, let's not pretend that unions have a sterling record on race and gender issues. Giant labor organizations like the AFL had to be dragged into racial integration, and trade unions have sometimes been on the wrong side of anti-immigration panics:

https://www.archives.gov/publications/prologue/1997/summer/american-labor-movement.html

But unions have also been the most reliable way for people of color and women to win better workplace treatment. The struggle for racial and gender justice was fought through labor organizing. Remember that MLK's "I've Been To the Mountaintop" speech was given in support of striking sanitation workers in Memphis:

https://www.afscme.org/about/history/mlk/mountaintop

Black organizers have always been militant labor organizers. Labor Day commemorates the victory of the long, hard-fought Pullman strike, where Black workers brought one of the most powerful companies in America to its knees:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pullman_Strike

And women have always fought for gender justice through the labor movement: the New York shirtwaist strike is the Ur-example, when women-led unions fought thugs and scabs on icy New York streets:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_shirtwaist_strike_of_1909

It's no surprise that labor activism, anti-racism and feminism go together. Since the earliest days, the labor justice struggle was also a social justice struggle. To learn more check out Kim Kelly's Fight Like Hell: The Untold History of American Labor:

https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Fight-Like-Hell/Kim-Kelly/9781982171063

The most exploited, underpaid, and abused workers in America are also the most marginalized (duh).

From nurses:

https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/kaiser-healthcare-union-says-week-long-strike-possible-early-next-month-2023-10-09/

To teachers:

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2023-04-18/l-a-teachers-win-21-wage-increase-in-new-lausd-contract

To Amazon warehouse workers:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_Labor_Union

To publishing assistants:

https://apnews.com/article/harpercollins-union-strike-ends-0a94238718879066d9b21af6266be526

To baristas:

https://www.cnn.com/2023/09/29/business/starbucks-union-wages/index.html

To fast-food workers:

https://www.ufcw.org/about/

The vanguard of today's labor surge is Black, brown, female and queer. Without a union, workers who face discrimination are on their own, hoping that their bosses will voluntarily do something about it. Black workers in Tesla's rabidly anti-union shops face vicious racism, from slurs to threats to violence. Without a union, they have to rely on the shifting whims of an Apartheid emerald mine space-Karen for relief, or hope for help from the NLRB or a class-action lawyer:

https://apnews.com/article/tesla-racism-black-lawsuit-class-action-21c88bddf60eca702560be58429495de

The far right isn't wrong when they holler that woke capitalism is bullshit. As with so many of their mirror-world causes, they've got a point, but only a limited one. The problem with woke capitalism is that it's no substitute for a union. The problem with relying on Business Resource Groups to fight racism, sexism, homophobia and transphobia is that these struggles are all class struggles, and a BRG is never going to fight against the company that created it.

To understand how bankrupt woke capitalism is, conside this: Stellantis is calling on its "Working Parents Network" to scab this Friday. Stellantis is also being sanctioned by the Department Of Labor for discriminating against nursing mothers – the same "working parents" that the BRG is meant to protect:

https://www.clickondetroit.com/news/local/2023/02/08/investigation-finds-stellantis-violated-rights-of-nursing-mothers-at-sterling-heights-plant/

Woke capitalism is just another kind of "predatory inclusion," like Intuit's campaign defending its "Free File" tax-prep scam, where they're claiming that ending this ripoff is racist because it denies Black families the right to be tricked into paying for something they are entitled to get for free:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/27/predatory-inclusion/#equal-opportunity-scammers

When I learned about Intuit's wokewashing, I thought I'd found woke capitalism's rock bottom, but I was wrong. Stellantis's call for woke scabbing is a new low.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/11/equal-opportunity-class-war/#inclusive-scabbing

My next novel is The Lost Cause, a hopeful novel of the climate emergency. Amazon won't sell the audiobook, so I made my own and I'm pre-selling it on Kickstarter!

[britsyankswheels24]

🚗✨ A glimpse into automotive history!

🇺🇲 1966 Chevrolets rolling off the assembly line at the GM Flint, Michigan plant. Witness the craftsmanship and dedication that went into creating these classic beauties.

[iww-gnv]

As the summer marked by nationwide labor movements continues to heat up, another major national corporation with deep roots in Kentucky may soon face a strike. The International Union, United Automobile, Aerospace and Agricultural Implement Workers of America, or UAW, is applying pressure on the Big Three automakers, which include General Motors, Ford and Stellantis — which owns the Jeep, Ram, Chrysler, Dodge and Fiat brands — by hosting a nationwide strike authorization vote. Ford Motor Co., which operates both the Louisville Assembly Plant, LAP, and the Kentucky Truck Plant, KTP, in Louisville is facing a strike authorization vote from union members at UAW Local 862 as national UAW negotiations continue ahead of a nationwide contract expiration on Sept. 14. UAW Local 862 represents roughly 12,000 rank and file workers at both LAP and KTP. While a strike authorization vote is often seen as a formality and a common tactic for unions to take during negotiations, it will allow the UAW to strike if deemed necessary in order to secure a contract it feels is best for its membership.

[Read the rest]

[billyart]

[flashhwing]

sometimes I worry about how some of y’all react to any kind of technology. every site has an algorithm that’s how programming works. AI is a blanket term for a certain type of code, it’s not automatically evil. electric cars being made consumer available is a good thing even if the ceo of the first company to do so is a bit of a dick.

[stone-cold-groove]

From the car files: illustration detail from a 1937 Packard Motor Car Company ad.

[rabbitcruiser]

General Motors acquired the Chevrolet Motor Company of Delaware on May 2, 1918.  

[istherewifiinhell]

Episode that can just go straight to hell. Be normal about the young girl character.

[aiautos]

Top: 2002 Gusto Motors "Drop" microcar

Bottom: 2057 Amon-Gus Drip electric Gyrocar

In 2002, Gusto Motors produced an adorable micro city car affectionately named the “Drop.” It was a relative success, sold modestly well, and became a beloved icon across the globe. Fast forward 55 years, and Amon Electric has partnered with Gusto Motors to reimagine the Drop in a joint collaboration. Their result was the Amon-Gus Drip, a 2-wheeled gyroscopic pod transport with suspiciously good specifications for a car this size. Featuring a front-facing cooling vent, this electrical microcar was perfect for the commuter who’s been unexpectedly called into work for an impromptu emergency meeting. The success of the Drip spawned numerous impostor cars from other companies, however by 2058 they had all been ejected from the market thanks to Amon Electric’s fierce team of legal taskmasters.

[carsthatnevermadeitetc]

Chevrolet Corvette S.O. 2151 Prototype, 1954. A one-off GM Styling Department “Proposal Car”  for an abandoned 1955 facelift is to be offered at auction. The Corvette body was restyled to incorporate several new features: a decorative hood scoop, eggcrate front grille, bumper-exit exhaust tips, and a re-styled trunk design. Another element of the new design were the slanted front-fender vents, painted body color on the passenger side and trimmed with chrome on the driver side – giving GM executives two different looks to choose from. The car has undergone an 1,800 hour restoration using  period photographs to ensure that the work was as accurate as possible, including re-creating missing trim pieces.

auction listing

[if-you-fan-a-fire]

“Ford Strike Second In Numbers,” Windsor Star. November 26, 1942. Page 3. ---- Only Winnipeg Walkout Involved More Men Than 13,500 Out in Row Here ---- A study of available records shows that the strike at the Ford Motor Company of Canada war plants, affecting an estimated 13.500 workers, is overshadowed in numbers only by the sympathetic general strike at Winnipeg in May, 1919. which involved about 27,000 emploves.

SYMPATHETIC STRIKES The work stoppage in Winnipeg, stemming from a dispute which members of the metal trades there had with their employers over wage increases and the question of a 44-hour week, led to the calling of sympathetic strikes in Brandon, Man., Calgary, Edmonton. Saskatoon, Regina and Prince Albert, Sask. 

After the Winnipeg Trades and Labor Council had championed the cause of the striking metal workers, street railwaymen. elevator men, postal employes, clerical and stenographic workers, employes of department stores and some classes of railway and municipal workers stopped work in sympathy with the strikers. 

Later, newspaper pressmen struck, being joined by telephone, telegraph and electrical workers and cutting Winnipeg off from communication with the outside world. Processions, demonstrations and rioting followed, resulting in casualties, including one death.

LEADERS ARRESTED On June 17, seven labor leaders who had taken prominent part in the strike were arrested on charges of seditious conspiracy, and on June 25 a royal commission of inquiry was requested by the strike committee and subsequently held. Within a few days there was a general return to work. 

Of the strike leaders arrested, six were convicted and sentenced to imprisonment April 6. 1920, five for one i year and one for six months. 

In 1924, more than 7.000 coal miners in Alberta and British Columbia engaged in a walkout which lasted from April until October, and caused a time loss of more than 1.000. 000 working days. 

Approximately 11,500 Nova Scotia coal miners were involved in a walkout in 1925, and before this dispute was settled they had lost nearly 1.500.000 working days. Disputes in the mining industry accounted for slightly more than 90 percent of the total time lost through work stoppages that year.

CAUSES OF FRICTION Records of industrial disputes show that from 1901 to 1936 changes in wages constituted the most, important cause of friction between employers and employes.

Since 1936, however, union questions, chiefly union recognition, the discharge of workers for union activity or membership and the employment of union members only in closed shops have led to many strikes and caused about 40 percent of the total time lost.

Most of the important disputes after 1931 occurred in textile and clothing manufacturing, logging, saw-milling and wood-working industries, with a substantial number arising in coal mining. 

In 1941, strikes in the mining and metal manufacturing industries caused three-quarters of the time loss, which that year was greatest in Ontario, Nova Scotia and Quebec. The principal disputes involved gold miners at Kirkland Lake, Ont., coal miners at Glace Bay, N.S., metal products factory workers at Toronto and St. Catharines. Ont., aluminum workers at Arviria. Que., and steel rolling-mill workers at Montreal. 

Ford Plant Gates Are Closely Picketed TYPICAL of the manner in which the tightly-guarded gates of the Ford Plant were picketed this morning is shown here. The man directly in the centre of the croup of pickets, carrying a parcel, identified himself as a painter who had been previously denied admission to Plant 2. He is shown as he was surrounded by pickets at the door of the main office where he evidently intended to learn his status. As an hourly-rated employe, he was meat for the pickets because they have instructions not to admit any in that category. The photographer who took this picture, contrary to picketing instructions, was told to get out of the vicinity of the plant or have his car overturned and his camera smashed. The union denied instructions had been issued to bar photographers.