Globalization Porn: American Axle (Michigan) Lays Off 300

More globalization-related bad news for the auto industry and the Detroit area. Here is The Oakland Press with the details:

American Axle & Manufacturing Inc. has laid off 300 blue-collar workers from its manufacturing complex at I-75 and Holbrook along the Detroit–Hamtramck border.

The workers were idled Feb. 25 when the American Axle’s labor agreement with the United Auto Workers ran out. Negotiations between the company and union have stalled and the workers were left without any kind of severance package, according to former UAW official familiar with the discussions.

American Axle had announced last summer it planned to close the complex, which in the late 1970s employed as many as 8,000 workers. The company’s headquarters is still on the site but the layoffs mean no more blue-collar work is done inside the Holbrook complex.

Of course, they keep on the management jackals who don't actually produce anything while the real work will now be done abroad:

The union blamed the shutdown on AAM’s unwillingness to negotiate a fair labor agreement.

“This is an indication that hard-working people are sick of constantly helping companies through concessions and back to profitability and companies refusing to share in that,” said UAW Vice President Cindy Estrada, who directs the union’s American Axle Department said last summer.

“Here is a business that started out as an American company providing good-paying jobs to 6,000 employees. As a result of the hard work of these employees, it has grown to an international company with 32 factories worldwide,” said Estrada. “All of this success was achieved off the backs of the original 6,000 hard-working Americans.”

However, American Axle has said it needs further labor concessions, including reducing the pay of active workers, to remain competitive in what has become a global market. Work done at the complex is being shifted to Mexico.

Globalization--the most effective union busting tool ever devised. If these assholes were at all honest, they would change the name of the company to Mexican Axle.


Bonus: Speaking of Axl, remember when he was young, thin and could still ROCK?