Solidarity with the struggle of the GM workers and ex-GM workers in Colombia

By Autoworkers Caravan

We are outraged over General Motors’ plans for mass layoffs at its Colmotores (Bogota, Colombia) assembly plant announced on December 21, 2018 that will result in an unspecified number of workers and their families deprived of their means of existence.

GM’s method of informing the workers was especially outrageous: waiting until the last day before the Christmas holidays, and only after most workers had left the plant. In these actions, the bosses exhibit their fear of the workers whose labor has enriched GM executives and shareholders. These layoffs are part of a broad and brutal corporate “restructuring” at the expense of workers in the U.S. (Detroit, Warren, Baltimore, Lordstown), Canada (Oshawa) and other unnamed international locations.

We declare our full solidarity in the struggle against these shutdowns. The discarding of the GM Colmotores workers is consistent with that plant’s brutal treatment of the workers who’ve suffered shop floor injuries and which the company subsequently fired and robbed of their means of existence.

We declare our continued solidarity with the struggle of the injured ex-GM Colmotores workers, members of The Association of Injured Workers and Ex-Workers of General Motors Colmotores (ASOTRECOL), who have heroically maintained their protest tent encampment at the US Embassy now over 7 years. The struggle by ASOTRECOL has strengthened the struggle by recently fired injured GM Colmotores workers who the company has been forced to reinstate. The perseverance of ASOTRECOL combined with international solidarity has been instrumental in their victories.

We declare our continued solidarity with the fired injured workers who continue their fight to win their jobs back. Together with the GM workers facing layoffs and their unions Sintraime and SintraGMCol, we can form a strong united front to fight for the rights of GM workers around the world.

We will support the militant fightback by GM workers here in the USA, Canada, Colombia, Brazil and elsewhere as part of a campaign of international working class solidarity – the only means by which we can triumph against GM and the other transnational corporations.