AFL-CIO’s policy director on General Motor’s decision to lay off thousands
The AFL-CIO labor union is worried that General Motors' decision this week to halt production at several factories and cut thousands of jobs in the U.S. could be a pretext for sending work outside the country where labor costs are significantly cheaper.
"This situation is really about whether or not GM is going to put new work into these plants or whether this is a smoke screen for offshoring work," AFL-CIO policy director, Damon Silvers said on CNBC's Power Lunch.
GM was not immediately available for comment. The automaker said Monday it will begin phasing out the production of several vehicles at a number of factories in the United States and Canada.
GM has said it is cutting production of these vehicles in part because they are slow-selling, but Silvers said GM recently decided to start making the Chevrolet Blazer SUV in Mexico, rather than the plant in Lordstown, Ohio that it plans to wind down.
GM has a "particularly bad history" compared with Ford and Chrysler of looking to move jobs off shore he said.
Successful auto companies worldwide pay decent wages and benefits to high-skilled workers, Silvers said.
"The bottom feeders do things like exploit $2-an-hour wages, which is what GM pays in some of its factories in Mexico," he said. "What we want them to do is to be in a first tier strategy that really takes advantage of the skills and capacity … of America's workers and America's communities."