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Deere workers on strike in Ankeny, Iowa, October 2021. (JOBsNews Photo/Charlie Neibergall)
On Monday, agricultural and heavy equipment giant Deere and Company revealed it plans to indefinitely lay off more than 800 workers in Iowa and Illinois in the coming months, in a significant escalation of its attacks on jobs this year.
Deere will lay off 503 workers at its Harvester Works factory on the banks of the Mississippi River in East Moline, Illinois, effective Sept. 20. In Iowa, Deere will lay off 211 workers at nearby Davenport Works and another 99 at its Dubuque Works plant, each effective Aug. 30.
The massive job cuts announced Monday effectively double the number of layoffs Deere has carried out during the year. In recent months, the company has announced layoffs at three Iowa plants — 549 at Waterloo Works, 166 at Des Moines Works and 59 at its technology center, Deere Intelligent Solutions — along with 34 layoffs at its Moline Seeding and Cylinder plant in Illinois. The company has also cut jobs through early retirement incentives, including 103 at its Ottumwa, Iowa, plant.
In addition to laying off production workers, Deere plans to cut its salaried workforce by the end of July, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission last month.
The company launched the current wave of mass layoffs last year, eliminating 225 jobs at Harvester Works in October. With the latest round of cuts, Deere will have slashed nearly 20 percent of its 10,000-person United Auto Workers workforce, in the largest round of job reductions since 2015-16. Deere employs about 80,000 people worldwide.
The cuts at Deere are part of a growing corporate attack on jobs across the auto industry and other manufacturing sectors. The U.S. auto industry had announced more than 21,000 job cuts between January and May, an 18 percent increase compared with the same period last year, according to a report by job placement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas.
Ford, General Motors and Stellantis have been engaged in a massive wave of staff cuts, reducing shifts, laying off thousands of workers and firing temporary workers. The cuts are a direct result of the UAW bureaucracy’s betrayal of the 2023 struggle at the Big Three, during which they kept the vast majority of workers on the job in fake “walkouts.”
Deere has attempted to justify its cuts by citing falling crop prices and lower demand for its large agricultural machinery. In a perfunctory statement, the company wrote that “increasing operating costs and declining market demand require company-wide changes in the way we work to achieve our goals and better position the company for the future.”
In addition, the Federal Reserve’s continued high interest rates (a policy intended to increase unemployment and weaken worker leverage) has helped suppress demand for Deere equipment, which can sell for more than $1 million for its large combines.
Yet Deere remains hugely profitable, having earned $2.37 billion in the previous quarter and more than $10 billion last fiscal year.
While throwing hundreds of workers into unemployment, the company continued to funnel huge sums to its senior management ($26 million to CEO John May last year) and its biggest investors ($7.2 billion in share buybacks and $1.4 billion in dividends in 2023).
The UAW apparatus, which imposed a sellout contract that betrayed the 2021 Deere strike, has been silent on the cuts until now. UAW President Shawn Fain’s administration has been rocked by an escalating crisis in recent weeks, with revelations that a court-appointed monitor is investigating both Fain and Secretary-Treasurer Margaret Mock for financial irregularities, as well as another UAW executive board member for embezzlement.
Last week, in a shocking court ruling, a federal judge rebuked the Biden administration’s Department of Labor for its “arbitrary and capricious” attempt to dismiss claims of fraud in the UAW’s 2022-2023 national election. The judge ruled in favor of Will Lehman, a rank-and-file Mack Trucks worker and UAW member who had filed the lawsuit, and ordered the Labor Department to review and respond to evidence previously submitted by Lehman.
Media and UAW try to divert anger over job cuts away from Mexico
Corporate media have attempted to deflect anger over the job cuts by stoking anti-Mexican sentiment, with headlines from The Guardian and JOBsNews Business proclaiming “Deere’s move to Mexico.” The company has announced the relocation of certain production lines from its Waterloo and Dubuque factories to Mexico.
The Guardian newspaper quoted former UAW Local 74 president Chris Laursen as saying: “A multinational corporation like Deere sees Mexico as a very attractive place as a source of cheap labour – they can import cheaper steel there, bring it across the border and sell it to most of their market in the US. It’s a sign of the times, perpetuating what’s been happening with the loss of manufacturing here in the US, of good union jobs and so on.”
The UAW bureaucracy has long sought to promote nationalist venom among workers, against Japan in the 1980s, and against Mexico and, increasingly, China in recent decades. Efforts to blame workers in other countries have supported the corporation’s “divide and conquer” strategy, used to increase the exploitation of its global workforce.
The UAW’s aid to the company’s mad scramble for profits has allowed working conditions to worsen, as revealed by the recent horrific death of 28-year-old Caterpillar worker Daulton Simmers.
The UAW’s promotion of economic nationalism has taken on a malignant character, serving to subordinate workers to American corporate interests and preparations for all-out war with Russia and China.
UAW President Fain has emerged as the Biden administration’s chief spokesman, calling for a new “arsenal of democracy,” which in reality means the imposition of a brutal war economy and further disenfranchisement of workers.
During the 2021 Deere strike, which won sympathy from Deere workers internationally, including in Germany and France, the UAW bureaucracy was repeatedly challenged and shaken by a rebellion by Deere workers, who rejected at least two UAW-backed contract proposals, the first by more than 90 percent.
Workers strike outside a John Deere plant, Wednesday, Oct. 20, 2021, in Ankeny, Iowa. (JOBsNews Photo/Charlie Neibergall)
UAW officials at the local and national levels attempted to pressure workers into accepting the company’s “last, best, and final offer” (which was unchanged from the one workers had just rejected), even threatening to move production to Mexico, claiming that “there was no more money on the table.” At the Davenport plant, a local UAW vice president called for Deere to move production from Waterloo, as that facility had been the focus of resistance to the UAW’s pro-company agreements.
“There has been nothing from the union”
A veteran worker at Deere’s North American Parts Distribution Center (PDC) in Milan, Illinois, told the WSWS: “Many of us knew when the strike was happening that they were planning to move jobs overseas. Waterloo knew some of their work was going to Mexico. Our contract states that the PDC facility has to remain open – well, there’s a little glitch in it where it doesn’t say anything about how many employees. They could have one security guard and that would be it.
“When it comes time to sign a contract, you have to say, ‘We’re signing, hurry up, the company is not going to give you any more money.’ Deere knew what was in store for him in the future.
“There has been nothing from the union. If they came and started firing us, they wouldn’t say anything. I haven’t seen any union representatives at the plant. They are too busy kissing the company’s ass.”
Let’s build a Deere Workers’ Rank-and-File Committee to fight job cuts!
During the 2021 Deere strike, a group of militant workers organized the Deere Workers Rank-and-File Committee, which served as an organizing center against UAW efforts to impose company demands.
In a statement calling for a no vote and an expansion of the strike across the UAW, the committee warned: “If this contract is approved, before the ink is dry, we will be forced to work around the clock to make up for lost production, and Deere executives will be bragging to their investors that they have achieved their goals of cutting costs and increasing profits.”
Workers cannot rely on the corrupt UAW apparatus, which will continue to support the company’s job-cutting attacks and seek to promote pessimism and convince workers that “nothing can be done” to save jobs.
The fight to defend jobs can and must be fought, but to do so, workers must take the fight into their own hands. The Deere Workers Rank-and-File Committee must be expanded, joining the International Workers Alliance of Rank-and-File Committees (IWA-RFC), to prepare industrial actions to stop and reverse job cuts around the world.
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