International Viewpoint - online socialist magazine

Ford Blanquefort, an example

Jean-Claude Vessillier — 2011-10-13T09:46:32Z

While car bosses in France are on the offensive to eliminate jobs and close factories, the long struggle at the Ford factory near Bordeaux is a counter-example showing that even in this situation, victories are possible. It is no coincidence that one of the main organisers of this struggle in the Ford Blanquefort plant is Philippe Poutou, the activist that the New Anti-capitalist Party (NPA) has chosen as candidate for the French presidential election of 2012.

- IV441 - October 2011 / France, Trade unions/workplace organizing

The state of the European car industry

Jean-Claude Vessillier — 2011-10-06T09:56:52Z

This is the introductory report presented by Jean-Claude Vessillier (an activist in the NPA and a former Renault worker) at the begining of the European Conference of Workers in the Car Industry, held at the International Institute for Research and Education in Amsterdam on May 28-29, 2011.
We have already published the Declaration of the European Car Workers' Conference and an overview at
Creating cross-border links between militants. Over the next few weeks we will publish the individual reports from particular countries.

- IV441 - October 2011 / Europe, Trade unions/workplace organizing

Cars: a time of transformations

Jean-Claude Vessillier — 2010-09-08T22:43:35Z

What was perceptible from the second half of 2008 has been confirmed: the crisis which has hit the car industry at a world level is not a simple depression preceding an inevitable recovery where everything goes back to what it was before, whether concerning the exploitation of the work force or the use of the individual car.

- IV428 - September 2010 / Economy

Cars, the end of a cycle

Jean-Claude Vessillier — 2009-03-21T08:46:11Z

In the thirty five years since the first oil crisis world car production has doubled, going from 33 million in 1975 to 73 million in 2007. In most developed capitalist countries, the usual mode of management of this growth has been that of crisis with restructuring among firms, factory closures and suppression of jobs. The car industry in the oldest capitalist economy, Britain, has been profoundly reduced over this period. Detroit and Boulogne-Billancourt in Paris bear the scars of closed factories with industrial wastelands in the heart of the city.

- IV410 - March 2009 / Ecology and the Environment, Economy