Option
The MAN-Steyr workforce today voted with a large majority of almost 64 percent against the investor Siegfried Wolf taking over the plant. Under threat of closure and relocation of the plant to Poland, the workforce at the profitable plant should have been forced to make devastating cuts. Attac criticizes the unfair negotiation practices and the pressure from investors and shows solidarity with the workers.
Climate crisis makes decommissioning of car production inevitable
For the future of the plant, Attac calls for a fundamental social-ecological reorientation instead of climate-damaging profit maximization. It is completely obvious that we need an orderly dismantling of parts of the car production so that we can cope with the climate crisis. In the medium term, the plants in Steyr could manufacture products for sustainable mobility - such as trains and trams (1). A future-oriented industrial policy should create the framework for this - for example through public contracts.
A location with creativity, know-how and a historically broad product range
The workforce in Steyr has the know-how to play a leading role in this socio-ecological restructuring. Historically, the Steyr location has always been characterized by the creativity of the designers, the high qualification of the employees and a wide range of products.
In a multi-part series of events, the Attac Regional Group Steyr uses historical examples to discuss how the socio-ecological restructuring of industry can take place in a self-determined manner and led by workers. The next event with industrial policy expert Julia Eder and contemporary witness Pit Wuhrer takes place on April 15, 2021 instead.
Erwin Kargl from the Attac regional group in Steyr explains: “From my point of view, a victim-perpetrator reversal is happening: The employees are not only put under pressure with fear for their own job, but also by being guilty, if it shouldn't go on. When will politics finally be made for people again and not for short-term profits? We need a policy that promotes social and ecologically sustainable solutions. "
(1) That is what recently demanded Experts from various universities.
ON THE CONTRIBUTION TO OPTION AUSTRIA
