By WILLIAM ALLAN

watswer to a request that General

' Corporation reveal the extent
Aftiog Sperations in apartheid South
Richa’ General Motors’ chairman,

- Gerstenberg, replied it would
De to r Months and a number of peo-
tnly ae this and it was of interest
d & minority — so it was turned
ing of a scene was the annual meet-
1200 Shareholders, attended by

vith t2ekholders were in full accord
€ GM directors and Gersten-
Met a peas Since the last time they

troit GM had made $1.9 bil-

tion

ln ant (@Xes in 1971 and $651 mil-
197, “t taxes in the first quarter of
Nin

Boup jp roPosals: by Ralph Nader’s
CTUshing © meeting all went down to

SOUP, kn defeat. The Nader-inspired
| eponsibin as Project on Corporate
low Ibilities (PCR), received the
The pro Support they’ve ever had.
info vine for merely getting more
Peratio, nh on GM’s South African
Year, Ss (milked down from last
Rot 2 on soPosal for total withdrawal)
SUltin Of the votes, besides the in-
OM a contemptuous remarks of
Would ‘man Gerstenberg that it
lormation.- four months to get the in-

But

org, the World-wide scandal -of GM,
theiq Shaoa bolstering the apar-
Ing to se @® in South Africa is not go-
of yyored up by a slick chair-
Shateho} dere ud @ mass of loaded
iGe TS voting it down.

: “Dart Motors Showed pressure -of
Or ‘ forces in the world when
mpany - time in its history the
Afticg Soom its chairman to South
Natpes With oY. to meet pressure

. ca the line, “I was there.”

Posed far’s chairman, James Roche,
he : Tacism by trying to per-
Were “free aying that its stockholders
“aught him: White and . . .” He then
Rtineg » Self. Shortly afterwards he

Gergt

en §

ie asie Bs his Successor, got bet-
y Protected me including a care-

trip to South Africa.

lack clergymen and
| GM to stay and help
of €conomic and social
Detroit pp), “MPloyees.”
Vigne wit Bla
Congressman Charles
» Ut int 4 recent visitor to South

Ugetd Pehor U.S. Congressional
Af’) On yg {Of 8 Broup of U.S.

of ee Rep, p. businesses in South

ang hat th 188s corroborated much

talks 3,52 from his own visits
Working-class people.

te, Charm... “© report reveal wh
regi to pe Richard Geran
Tho th depart” GM’s 200-member re-
Wout eseqncnt tO even spend four
the q disc’ one ching information that
hy <rdig g° '© GM's shareholders
M’s involvement

» and its relati i
ers there. ationship

hf Planes clerg i
Notts of Y- delegation visited

ing Tece urch of Chri
n rist,
Ke on ‘GM Shareholders meet-
You Shd-braap und, “One stream of
diy; den ak

de Ing profits from which

ote: oe
o2 2 eee

22s ee oe mee

GIANT U.S. CORPORATIONS

With signs denouncing racism and imperialism in Africa, the 2,000 demonstrators

AFRICA
ig MUST BE

EFI

for African Liberation Day on May 27 in Toronto stop at the consulates of France,
Portugal, the USA and the British Trade Mission. A clear example of imperialist

penetration in Afric
operations.

Ps

inexhaustible poo! of Black workers,

without suffrage and without collective

bargaining rights, obliged to work for”

e unilaterally set by the GM Cor-
Seren at. a fraction of what white
workers, doing comparable work un-
der union contracts and with a mono-
poly of political power, are currently
being paid.”

Timothy Smith, assistant for African
Affairs Council for Christian Social
Action, spoke to a majority of bored
GM shareholders asking for detailed
information on GM’s operations in
South Africa. He asked Gerstenberg,
the chairman, just returned from South
Africa, a number of questions that
were totally ignored:

e Why has GM refused to give de-
tails of its operations in South Africa?

e@ Why hasn’t GM told us here whe-
ther all their wages are above the
Minimum Effective Level of $140 need-
ed for an average African family to
live adequately? es

e@ Why hasn’t GM told us what their
profits there were? Are they afraid to
release‘such information for fear their
profits will be criticized because of the
low wages they pay?

e Why has GM declined to tell us
what apitsect they have with the
white South African government's de-
fense department? Or GM's support for
a military machine which suppresses
Blacks inside South Africa and fights
Black freedom fighters in Angola and
Mozambique? Also why have they re-
fused to tell us how many police and
army vehicles they make a year: ‘

e hasn’t GM publicly dis-
ae future connection with ae
South African Foundation, an all-whi e
organization which lobbies iikernbon.
ally on behalf of white South ce Gh
GM was a contributor in 1970 bu
won't tell us what its future plans are
with this group.

e Why does GM refuse to tell us the
facts about their international sue
ing program in Europe that helps sagt
Africa attract all white immigrants
work in GM’s plants, cutting off oe
possibilities of upgrading Black work-
ers? :
e Why does GM mislead the worl

2 Sw Aw

a is given in this article of General Motors’ South Africa

PHOTOS BY EDYA WEIR

4 1

public by implying that
change” is occuring in South Africa
when the facts show that the overall
quality of life has worsened for Afri-
can, Asian and Colored South Africans
over the last decade? Yes, tell the
truth GM! There is much more to-the
story than you have told...

Ali shareholders, including the Board
of Directors and GM chairman Gersten-
berg, received a copy of the above, but
ignored it completely.

According to Business Week maga-
zine, Gerstenberg “looks to foreign
business as a primary source of
growth” and fatter profits. It notes
that auto sales are expected to grow
by 55% by 1980, comparéd with only
30% in U.S. GM has opened an as-
sembly plant in Malaysia, is looking
for locations in South Korea, plans to
build million-dollar plants like Ford in
the Philippines. Also it has gotten 40%
of Bangchan General Assembly Co. of
Bangkok, Thailand, which company

distributes GM’s Australian car, the

Holden.

GM, like Ford, has now produced a
special car for the Asia-Pacific area.
The increasing sinking of capital into
this section of the world reflects both
the cheap labor they hope to exploit
and the market potential.

Business Week reports GM and Ford
have produced a car “for the masses,
but hopes these plans are not frustrat-
ed by political and social changes...

GM has been in South Africa since
1926 and by 1970 its investment had
grown to approximately $125 million
with an engine and assembly plant
near- Port Elizabeth. They sell about
35,000 vehicles a year (1971). Their
work force is 5,000. The 1971 break-
down of their employees showed 50%
white, 40% Colored and 10% African.
Of the 1,380 skilled workers, six are
“non-white.” .

Says a brief by the U.S. National

ate ae

Council of Churches, aiso presented to
GM officials at the Detroit May 19
shareholders’ meeting, and contemp-
tuously disregarded:

“The shortage of labor has neces-
sitated the increased employment of
Africans in every industry, including
GM-South African. This is a by-product
of economic pressures rather than an
international effort by GM-South Afri-
can to hire more Africans, Asians, Col-
ored.”’

From the same. report: GM-South
African argues that the average in-
come of its African employees is “‘al-
most double the average income of
African employees in cities and about
three times the national average.”

An October 1971 report shows GM-
South African wages range from 56¢
to $1.26 an hour for unskilled; 98¢ to
$1.82 per hour for semi-skilled. GM in
a tip of its hat to world-wide pressure
raised the wages of 245 Colored and
African workers an average of 33%.

A year before, in 1970, GM was pay-
ing unskilled starting workers $.52 an
hour and semi-skilled workers between
70¢ and $1.00 an hour. Machine set-
ters and changers, mostly whites,
earned $1.40 and $2.00 an hour. The
white skilled artisans got more than
$2.10 an hour. African workers get
$154 a month for a 44-hour week, while
Colored get $183 a month. White
skilled get $369 per month.

Labor relations by GM in 1971 re-
veals GM allowed ih its South African
operations a “Works Committee for
African Employees” to be elected in
its plants. It’s apartheid government
sanctioned. African workers are not
allowed into registered labor unions,
nor to participate..in the Industrial
Council, which includes GM-South
African, Ford and Volkswagen, toge-
ther with the two major trade unions
(white and Colored).

GM operated:in South Africa for 42
years without unions in its plants but
now the two unions have been formed,
representing the white and Colored
workers. The Industrial Council agree-
ment does not apply to Africans. GM
says its personh€tspractices are non-
discriminatory, ‘unless required by
South African law to be racist. —

hi,

Yet GM makes no move to fight the
apartheid Factories Act which man-
dates facilities for different races in
clocking stations, washing facilities,
change and rest rooms, dining areas,
drinking fountains, wage payments and
medical treatment. GM’s upper man-
agement had no African, Asian or Col-
ored when interviewed in 1970. The
plant manager of. GM-South African
Aloes. plant said: about Africans, “I
wouldn’t. say that these people don’t
have reasoning power, but what ‘they
do is very limited.”

The retired U.S. GM_ chairman,
James Roche, consistently referred in
letters to Africans by the racist and
chauvinist term of “natives.” GM-
South African is a subscriber to the
South African Foundation, a pro-apart-
theid organization which lobbies in
the U.S. and Europe for support to
apartheid.

* * Ba

No wonder GM chairman Gersten-
berg said the company would not take
four months or the personnel to tell
about GM’s South African operations—
the above information is easily avail-
able, and GM knows it without any
team of researchers telling them.

PACIFIC TRIBUNE—FRIDAY, JUNE 9, 1972—-PAGE 7