GE Appliance Park Without Fans Despite Sweltering Heat Wave

“Three this month,” a worker told me during his break at GE Appliance Park in Louisville, Kentucky. “Three this month, in this building alone.” He was speaking after a man passed out on his line and had to be taken out on a stretcher. Despite many workers having access to personal fans, his position did not. This all came a month before the scorching July heat waves that have left so many workers in uncertain and potentially dangerous working conditions.

This issue is far from uncommon in the GE Appliance Park, owned by Chinese multinational Haier. Haier is ranked 407th on the Fortune 500, with plants in multiple countries in Africa, Europe, Asia, and the Americas, employing workers around the globe. Generating super-profits, they bought Appliance Park for about five billion dollars in 2016, and have since continued to dominate the planet with imperialist expansion, contributing to the very processes that have caused the impending climate disaster. It is clear that the difference between working conditions across jobs is not due to a lack of available resources, but rather it is part of a broader strategy to cut costs and increase profits, by creating and maintaining a divide between workers within the factories.

The fight for better working conditions, for all members of the plant, is one that can and must be fought, and it can only be brought about through direct struggle and concrete demands from an organized working class. But why stop at fans? Why not slow down the line, so that workers can tell when somebody is overworked and on the brink of collapse, and intervene?

Allow me to speak in no uncertain terms: workers of the GE Appliance Park, we must fight for better working conditions, for each and every one of us! With these heat waves and the extreme heat of the upcoming summers, we should not have so many of our fellow workers falling over, unable to cope. Our bosses make billions buying our labor power for pennies, and they will continue to squeeze us as much as they physically can, unless we remove them and take power for ourselves. Many of us have to work second jobs just to afford rent, and even if we win temporary concessions, our bosses will just be waiting to pull the rug out from under us. We must not be guiled into playing the short game, like so many of our bosses and superiors do, chasing short-term profits. We must fight the long-term struggle for socialism! Only once we firmly wield political power can we ensure total victory and build better lives for ourselves and each other!