Car production is increasing in Asia.

It is a fact that the internal combustion engine is the biggest single contributor to global warming, which is already raising sea levels by melting glaciers and polar ice caps. Environmentalists believe that by 2050 there could be as many as 150 million refugees displaced by rising tides. In the foreseeable future, large delta areas will lose huge areas of land. Most at risk in Asia Pacific are Bangladesh, Thailand, China, Pakistan, and India, as well as the low-lying Maldives, Kiribati, Tuvalu, and the Marshall islands.

One century ago, Henry Ford’s motor company revolutionised the system of producing goods by transferring ‘series production’ to ‘mass production’. Series production was carried out by craftsmen producing whole parts or products; mass production separates production into small individual processes that can carried out by low-skilled workers on assembly lines.

But the industry, which is central to the economies of many countries, is in fact ailing badly. In the second quarter of 2003, although Ford made $417 million profit, only $16 million came from car production; the rest was from loans to car buyers. It is a similar story at General Motors where $834 million of its $901 million profit came from home mortgages and to a lesser extent from car sale loans.
While governments and banks encourage privately- or state-owned companies to produce motor vehicles, they also encourage consumers to buy the vehicles produced in the factories. This policy has caused many problems.

Bad for people who do not drive
Pedestrians are treated as second class citizens, as vehicles and their infrastructure take precedence in both urban and rural environments. Pedestrians are inconvenienced by the priority of traffic, cumulative hours of waiting for safe opportunities to cross roads, and crammed onto narrow paths, while cars enjoy several wide lanes.

Cars produce poisonous fumes which we are all forced to breathe; these fumes are particularly damaging to children’s development. In addition, vehicles of all sizes litter our roadsides, which they often use as free car parks.

On flat land, bicycles are great eco-friendly transport. Yet in the UK, cyclists make up 45 percent of all road accident fatalities. And in a move that beggars belief, Shanghai is about to follow Beijing’s example by banning bicycles from its busiest routes to make way for more cars!

Killer cars
Road accidents kill and maim millions around the world each year. As middle classes emerge in Asia, so car ownership also grows, and deaths are rising steadily each year.

China’s car sales in 2003 – up by 82 percent – may be good news for manufacturer and government incomes, but motorisation has resulted in China having the highest road accident rate of any country of the world – scary news considering that only a fraction of Chinese people drive cars. Things are so bad that the Beijing government announced in December that commuting workers injured in auto accidents will be paid compensation by all companies in the municipality.

Bad for the environment
With the technology to produce ever more efficient ways of using petroleum products, the industry still thumbs its nose at the environment. The sports utility vehicles (SUV) that are so common now have worse fuel consumption than Ford’s Model T of 100 years ago, and can be a low as 10 miles per gallon. This has a disastrous effect on global oil reserves and encourages oil companies to use ruthless tactics to control them.

Governments add to environmental problems by building ever more roads needed to drive the cars on. This uses up huge areas of prime agricultural land.

Good for workers?
Henry Ford not only introduced mass production to his factory in 1913, he also paid his employees well, reasoning that well-paid workers make good customers for him. Good wages set a marker for the industry, whose workers are still among the highest paid. As auto production and sales played an increasing role in national economies, so car workers developed strong industrial muscles, seen in well-organised trade unions. This made car workers one of the key sectors of labour and leaders of the labour movement.

Car producers automate as much production as possible, yet they still need large numbers of workers, so they move production to the Third World. For this reason it is essential that car workers here are organised into strong, democratic, and independent unions. Despite some of the problems outlined in this issue of ALU, car workers in Asia Pacific are relatively well treated compared to workers in other sectors.

Although public transport is far more efficient and less damaging to the environment than private cars, governments continue to encourage private transport. Even workers who can afford to buy cars must recognise the insanity and unfairness of private transport. ALU’s support for the right to work is well documented, but at the same time we believe that the transition from private to public transport is ecologically inevitable. This does not mean that auto workers will necessarily lose jobs; rather they may transfer to public vehicle production, and develop this sector.

However in the short term auto workers may not come to terms with environmental concerns. As in other industrial sectors that foul the environment, auto workers can be in direct conflict with environmentalists.

Getting rid of private cars will not be easy in the face of a powerful car/road/oil lobby. Part of the solution is to switch from private to public transport; another part is to stop using fossil fuels to power vehicles. If strong auto unions can be convinced of the need to eliminate private cars, this would contribute greatly to the battle of cleaning up the world.