The level of unemployment has been seriously affected in the USA. In the first week of April this year, 79,000 of the United Automobile Workers' total membership of 728,000 had been definitively laid off. Another 72,000 were only working part time. The actual em ployment rate was 20 per cent of the workforce-two thirds of these were workers at General Motors.
Lay-offs in Europe have been less sweeping. But there have been several waves of partial unemployment. Early in the year the Fiat workers in Italy were on a three-day week. the Volkswagen works in West Germany, 62,000 workers were put on part-time work during the spring. A total freeze was placed on hiring. and pressure was put on older workers to retire or quit voluntarily.
As profits fall the firms most seriously hit are preparing new attacks on staffing levels. British Leyland announced on 21 June this year an "economising' programme that involves a massive reduction in employment, especially in the old AustinMorris division, which specialises in the cheaper cars for mass consumption.
The car crisis is developing under the impetus of three major factors: the cconomic recession in most of the imperialist countries; the economic effects of the increase in the price of oil; the end of the long phase of accelerated growth in the market for automobiles in Western Europe and Japan and in several other countries. Thus, the oil crisis" is but one element among others that are causing the car crisis, Even if it were to be pranted that the oil crisis triggered the car crisis, it is scarcely cnough to relegate the other, more profound, causes to the background.
What are the real effects of the "oil crisis" on the car crisis? The effects are exerted mainly on the costs of using a private car and on the category of privately-owned cars.
First the oil shortage and then the considerable increase in petrol prices manifestly discouraged purchases (or use, and therefore replacement) of cars for a whole series of buyCIS.
The more modest groups of car users -semiskilled workers, low-paid white collar workers, civil servants, craftsmen, small peasants, and small, nonprosperous merchants-tended to think more thin they did in the past about whether they could afford to go someplace hy car or whether they had to in Western Europe and Japan.
Further, the gasoline price increases and the legal reductions in speed limits have undercut most of the attractive power of 'middle-sized" or "big" cars as opposed to compacts and 'economy cars, except for reasons of ostentation or desire for luxury. Consequently, with the exception of a few specialized brands, sales of middle-sized and big cars are going through a more than proportional decline, while things are going somewhat better for small cars.
On the US market, sales of small AL cars are declining only modestly, to preferred by American customers, have literally collapsed (going from 660,000 in March 1973 to 350,000 in March 19741) Since the beginning of 1974, sales of small cars have for the first time surpassed sales of big