“As
emerging algorithm-driven artificial intelligence (AI) continues to spread,
will people be better off than they are today?” –Pew Research Center, “Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Humans”
The Midwest was jerked out of its comfort zone recently, when General Motors’ announced that over the course of 2019 it would be laying off 14K+ workers (15% of its workforce) and shuttering five plants, in Michigan and Ohio. The move wasn’t a total surprise: many analysts had anticipated something big—between Trump’s counter-productive tariffs regime raising prices on steel and other raw materials, not to mention items manufactured for export like automotive parts, and the fact that several GM sedan models were simply underperforming, something had to give.
Unfortunately, the plan is now to
produce more gas-guzzling SUVs, as opposed
to remaining on track with the more energy efficient direction the company was
pursuing under the Obama administration; if the age-old collusion between the
auto and oil industries seems no weaker today than it’s ever been, it’s
probably because market forces (i.e., consumer preferences) haven’t yet
punished them sufficiently, and the political will to impose a carbon tax on
their products simply doesn’t exist quite yet.
In fact, the weeks-long “Yellow Vest” protests
in France are a signal that taxing petroleum in a climate of radical wealth
inequality simply pushes working people too far. Putting food on the table will
always take precedence over long-term environmental goals—a story for another
day, but a critical conundrum that we must
solve.
For his part, Trump came into office
offering a sweetheart deal to unscrupulous car makers: huge corporate tax cuts and reduced emissions requirements. Once the tax cut was gobbled whole,
workers and the environment were bound to pay the price for years to come.
Besides, the minute GM announced the
layoffs, its stock
prices shot up, so what a nice end-of-year boost to the execs’
profit-linked bonuses! Cynicism is fully warranted, unfortunately. As often as
this has happened over the years, however, we keep forgetting that the perverse
callousness of issuing pink slips right before the end-of-year holidays is just
the corporate way. End-of-year profit statements crowd out human decency every
time.
Even so, the company’s official
statement on November 26th sounds reasonably tuned into our
cosmic times, and it certainly acknowledges the massive changes so many trend-watchers
are predicting these days:
“ ‘The actions we are taking today continue our
transformation to be highly agile, resilient and profitable, while giving us
the flexibility to invest in the future,’ said GM Chairman and CEO Mary Barra. ‘We
recognize the need to stay in front of changing market conditions and customer
preferences to position our company for long-term success.’”
That said, this post is about not
just the GM layoffs, but also about the larger context that is driving the
company’s plans. To explore both at once, we’ll examine a chart for the
announcement GM made this past November 26th against its 2009
reorganization chart. The November announcement didn’t happen in a vacuum, of
course—it’s been gestating since the company reorganized amidst a tough
recession and an auto industry bail out, and during volatile political times
that have ensued.
![]() |
Barra took over the GM helm during tough times, in 2014. |
The announcement was interestingly
timed in regards to important technological trends and geopolitical cycles that
are rapidly waning and re-launching anew in the coming 2 years. We have an economy that shows signs of slowing
down, at the same time a robotics/AI-powered “4th Industrial
Revolution” gains tremendous steam. GM won’t be the only company that needs to
switch gears and plan carefully for the road ahead.
GM’s current plans tells us that
2019 will probably be a tumultuous year for labor issues in general; between
GM’s situation, trade wars and a host of uncertainties that are giving
investors serious heartburn, the Dow looks likely to finish out the year in
very erratic, correction territory.
All of this gives less high-profile
companies license to ride GM’s wake, of course, like compact cars driving
behind an 18-wheeler. The “big guy” will give them cover for further layoffs. Do
we expect labor unions to gain strength during this period? Not likely, and their
inability to protect workers from the worst excesses of capitalism will be sorely
felt as things develop.
GM’s move reflects a more profound
transition, however: according to the Brookings
Institute:
“GM’s layoffs are not just incremental but existential, in that
sense: They are about accelerating the staffing changes mandated by the
company’s aggressive transition from analog to digital products and from
gasoline to electric power. As such, the new layoffs (and associated future
hirings) are likely an augury of much more disruption coming — in the auto
sector, for sure, but also in firms all across the economy.
Central to GM’s announcement is, in our view, what we call the “digitalization
of everything.” By that, we mean that GM’s layoffs significantly
reflect the talent and workforce strains associated with the diffusion of
digital and electronic technologies into nearly every industry, business, and
workplace in America.”
It seems that the American workforce
simply doesn’t have the requisite skills for this transition, so what are the
choices going forward? Since legal migration and work-related visas have been
severely curtailed under the Trump administration, companies will likely depend
upon American workers acquiring the needed
skills, or they will have no choice
but to automate as many jobs as possible with robots and AI-driven technologies
so they can selectively train human
workers for the remaining positions.
The labor/capital dynamics at work
will be predictable, pretty much as we’ve seen in past lay-offs and recessions
in Detroit’s auto industry. Once the impact of lay-offs across vulnerable companies
settles in, there’s always a deep pool of unemployed workers to choose from—and
these workers don’t feel free to hold out for the wages their experience says
they rightly deserve, whatever their unions may hope for. Besides, the power of
labor unions—which has always been predicated upon companies having to shut
down if workers simply walk out—may be fatally compromised as this new wave of
automation takes hold.
Again, those who can’t or don’t want
to co-exist and work with robots need not apply.
So yes, there’s a Damocles’ sword
hanging over the auto industry’s human workforce if it doesn’t gain the skills
it needs to participate in the coming “digitalization of everything.” GM says many of its soon-to-be laid off
workers will be allowed to apply for GM positions in its remaining American
plants, but the company knows only a small fraction of laid-off workers ever
actually moves to another state to take jobs that may be temporary at best.
Besides, GM hasn’t divulged how many
human laborers will be displaced by new technologies in their near- and long-term
planning; they’ve only said
that “The company is transforming its global workforce to ensure it has the
right skill sets for today and the future, while driving efficiencies through
the utilization of best in-class tools.” So no commitments.
To get a handle on what’s going on
more narrowly with GM, let’s take a look at the chart for the November 26th
announcement (read the company’s official statement here)
against the company’s current radix chart. There are several charts to choose
from for this corporation (its actual founding in 1908, its incorporation in
1916, etc.), but I’ve chosen to use its 2009 reorganization under the Obama
auto industry “bailout” because that chart reflects the current incarnation of
the company and it also captures the tumultuous times this reorganized entity
was “born” into.
Both charts in this biwheel are cast
for noon—no precise timing is available.
Biwheel
#1: (inner wheel) GM reorganized,
July 10, 2009, 12:00 p.m. (noon chart) DST, Detroit, MI; (outer wheel) General
Motors layoff announcement, November 26, 2018, 12:00 pm. (noon chart) ST,
Detroit, Michigan. Tropical Equal Houses,
True Node.
Interchart Grand Square: Announcement (ANN) Pluto/So. Node (midpoint,
Capricorn) opposes Reorganized GM (GM) Mercury-Sun-ANN No. Node (Cancer); this
axis squares ANN Uranus Rx-Eris (Aries)-GM Eris opposite ANN Venus (Libra). This
complex configuration certainly reflects what GM has to say in the official
announcement, entitled “General Motors Accelerates Transformation.” Pluto, especially in combination
with the nodal axis, speaks to developments that feel fated or that
redefine the entity in profound ways. Pluto’s opposition to GM
Sun speaks to an existential challenge, and to the need for a
fundamental transformation.
There
is also the possibility of secretive maneuvers and influence-seeking exchanges.
Will GM
Mercury-opposite ANN Pluto portend back-channel negotiations with the
Trump administration? He has planets in late Cancer that are being opposed by
transiting Pluto (chart not shown), so it’s hard to say, but we can
surmise that Trump will want to look like the auto industry’s “savior” before
election 2020, so anything goes.
The
competitive impulse and the company’s need to balance that with a futuristic
transformation is reflected in the cardinal intensity of this configuration,
too—it’s particularly interesting that GM made this announcement while Uranus
was in its retrograde “shadow period.” We can see this as a “holding”
period when plans for change are pretty well “in the hopper” and people should
be notified of what’s coming, but it’s just not time to launch.
Uranus
will continue transiting retrograde until January, 2019 when
it turns direct at 28°36’
Aries. Between then and February 16, 2019, it will retrace the steps it
retrograded between 28°36’
and 29°17’ (its Rx position on
announcement day, 11/26), so it’s likely that some “other shoe” related to all
this will drop in the news around that time. If GM’s plans proceed without too
many hitches, by the time Uranus re-enters Taurus in March,
2019 (its 1st ingress was in May 2018), most of the major plant
closures will likely be underway.
GM
uses the sterile term “unallocated” to describe plants it has decided to close—Uranus
is thought to be a “humanitarian” energy in so far as it facilitates
rebellions and revolutions, but its nature is also radically impersonal, and there is often
unfortunate fall-out and backlashes when its energy predominates. Undoubtedly
these layoffs will be no exception, even if they are framed as an essential
step towards a larger transformation. Did CEO Mary Barra think that unleashing
this announcement right before the end-of-year holidays like some kind of
corporate Grinch was a good idea? Funny how she waited until after Black Friday—wouldn’t want to kill
sales!
![]() |
A shot of GM corporate headquarters in Detroit. |
ANN
Venus (Libra) trines GM Chiron-Jupiter-Neptune (all Rx
inAquarius) and inconjoins GM Mars (Taurus); GM Mars opposes ANN Sun-Jupiter
(Sagittarius); this axis squares GM Chiron-Jupiter-Neptune. The latter
set of aspects here constitutes an out-of-sign T-square, of course—GM’s late
Taurus Mars opposes early Sagittarius ANN Sun-Jupiter and both
ends square Aquarius Jupiter-Neptune. Clearly, GM’s
announcement was timed for maximum immediate benefit (Sun conjoins Jupiter), with
Jupiter
strong in Sagittarius, ready to stimulate the company’s
growth (the Stock Market reacted accordingly that day).
The t-square
involves Chiron-Jupiter-Neptune, which, combined with ANN
Venus’s inconjunct to GM Mars (in Taurus, disposed by Venus) suggests
that the dice have been rolled in this corporate gambit, but the company may
find that its resources don’t always stretch around its aspirations, and most
importantly, it may be subject to outside forces that confuse its direction and
ultimately deliver a Chironic “wounding.”
Notice that GM’s
reorganization took place during the 2003-10 Uranus-Neptune mutual
reception from Pisces to Aquarius, during that mind-blowing first year (2009)
of the Obama administration when so much was up for grabs due to the recession.
The pressure applied here to the company’s Chiron-Jupiter-Neptune retrograde
conjunction could further delay technology (Aquarius) rollouts—indeed, that may
be what the ANN Chiron is signaling by transiting conjunct GM
Uranus (Rx, Pisces).
Will the ANN
Sun-Jupiter
conjunction shield the company from hard times going forward? This
conjunction also opposes GM Venus (widely conjunct GM Mars from Gemini), and Venus
is also quincunx GM Pluto, widely conjoined ANN Saturn in
Capricorn, so the jury is out. Massive structural transformations on
the scale GM is planning rarely happen smoothly, so it won’t be surprising if
this one has its resource and logistics problems.
The bottom line for
all of the above aspects is that GM
may want to work harder at gaining the public’s support—in Detroit, the fact
that taxpayers (and their workforce) bailed them out of bankruptcy in 2009 and
stuck with them through lean times is still a very fresh memory.
ANN
Saturn-GM Pluto Rx (Capricorn) square GM Juno (Aries). As
the one ultimately responsible for
carrying out the plans, Mary Barra is powerfully wedded to (Juno)
GM’s successful roll-out of this announced “transformation.” She has
undoubtedly met some serious challenges in the past year, as Saturn
transited over GM Pluto; in fact, a noon chart for
Dec. 24, 1961 (her birth date published on Wikipedia)
shows that her Sun-Mercury conjunction in Capricorn would have been impacted
at the same time.
She’s proven her mettle repeatedly since the company reorganized, but with Election 2020 looming on the horizon, the timing for massively disruptive transformations could be problematic. Will she be targeted in Election 2020 for short-term political gain? Quite possibly.
![]() |
Chairman/CEO Mary Barra |
She’s proven her mettle repeatedly since the company reorganized, but with Election 2020 looming on the horizon, the timing for massively disruptive transformations could be problematic. Will she be targeted in Election 2020 for short-term political gain? Quite possibly.
On
that note, let’s take a quick look at Barra’s noon chart next to these two
charts. Her “fit” for the position couldn’t be more obvious, but the challenges
going forward are pretty clear, as well.
Triwheel #1: (inner wheel) Mary Barra, December
24, 1961, 12:00 p.m. ST (noon chart, no time available), Royal Oak, Michigan;
(middle wheel) GM reorganized, July 10, 2009, 12:00 p.m. (noon chart)
DST, Detroit, MI; (outer wheel) General Motors layoff announcement, November
26, 2018, 12:00 pm. (noon chart) ST, Detroit, Michigan. Tropical Equal Houses, True Node.
The most striking thing about Barra’s
chart is the incredible array of points her chart features through the
so-called “collective sector” of late Sagittarius through Pisces: her very being
appears calibrated for doing something on
a grand scale, the bigger the organization the better. We can see her fit for leadership
in the auto industry reflected here, certainly—especially with her Jupiter
in technology-focused Aquarius and her Saturn dignified in late
Capricorn.
Reinforcing all this is her waxing Jupiter-Neptune
square from Aquarius to Scorpio—she is capable of making Machiavellian,
back-room dealings sound logical and transparent, which may be one key to her
long, steady rise within the company. Her “membership” in the 1960s Uranus-Pluto
(opposed to Chiron) generation drives her: it may have lent her the adaptive
skills and commitment needed to persist as a strong woman in the mostly “man’s
world” of engineering, not to mention auto industry leadership. Barra’s Uranus-Pluto
conjunction is quite wide (the first exact hit was in 1965), but the Uranus-Chiron
opposition is close and probably signals an “Achilles heel.”
The opportunity she realized in the reorganized
GM (she was appointed VP
of Global Human Resources in July 2009 and became CEO in January, 2014) is
reflected in her Venus-Mars conjunction (Sagittarius) sextile to GM
Chiron-Jupiter-Neptune (Aquarius). Because this is a noon chart, we won’t
speculate on her MC figuring into all this, as appropriate as that feels.

Charmed though her career path may appear, however, transits will be
a major concern for Barra going forward, and we get a glimpse of what those
will be from the ANN chart. Let’s consider some:
Transiting Saturn conjoins Transiting Pluto at
22°+ Capricorn)
in January, 2020, widely conjunct Barra’s Saturn. Try to envision how
these two planetary “heavies” will be transiting over her Capricorn points
between now and the new cycle launch in January 2020: in the process, Saturn
will do a retrograde turn between April 29th and September
18th, when it will station direct at Barra’s Mercury/Saturn (midpoint,
Capricorn). The station Rx on April 29th will restimulate ANN
Pluto, so it’s possible that Barra and GM will revisit the decisions
announced on November 26th, 2018 at that time and make some
adjustments; the pressure will certainly be on to do so between then and
September, when Saturn turns direct.
Taking Barra’s Mercury/Saturn midpoint
into consideration, it’s possible that she will feel forced to compromise her
professional judgment for the sake of press coverage, and we can expect that
she will be called to account for her decisions and even her words (another
appearance before Congress?). The more forthright she is with any such
challenges, the better.
So the new Saturn-Pluto cycle will
launch in a key sector of Barra’s chart, close on the heels of her chart’s
final dispositor Saturn, and within
orb of her Saturn/Neptune midpoint. Not to be overlooked here, of course,
is that Barra will be experiencing her 2nd
Saturn return during this period as well—a time for revisiting one’s life
path and regrouping from the perspective of an older, hopefully wiser heart and
mind. A Pluto-infused Saturn return could be particularly
intense, with a heavy focus on responsibility and perhaps even guilt. This fits, unfortunately, with
the possibility that she may fall victim to all kinds of vicious political torment
in 2020. Whether this means the end of her long, solid career with GM will
remain to be seen.
![]() |
Pressure from the White House has been intense after GM announced layoffs. |
A side note here is relevant: as we saw
in Biwheel
#1, GM’s Mercury-Sun conjunction (Cancer) was opposed by ANN
Pluto at that time, and that heavy pressure will
continue as long as Pluto remains within orb (after the Saturn-Pluto cycle
launches in January 2020). The company will
be reinvented, one way or another—in all fairness, its announced plan is
probably a far more constructive way to accomplish this than trying to play along
with Trump’s tariffs and trade wars would be. Left to those whims, not to
mention political pressure, the outcome could be far worse. Trump likes to pick winners and losers, and for
the sake of its remaining workforce, GM really needs to shore up its defenses
against this tendency.
Transiting Jupiter should lighten Barra’s (and
GM’s) path ahead to some extent. It’s important to remember that a
unique Jupiter-Saturn cycle in air sign Aquarius is only two years away (almost to the day) as I
write this. In the process of closing out the waning 2000 Taurus cycle, the
earth element will weigh heavily in Capricorn, and Barra will be feeling that
weight in the coming two years of transits. Despite Jupiter’s innate optimism
and lightness, it doesn’t function as well in Saturn-ruled Capricorn,
so when it approaches GM’s Pluto and Barra’s Sun (Capricorn)
next year about this time, we can expect a power shift of
some kind.
Barra should survive this passage (Jupiter’s not likely to
give her the boot), but some change (or at least an updated announcement) is
likely. This is reinforced by two factors: one, the new Jupiter-Saturn cycle will
launch conjunct GM No. Node (!) and two, transiting Uranus Rx will
trine GM’s Pluto and Barra’s Sun-Mercury (all Capricorn) from
Taurus at that time.
Finances could be a factor between
now and the launch of the new 2020 cycles: with Jupiter, Saturn and Pluto all
influencing Barra’s career and the shape GM will take after this transformation
shakes out, major responsibilities and debts could come due, and we have been
seeing signs of an economic downturn, if not a recession looming. No doubt the
2008-9 auto industry bailout will come back to haunt GM and Barra, by
association—even though the company recovered strongly and repaid
the government loans it received
early on, taxpayers never did recoup $10.6 billion in stock purchases. This
leaves the company vulnerable to political targeting.
And, as any Michigander knows, when
Wall Street sneezes, the auto industry catches pneumonia—will a downturn or
recession be the most supportive environment for the aggressive transformation
Barra and GM have in mind?
![]() |
What works for GM will likely clash with 2020 political agendas. |
If it seems like we’ve veered off
into a focus on GM’s transits and
lost track of Barra’s, this goes back
to how closely “wedded” she has been her entire professional life with this
corporation—she will experience the upcoming transits from both the personal and professional perspectives.
Unfortunately, her natal Juno conjoins GM Uranus Rx in Pisces, a
conjunction that was
further conjoined by ANN Chiron. This signals that her
fate is tightly tied into the company’s fate. This close overlap between Barra’s
personal and professional/collective lives will probably influence how she
processes her 2nd Saturn return: perhaps she will even
start feeling that it’s time to explore who she is apart from the company.
Uranus transits. Some of this was
mentioned earlier, but it bears repeating. In the ANN chart, Uranus
(Aries) trined Barra’s Venus-Mars (Sagittarius), catching her Sun in
the process (out-of-sign trine). This latter aspect will morph into a more
supportive, in-sign trine that includes her Sun and Mercury once Uranus
returns to Taurus in March, 2019. As positive as a trine can be, however, this particular one can
signal political/leadership changes that either work to Barra’s advantage or
don’t.
In so far as what happens in D.C.
impacts GM’s plans at all, the political climate next year is bound to be
different, but the inevitable strains between a Democratic-led House and a
Republican Senate and White House will make for volatile times. Investing in
the future (Uranus), much less making clear-minded decisions, will require
nerves of steel—perhaps the stability of Taurus will help Barra and GM stay the
course.
Neptune transits. The good news here
is that aside from the generational Neptune transiting opposition to natal Pluto
(Virgo) and its trine to natal Neptune (Scorpio) in
Barra’s chart, Neptune appears to be a fairly neutral player during the
upcoming season of transits and new cycles. This doesn’t mean it won’t wield
its special kind of influence from behind the scenes, but neither GM nor Barra
seem particularly vulnerable.
The more Barra frames everything she does in a
fact-based light, the better, although she may want to sharpen and humanize GM’s
public relations messages, along with her own. Election cycles tend to pose
difficulties for strong women—they’re easy targets on social media, etc.—so a small
dash of Neptunian charm and compassion wouldn’t hurt.
Pluto transits. We’ve already
covered Pluto in some detail, but it bears repeating that this
geopolitical heavy’s transit into conjunction with her natal Saturn
will only deepen the intensity of the 2020 Saturn-Pluto cycle
launching in that same sector of her chart. Authority, responsibility, and the
massive task of restructuring a major corporation for the coming “digitalization
of everything” will be hot issues for her (and the company).
Barra may feel herself
to be under siege, in fact, as every stakeholder in this restructuring process will want
its due, and there will never be enough good news to go around. Needless to
say, separating her personal and professional lives will be daunting, but
essential for her own effectiveness.
Navigating volatile geopolitical
times is just part of the job description for global corporations, yet the
times we’re facing now are uniquely risky and challenging. I am particularly
interested these days in teasing out the personal
dimensions of these challenges and understanding how the personal and
collective levels interact. In the case of CEO Mary Barra and the
reorganized General Motors, those two dimensions seem especially interwoven and
mutually reinforcing. She and the company will likely thrive or run aground,
together.
With other situations we see in
politics and stories in the news, however, the personal and the collective seem
to be like ships about to collide head on in a turbulent sea. This is where we
seem to be as a society with the issue of climate change, for instance: on a
collision course with the facts, for the sake of maintaining a status quo that
is crumbling before our eyes, anyway.
Change is not coming; it’s here, and it’s
the only constant we can count on. Despite my own misgivings with the labor and
economic disruptions, not to mention the huge backward step GM has taken with
regard to producing energy efficient vehicles, I will give GM and Barra credit
for attempting to work with change,
as opposed to working against it. Here’s one truism we can count on, though: companies
respond to consumer demands, so maybe we all have a role to play in how the
auto industry transforms itself.
Let’s see where they go from here!
Raye
Robertson is a practicing astrologer, writer and former educator. A graduate of
the Faculty of Astrological Studies (U.K.), Raye focuses on mundane,
collective-oriented astrology, with a particular interest in current affairs,
culture and media, the astrology of generations, and public concerns such as
education and health. Several of her articles on these topics have been
featured in The Mountain Astrologer and other publications over the years.
She is
also available to read individual charts—contact her at: robertsonraye@gmail.com.
© Raye Robertson 2018. All
rights reserved.
[1]cited in Brynjolfsson, Erik. The Second Machine Age: Work, Progress, and Prosperity in a Time of
Brilliant Technologies, W. W. Norton & Company. Kindle Edition, p. 13.