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The 36,000 Verizon workers currently on strike are fighting for the entire international working class. With mass racist unemployment the rule in the U.S., the Progressive Labor Party salutes such courage to strike! The working class will need a lot more of it to turn the coming period of crisis at home and widening imperialist wars overseas into their opposites- and make a revolution for workers’ power.
Racist, Sexist Verizon Bosses Aren’t Broke!
The racist and sexist Verizon bosses make around $1.5 billion per MONTH right off the backs of the workers – mostly Black women and many with families. Verizon has paid its top five executives over $250 million over the last several years and their cutbacks to “wireline” services profited $8.9 billion in 2014.
When their corporate attorneys aren’t hitting strikers with their Porsches like they did in Gaithesburg, Maryland on April 16, they’re outsourcing jobs, closing call centers, cutting the “wireline” workers, and hiring and super-exploiting low-wage, non-union contractors. All these cuts drag the unionized workforce down closer to the pay and benefits of the non-union wireless workforce. This will help keep Verizon “competitive,” according to the bosses.
When wireless phones first came out, the CWA and the IBEW unions both failed to unionize the new workforce that was hired, supposedly to help Verizon stay “competitive” with other non-unionized providers. Verizon bosses are using the same arguments against unionized workers. An injury to one is an injury to all: sticking together is our only winning strategy.
Black workers at Verizon, especially women, are being hit hardest – and as the Verizon workers are showing over and over, they’re fighting back the hardest!
Biggest U.S. Bosses’ Agenda: Pay For Wider Wars
Where’s the money going? Not to the working class! Right now, Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders are running for President of U.S. imperialism. Military spending is 56% of the bosses’ budget and that number isn’t going to budge as U.S. imperialism under Obama has expanded to Syria, Libya, sub-Saharan Africa, and the South China Sea. Drones are murdering mainly innocent workers in more than twelve countries. All the bosses’ servants in DC, from Sanders and Clinton to Trump, Cruz and Kasich, may disagree on taxing the rich and taxing corporations, but wider imperialist wars mean higher taxes are on the way.
These escalating war costs and the rising taxes are having ripple effects throughout the U.S. economy. Competition between bosses in every sector of the economy is intensifying, including telecommunications. Verizon bosses know it- that’s why they’re attacking unionized workers now, to build a war chest of profits to take on AT&T, Sprint and other rivals in years to come as the costs of U.S. imperialism continue to rise.
No Lasting Victories for Workers Under Capitalism
As long as the capitalists hold state power, they will use their courts, politicians, laws and police to change the rules to ensure their drive for maximum profit. They will launch more wars against their strengthening Russian and Chinese imperialist rivals overseas.
Verizon workers are showing the working class the way forward. They’re striking against capitalist bloodsuckers, defending gains won over fifty years of bargaining and striking. And they’re fighting back for their non-union sisters and brothers.
MARCH ON MAY DAY!
We need a system where the profit motive that drives the bosses to attack workers and launch wars is abolished. Communism means smashing capitalism and racism, sexism and imperialism. Under communism, workers run society. Verizon workers already know they don’t need the bosses to run operations! A strike can be a step toward communist revolution, and the boldness of the Verizon workers is the kind of boldness our class needs to take our struggle all the way. PLP invites Verizon workers to march on May Day with us, the only holiday for the international working class. FIGHT BACK!
