This article continues our account of PLP’s 50-year history. The Party’s concentration among industrial workers, a basic principle in building a communist movement, has helped PLP grow to our current presence in 27 countries on five continents.

In 1970, more than 400,000 workers struck General Motors (then the biggest employer in the U.S.) for 67 days to win a big raise and the 30-and-out retirement pension plan.
Three years later, with watershed contract negotiations looming between the United Auto Workers (UAW) and the Big Three automakers (GM, Ford, and Chrysler), thousands of young, conscious, militant Black workers were an emerging force. The auto bosses had hired about 10,000 Black workers as a direct result of the 1967 Black-led rebellions in Detroit and Newark against racist police brutality and for jobs. Many were Vietnam veterans who had rebelled in 1967 and again in 1968 after the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. The Dodge Revolutionary Union Movement (DRUM) and the PLP-led Workers Action Movement (WAM) were gaining strength and credibility by challenging the racism of the UAW leadership and the auto bosses.
PLP was organizing in factories in New Jersey, Detroit, Cleveland and California. In one New Jersey Ford plant, the Party and a Black caucus staged a week-long wildcat strike to stop Ford from using massive overtime to build a stockpile and undermine a possible strike. In the Cleveland Ford plant, we established the first six-hour day committee. Had it been enacted, a six-hour day would have created thousands of new jobs by adding an extra shift.
In Detroit, at Chrysler’s Mack Avenue stamping plant, we were waging an anti-racist health and safety struggle, demanding fans where temperatures routinely soared above 100 degrees. (For workers, the bosses couldn’t find any fans. But when they later replaced workers with robots, they found money for air conditioning.) It was during this struggle, in August 1973, that a PLP member was fired.
Meanwhile, at Huber Foundry, Chrysler workers walked out over a racist incident involving a supervisor. At Jefferson Assembly, a racist foreman called a Black worker the n-word. The worker climbed to the top of the plant and shut off the power. The other workers carried him out on their shoulders and the foreman was fired.
Historic Occupation
At Mack Avenue, our fired member snuck back into the plant and on the line. When Chrysler security tried to remove him, they were beaten back by 350 workers who seized the factory. It was the first plant occupation in the U.S. in more than three decades, since the communist-led Great Flint Sit-Down Strike established the UAW in 1937.
As the Mack Avenue workers secured the plant, the PLP organized support from around the city and surrounding community. Picket lines ringed the plant while workers passed bags of groceries to those inside.  The following day, with the Chrysler security guards routed, the bosses called on the cops—the capitalists’ shock troops in class struggle—to evict the strikers. But the 350 workers surged down to the ground floor and met the police with their fists in the air, chanting, “FIGHT BACK!  FIGHT BACK!” The cops retreated, no doubt under orders from Chrysler not to destroy the factory.
A detachment of PLP workers and supporters went to UAW Local 212 offices to demand union backing for the strike. When the local president refused, a scuffle erupted. By the time it was over, his glass desk was in little pieces and many union hacks were injured. Then the UAW revealed its pro-boss colors by organizing a thousand thugs from four states to physically retake the plant for Chrysler. Some were known Klansmen; others were newly elected or appointed Black officials. The strikers’ number had dwindled to about 50, too few to repel the UAW hacks and their baseball bats. The fired white comrade and a Black worker who gave crucial leadership to the action were arrested, both charged with felonious assault.
Workers Back PLP
PLP turned to workers and students to wage a political defense in the factories, at Wayne State University, and in unemployment and welfare offices. Many supporters attended the subsequent trial, and many more gave money. The Black worker who was arrested, a Vietnam vet, joined the Party the day he was called to testify. The charges were dropped when the prosecutor was unable to produce a single Chrysler production worker to testify. Not one.
When the plant reopened, UAW officials walked up and down the line with Chrysler bosses, fingering workers who had participated. About 35 were fired on the spot. Most eventually won their jobs back, but our comrades were blackballed from the industry. The UAW and the auto bosses then tried to purge PLP from the auto industry and the union.
From that point on, the UAW functioned as an overt arm of the auto bosses. Six years after the Mack Avenue action, the union entered an agreement with President Jimmy Carter and Chrysler boss Lee Iacocca to bail out the company, closing many plants and wiping out thousands of jobs. The UAW played a similar anti-worker role in 2008, when it accepted Obama’s “restructuring” of the industry after the 2007 economic crisis, which closed dozens of more plants and cut starting pay in half.
PLP’s leadership and the militancy displayed by auto workers — and especially Black workers — reinforced the Party’s concept that the industrial working class can become the heart of a communist revolution.

**

Bosses Gear Up for Next Attack on Auto Workers

2015 is a contract year in auto. This will be the first major negotiations since the contract negotiated after the Obama-UAW-Wall St. bailout of the industry in 2009. That bailout cut starting wages in half, eliminated pensions for new hires and created a second tier of health care.
Ford did not declare bankruptcy in 2009, and will likely be the target company this year. Ford has gone from 36,000 workers in 2011 to 54,000 today, surpassing GM. 17,000 Ford workers are second tier. Huge profits allowed Ford to invest over $8 billion in plant improvements since 2011, to create even higher productivity from a growing low-wage workforce. And this doesn’t include the parts-supplier plants, a third and fourth tier, at 70 percent of assembly plant wages.
The Chicago Ford Assembly plant has over 2300 workers, an increase of 60 percent since the 2009 economic collapse. Two-thirds of these workers are at entry level wages, making under $15 an hour. with a cap of $19 an hour. First-tier workers make about $28 an hour. Work is coming back to U.S. Ford factories due to high productivity and cheap wages in the US.
Many of the delegates at the Special Bargaining Convention in Detroit last March were angry, and the loudest cheers came at any mention of a strike. Senior workers haven’t had a wage increase in almost 10 years, and young workers are tired of making half-pay. One young worker said, “90 percent of the workers in my plant are second-tier…We are exposed to dangerous chemicals [which she rattled off] and health and safety violations. We all need equal pay and healthcare.”
Another delegate said, “My local marched for Mike Brown in Ferguson and Eric Garner in New York City. The fight against racism on and off the job must be at the heart of who we are.” Delegates cheered as earlier that morning, the local news released video tape of Floyd Dent, a Black Ford worker with 37 years seniority, being beaten by racist Inkster police (a Ferguson-style suburb of Detroit).
We work in the unions to fight for the political leadership of the workers, to break them away from the dead-end treadmill of reformism and the Democratic Party. We have been at it for a long time in the UAW, and even though progress is slow, the workers continue to encourage us.

The United States military is the largest and deadliest in the world, with over 750 military bases in 153 countries and fleets of warships, drones and satellites. Its job is to protect the global investments of the dominant finance capital wing of U.S. imperialism: Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase, ExxonMobil. The U.S. president is commander-in-chief of the U.S. military; for the ruling class, the 2016 elections matter. The capitalists hope to find a winning candidate who can mislead and pacify millions of U.S. workers, as Barack Obama did in 2008 and 2012 to accept and fight for their imperialist wars. They especially need the support of Black, Latin and immigrant youth as soldiers in the global conflicts to come, the very same people their cops gun down in the streets.
For the working class, it will make no difference whether the next president is a Democrat or a Republican. No matter which party is in power, racist cops will terrorize Black and immigrant workers and youth. The capitalist court system will imprison them by the million. Women will suffer sexist degradation; thousands of migrant workers will die seeking a better life. Regardless of who wins the big electoral prize, the ruling class will pursue broader imperialist wars and slaughter millions of our working-class sisters and brothers worldwide.
We don’t need the bosses or their rotten capitalist version of democracy. PLP fights for communist revolution to put the working class in power. We say: Don’t vote, distribute CHALLENGE! Don’t vote, fight back against racist police terror and imperialist wars! Don’t vote, revolt and fight for communism!
Elections Settle Bosses’ Fights
The capitalists need presidential elections to sell the myth that voting can force the profit system to address workers’ needs. But that isn’t the only reason. The presidency holds enormous power. Different factions of U.S. bosses slug it out in presidential campaigns — spending billions of dollars along the way — to resolve internal disagreements over how best to handle rival imperialists like China and Russia. Having invested trillions in Iraq and Afghanistan, the finance capital wing wants to use U.S. military power more aggressively to protect ExxonMobil’s profitable oil-pumping. Obama represents this wing. Most current Democratic and Republican presidential candidates do as well.
In general, the U.S. bosses want workers — and especially Black and immigrant youth — to believe the Democrats are on their side. For the 2016 presidential election, their only credible candidate at present is Hillary Clinton, the wife of former president Bill Clinton. Throughout the 1990s her husband instigated a children’s genocide by blocking food and medicine from entering Iraq. By the time his successor, George W. Bush, was finished, U.S. imperialism had killed 500,000 Iraqi children. Meanwhile, Hillary became a U.S. senator who voted for the 2003 Iraq genocide. Obama later appointed her as his pro-war secretary of state, where she backed the slaughters in Libya in 2011. Like her former boss, Hillary Clinton is no friend of the working class!
Slapping Down Adelson, Warning Rubio
On the Republican side, Jeb Bush, former President’s George W. Bush’s brother, is competing with the likes of Marco Rubio, Rand Paul, Ted Cruz and Scott Walker. Despite their minor disagreements, all of them reflect the growing domination of the main finance capital faction. Rubio’s case is the clearest. As recently as last month, the Republicans’ biggest single donor, billionaire casino mogul Sheldon Adelson, made Rubio a front-runner for the nomination and claimed to have the candidate in his pocket. But Adelson has allied with capitalist bosses in China, where his mega-casino profits depend on the favor of government officials. In response, U.S. finance capitalists used Obama to punish Adelson earlier this month:

Details of [Adelson’s] Macau operation have raised red flags in both the U.S. Justice Department and federal financial regulators. If the allegations are proven to be true, Adelson could face severe penalties affecting his empire, namely the suspension of his gambling license, drastically hindering his revenue stream (Jerusalem Post, 5/9/15).

Within days of this discipline, Marco Rubio reversed his positions on military spending. On May 13, he marched into the New York mansion housing the Council on Foreign Relations, the think tank funded directly by ExxonMobil and JPMorgan Chase. Telling these arch-imperialists what they wanted to hear, Rubio said, “Russia, China, Iran, or any other nation that attempts to block global commerce will know to expect a response from my administration.” He also vowed:

[M]y first priority will be to adequately fund our military. ….to modernize them... on the cutting edge in every arena before us — land, sea and air, but also cyberspace and outer space: the battlefields of the 21st century. ...We can ensure that we never send our troops into a fair fight; but rather always equip them with the upper hand.

Rubio also turned his back on the billionaire Koch brothers, the chief domestic rivals of the finance capital wing. Since the Kochs pump and refine their oil within the U.S., they are less eager to commit U.S. resources to the next oil war in the Middle East. The Koch-funded think tank, The Cato Foundation, charged that Rubio’s manifesto “minimizes the costs and risks of our current foreign policies, and oversells the benefits” (Cato Foundation website, 5/15/15).
Lining Up Behind Finance Capital
Kentucky Senator Rand Paul was quicker than Rubio to reassure the finance capitalists of his allegiance:

Just weeks before announcing his 2016 presidential bid...Rand Paul is completing an about-face on a longstanding pledge to curb the growth in defense spending. In an olive branch [offer of reconciliation] to defense hawks hell-bent on curtailing his White House ambitions, the libertarian Senator introduced a budget amendment late Wednesday calling for a nearly $190 billion infusion to the defense budget…. (Time, 3/26/15).

One day later, Ted Cruz followed Paul:

I supported...increasing defense spending because the very first priority of the federal government must be protecting our vital national security (National Review, 3/27/15).

Scott Walker, the union-busting governor of Wisconsin, has also fallen in line, “publicly supporting an end to defense cuts under sequestration” (The Hill, 5/11/15).
The Republicans’ problem is that most of their leading candidates come from states with viciously racist anti-immigrant laws. If elected president, one of these politicians will have to convince terrorized immigrant workers to help defend U.S. imperialism.
Don’t Vote, Organize with PLP
The U.S. bosses have killed millions of workers across the globe. Marching into the voting booths will never stop the capitalists’ next mass murder. The fightback in Ferguson and Baltimore showed the way. Under liberal Democrat Obama, the international working class saw only more war and racist terror. All electoral parties represent capitalism. Only Progressive Labor Party struggles for the needs of the working class. PLP calls on workers everywhere to choose communist revolution. We cannot vote on revolution; we must fight for it. Join us!

PAKISTAN, May 1 — “Workers of the world, unite!” was a slogan chanted with energy, enthusiasm, excitement and confidence all over Pakistan on May Day. The working class in Pakistan is still facing the same problems as the working class did in 1848. On this year’s May Day, comrades, friends and sympathizers of the international revolutionary communist Progressive Labor Party were very active bringing the working class into the streets all over Pakistan!
Nationwide, huge rallies, protest demonstrations and seminars were organized under different trade unions, student organizations, employees and women’s organizations which were attended by hundreds of thousands of workers all over Pakistan. Workers were demanding minimum wage increases to 40,000 rupees ($392 per month from the current $197), empowerment of labor courts, social security benefits to informal sector workers, an end to forced labor, the contractual system and privatization. Workers also demanded an end to poor living and working conditions, and mass unemployment.
PLP in Pakistan Marches and Fights!
At two large rallies of workers and students in different places, PLP women comrades explained that only five percent of all workers are organized under trade unions in Pakistan, but only one percent of women are. They emphasized that any worker’s struggle cannot achieve success without the participation and leadership of women. Comrades also asked their coworkers in their trade unions to rise above their personal interests and help the working class to unite into a single movement for equality and justice. CHALLENGE was distributed to the workers and students in the audience.
In a rally, a PLP member explained to the crowd that the government is planning to privatize big industries like Pakistan Steel and Pakistan International Airlines (PIA). But meanwhile the phony leadership of PIA’s union is organizing a strike just so they can win themselves free plane tickets! He explained that workers need PLP, a true working-class and revolutionary party to fight not only against privatization, but all capitalist exploitation. He expressed great concern over the economic and social sufferings of the working class, which enables the rich to become richer and the poor to be poorer. The bosses here have stashed $200 billion into Swiss banks. Meanwhile, the U.S. imperialists are pushing the Pakistani bosses into the clutches of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank.
A comrade addressing another major trade union said that the children of workers had no access to education, but even if they did manage to get an education, they cannot get jobs because of blatant corruption and the preference given to rich people. He explained that without communist revolution under the leadership from the international working class, our children will also become exploited workers. Therefore we must strive to eliminate bosses and establish a classless society.
Hundreds of poor brick-kiln workers — a sector PLP has been organizing in the suburbs — also held a rally on May Day. A friend of PLP complained of being paid only 400 rupees ($3.90) per 1,000 bricks, against the government stipulated minimum of 742 rupees ($7.29) per 1,000 bricks. A woman brick-kiln worker and friend of PLP explained that sexual harassment is rampant, and owners of kilns threatened them with torture and death when they expressed concerns at the condition of the bonded laborers employed in brick-kilns. Another brick-kiln worker complained that the bosses had stopped them from traveling to the city for the May Day rallies.
Women healthcare workers also participated in citywide May Day rallies. Their union representatives blasted their industry’s lack of regulation of existing laws. Health care workers are paid far below the minimum wage of 12,000 rupees ($117.82), despite orders from the Supreme Court. They also condemned the bosses for not supporting the families of women health workers who were killed by terrorists during the polio campaign in the regions of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Karachi.
Comrades and friends of PLP in industial unions demanded that the government immediately honor existing labor laws, restore labor inspection in all the industrial units, provide all workers the right to organize trade unions, and increase wages according to increasing inflation. They called on the workers to organize and build a fighting Progressive Labor Party on their jobs, and that only joining the fight for communist revolution can ultimately end the nightmare these workers suffer in Pakistan.
Only Security Is Communist Revolution
A PL’er in another area recalled the sacrifices of Chicago workers in 1886, which led to the first May Day in 1890, and said that the working class in Pakistan is also facing similar exploitation. He called on forging unity among workers to force the ruling class to fulfill their demands. He criticized the government for imposing a ban on trade unions in 98 per cent of private sector factories, where the workers are being forced to work for 12 hours on just 4,000 to 6,000 Pakistani rupees ($39 to $59 monthly). He said that the workers also lack social security, medical facilities, free education. Labor laws were openly violated with no check by the authorities. The only true social security for workers in Peshawar is communist revolution!
many areas also organized separate May Day functions, with PLP members involved in each. Workers demanded a mechanism to save the precious lives of workers at workplaces, provide social security to all workers, stop privatization and to smash the sexist harassment of women workers.
A Party comrade in a very remote and relatively backward city of Pakistan succeeded in bringing cart-drivers and rickshaw drivers onto the roads together with only red flags, and no other flag or banner! Another comrade who is organizing among taxi drivers convinced his friends and coworkers to raise red flags over their taxis on May Day as well.
Comrades and friends of PLP in another region who are landless agricultural workers report that they are organizing our Party among masses of landless farm workers in that region to unite against big feudal lords and to get rid of their barbaric actions and exploitation.We explained that without an international revolutionary communist struggle, we cannot truly get rid of exploitation and poverty! We will fight for the lands controlled by the big landlords. On May Day the landless workers demanded the government implement labor laws to protect farm workers, and erect decent housing for poor workers in Pakistan.

For the first time in two cities, young PLP comrades working in a student federation brought workers affiliated with different trade unions and students’ federations under one red flag to celebrate May Day. It was great to see their chanting anti-nationalist and revolutionary slogans like, “One world, one fight, workers of the world unite!” In their May Day speeches, comrades explained before the gathering of poor workers that nationalism is a tool of bosses to divide one working class into different nationalities, ethnicities, sects and races so that workers cannot fight a united struggle against exploitation, poverty, illiteracy and injustices. They concluded that we must unite under one red flag, of the Progressive Labor Party, for an international communist revolution to establish a classless society.
Our Party in Pakistan marches on!

CHICAGO

Chicago, April 25 — “After all this time of being around and not seeing things getting better, I finally understand the need for a party to end capitalism,” said a long-time supporter of PLP here who has now joined the Party at this year’s May Day celebration. The decision for her to join was a reflection of years of friendship, exposing her to class struggle, Party culture, and a class analysis of the successes and failures of our work in mass organizations. She, and another new comrade who joined after the dinner, represent rays of light climbing out of  the  capitalist oppression our class is in now.
May Day, the International Workers’ Holiday, has its’ roots in Chicago and is the observance of the Haymarket Massacre of May 4, 1886.  Workers on a citywide strike marched in protest against police attacks and for the right to an eight-hour workday.  After a police agent threw a bomb from the crowd, the cops attacked and started a full-scale riot. In the end, seven labor leaders were tried and convicted of conspiracy, resulting in the public hanging of four comrades on November 11, 1887.  May 1 was chosen as the international day of remembrance for those killed in the massacre.
The theme for this year’s dinner was “Celebrating 50 Years of Class Struggle.” With comrades we hadn’t seen for a while, new members, and our base, we enjoyed delicious food and heard reports of our local work in the city and surrounding areas, national activities, and a report from comrades involved in international struggles. There were performances of spoken word and poems by high school and college members, and a rousing call to action for the Summer Project and the PLP Convention. We took time to give a fond send-off to a very dedicated comrade who was moving away after decades in the fight for communism in the area.
The highlight was the report from our friends from Ferguson and St. Louis, Missouri, on the status of their work and the impact of PLP’s support. The Party took up a collection for the group, as they announced they were making their way to Baltimore to support the struggles there against the murderous police and a racist system of injustice.  Mike Brown (Ferguson), Rekia Boyd (Chicago), and Freddie Gray (Baltimore) are just three of the thousands of people slaughtered by a capitalist system that sacrifices our class for their profits.  In every city, we see the carnage left behind by killer cops and fascist politicians in their efforts to terrorize and exploit working class people, and super-exploit Black, Latin, Asian, and migrant workers.
Criticism of our dinner included the modest attendance. Also, we agreed to re-commit ourselves to expand our distribution networks , and write for, CHALLENGE, the only newspaper for the international working class.  We will continue to struggle with each other to deepen our commitment .
As one of our new comrades expressed, the need for a mass Party to end the suffering of working-class people is ever-growing. During May Day, we celebrate the struggles we have come through and the resolve to continue fighting in this dark night of imperialist oppression. We must work harder to turn the quality of people we win to our fight into the quantity of workers needed to win the war against capitalism.  Power, power, power to the Workers!

MEXICO

Mexico City, May 1 — Today, members and friends of the Progressive Labor Party, marched with flags and banners while we chanted communist slogans. Our group represented a beacon in the midst of the dark night of capitalism in crisis and on the brink of wider imperialist wars. Amidst the passivity and opportunism that the reformist, electoral, and phony “communist” organizations pushed amongst the working class, our slogans calling workers to fight for communism and the dictatorship of the proletariat had an impact on thousands of workers. Workers in the march listened carefully to our communist slogans and chants, and many took pictures of our banners and of the children who marched with us carrying red flags.    
We distributed more than 6,000 flyers to groups of teachers, electricians, miners, telephone workers, students and other groups that participated in the International Workers’ Day celebration. On the eve of the elections on June 7, our principal slogan is to reject the electoral process and denounce the bosses’ democracy as a bosses’ dictatorship.
Before the march, we organized three dinners with our friends, where we talked about rejecting the electoral farce and imperialist wars. We discussed the importance of committing our lives to organizing a communist, revolutionary party: PLP.

LOS ANGELES

Los Angeles, May 2 — Today PLP marched through the neighborhood where we had begun organizing against the racist murders of Ezell Ford and Omar Abrego by the LAPD.  The day before, we participated in the reformist march to greet marchers with our communist politics.
Today’s march is a communist revolutionary march for May Day. One new member described it as “small but spirited.”  Workers supported from the sidewalks and cars beeped their horns in support, and for the most part, we were able to march in the street without any interference from the police. 
Afterwards, we met at a nearby park recreational center for our dinner.  We kicked it off by singing “Bella Ciao” which was followed by inspiring speeches from four new members who spoke about why they joined the Party and called on others to join.  Another young leader talked about the history of PLP’s first 50 years.
As we reflected on the year’s activities, we realized the Party here has the great potential to be a mighty force against racism and sexism. PLP participated in the upswing in the fightback surrounding the racist murders of Michael Brown in Ferguson and Ezell Ford here in Los Angeles.
We organized a BBQ prior to May Day. A family member of Ezell Ford attended, among others. We are also witnessing growth in our mass activities, including a new PL member from a local church.
 Looking forward, many in the collective recognize that we must respond to these attacks swiftly and mobilize our friends in the process. We should also see May Day as an opportunity to re-dedicate ourselves to winning the working class to our politics. Our Party is moving forward!  Happy May Day, comrades!