NEW YORK CITY, December 26 — “How can you have people with 35 years on the job get fired, while they hire somebody off the streets? It’s not fair, it’s not right.” That’s what a woman school bus driver with 26 years on the job had to say as she and more than 100 of her co-workers picketed outside their union hall, demanding the resignation of their union president. As Mayor de Blasio starts negotiating contracts for 300,000 city workers, today’s rally is an opening shot in what can be a major antiracist struggle against this capitalist state.
The school bus drivers and matrons are members of Amalgamated Transit Union (ATU) Local 1811. In January 2013, they led a month-long strike — the first school bus strike since the three-month 1979 wildcat — against racist billionaire Mayor Bloomberg and the bus company contractors who wanted to eliminate any seniority or job security by doing away with the Employee Protection Provision (EPP) in their contract. The EPP states that when a bus company won the bid to a particular route, the workers who had been driving that route would keep their jobs. The clause had been won by the workers during the 1979 strike. Bloomberg decided to accept bids on certain school bus routes without the EPP and the workers flexed their class power by responding with a strike.
During the five weeks of mass pickets, rallies and marches in the frigid winter, PLP organized workers and students to join the strikers. Hundreds of CHALLENGEs were circulated. Rather than have all the more than 300,000 city workers who also had no contract shut the city down with a general strike, the racist ATU leadership and the Democrats pulled the rug out from under the mostly immigrant strikers. All five Democratic mayoral candidates signed a letter telling workers to return to work without a contract, and that after becoming mayor, they would “revisit the EPP.” This exposes whom politicians and union leaders actually serve: the bosses. The ATU leadership’s class position — like all unions — support capitalist profits against workers’ need.
The strike ended and dozens of workers found they had no jobs to return to. Many were fired and replaced; some bus companies shut down and later reopened with new names and new lower paid workers. On December 17, parents and bus drivers protested the shutdown of the Atlantic Express, the fifth largest school bus operator in the U.S. and Canada. Strikebreakers who had crossed the picket lines kept their jobs. And the ATU leadership did nothing. The Democratic candidates, including de Blasio, did nothing. It was a brutal racist attack on mostly black and Latino and immigrant workers and the families they serve.
While life has gotten much harder for the remaining and former drivers and matrons, PLP is fighting alongside and strengthening our ties. A delegation of strikers attended PLP’s May Day celebration last spring, and friends were active in today’s picket at ATU headquarters and in the rally protesting the closing of Atlantic Express. The school bus drivers and matrons have let us know that they are ready to fight. We will challenge the politicians and union leaders for the political leadership of a growing number of transport workers as we continue to struggle alongside our friends to win them to communism.

SEATTLE, January 3 — Today, 30,000 Boeing workers, members of the International Association of Machinists (IAM) Lodge 751, voted to give away pensions for new hires and to let Boeing freeze their own pension plans in 2016. The contract, not due to expire until 2016, will now be extended to 2024.
This is a major step in the growth of fascism, where the bosses rule through force and terror. Boeing used politicians of both parties and the union leaders to strip away 70 years of collective bargaining and economic gains. They do this partly because they can, but mostly to meet growing challenges from competing international imperialist powers.
Historically, these challenges have always been resolved through war. By 2024, starting pay for the bottom three pay grades will be at the state minimum wage, currently $9.19/hr, half of the current starting wage. Overall, wage increases will be four percent over eight years. Also, over the life of the contract, monthly health care premiums will increase by $3,000/year. And Boeing reserves the right to unilaterally reduce health care benefits to avoid Obamacare’s so-called “Cadillac tax” on top-shelf health coverage, fought for by auto, steel and aerospace workers.
Boeing workers voted down a similar contract by a 2-1 margin last November. These fascist cutbacks follow similar attacks in auto and steel, when those industries were losing billions to their international competitors. Many were either bankrupt or on the brink. Not so with Boeing, the world’s largest commercial airline manufacturer and the second biggest military contractor. In 2013, the company enjoyed record profits, with over $400 billion in back orders.
CEO Jim McNerney, Obama’s choice to chair the President’s Export Council, received $27.5 million in total compensation, up 20 percent. (McNerney is a former top executive of 3M and General Electric, and serves on the board of directors for Proctor and Gamble and IBM. He is a trustee of Northwestern University.) In November, Washington State politicians handed Boeing $8.7 billion in tax breaks, the largest package any state has ever given a single corporation.
Union Betrayals
Still, Boeing demanded draconian concessions and threatened to move production of the 777X jet liner to a non-union factory in South Carolina, along with thousands of jobs (and $25 million/year in union dues). IAM President Buffenbarger went to bat for the company and scheduled another vote. How else could he hold onto his $300,000-plus salary, or the nine other IAM International reps who were paid more than $265,000, or the $1 million a year needed to maintain the union’s Lear jet?
The contract passed by about 600 votes, 51-49 percent.
The turnout was much lower than in November because the IAM leadership scheduled the vote while many members were away on holiday vacations. To grease the skids, Boeing offered workers a $15,000 signing bonus.
Since the financial crash of 2008, unions have given up pensions for new hires in the auto industry, General Electric, Verizon, Honeywell and now Boeing. Jim Levitt, a 35-year veteran machinist at Boeing, described the “grim mood” of the workers to Labor Notes. “I’m astonished there wasn’t an explosion. Almost everyone just put up with it…Very few signs, no chanting, no nothing…Less than 100 people were in the room for the vote-count announcement, in stark contrast to other times we’ve voted on a contract. The few hardy souls who came to the main Seattle hall of Machinists (IAM) District Lodge 751 seemed stunned when the results were read. Only one or two shouted anything, and within a minute the room was empty. It all ended with barely a whimper.”
The loss of pensions at Boeing is another painful reminder that no victory is guaranteed, no security is possible as long as the bosses hold power. We don’t need better politicians or new union leaders. We need to take power from the bosses and build a communist world that meets the needs of the workers. We need to build a mass revolutionary PLP that can lead Boeing workers and the whole working class in an armed insurrection. This is no pipe dream. For many years, Boeing workers have read and distributed CHALLENGE and supported our movement. And many more will again.

CAMBODIA, January 15 — Garment workers here have shut down more than 500 factories. On Friday, January 3, hundreds of workers blocked a road leading out of the capital city of Phnom Penh, burnt tires and refused to back down from the police. They are demanding doubling of the minimum wage to $160 a month.
More than half a million garment workers, mostly young women, are on strike here, where international retailers have flocked in search of cheaply produced clothing. Cambodian bosses export more than $5 billion of apparel a year, from which the workers receive a tiny fraction. The Cambodian minimum wage is only $80 a month, and working conditions are abysmal.
The International Labor Organization recently reported that garment factories routinely violate health and safety regulations, making the workplaces potential death traps. As one woman worker said: “The factories don’t care about us.They pay us so little, work us so hard and throw us away when we cannot work for a moment.”
Class struggle in China raised wages to the point where global retailers like Wal-Mart, Target, Gap, Nike and Carrefour in France now look to Cambodia to produce the clothing and shoes they sell. But wherever capitalism goes, class struggle — including strikes and militant demonstrations  —  follows in its wake. The number of strikes in Cambodia increased nearly 170 percent between 2010 and 2012, and garment workers have led scores of strikes this year.
Like capitalist governments everywhere, the Cambodian government of PM Hun Sen is completely on the side of the manufacturers and their international buyers. It is refusing to raise the minimum wage beyond $100 a month, which barely covers the cost of food and the rent for wooden shanties without running water or electricity, leaving nothing extra for emergencies (such as sickness) or enjoyment. The government has sent police with AK-47 rifles to brutally attack the demonstrators, killing four and wounding others.
There is currently a sharp political struggle in Cambodia between the Cambodian People’s Party (the governing party of Hun Sen, which should be called the “Rich People’s Party”) and the opposition National Rescue Party, led by Sam Rainsy. The latter party has led demonstrations of tens of thousands demanding that Hun Sen resign as Prime Minister and call new elections. The opposition is opportunistically using the mass uprising of garment workers to attract more people to its rallies by promising to raise wages, lower gasoline prices and provide free health care for the poor. However, as soon as it gets into power, the National Rescue Party will be taking orders from Cambodia’s wealthy class and the global companies and banks that do business with it. Its leader, Sam Rainsy worked for years as a French investment banker and today promises a “clean government” that will work on behalf of international investors, in contrast to the corruption-ridden government of Hun Sen.
The workers of Cambodia, like the workers of Bangladesh and Haiti, have discovered that their interests and the interests of their employers are diametrically opposed. Some of these exploited workers — like millions of workers before them — have undoubtedly begun to think about creating a society run by and for workers, without owners or government officials using force to suppress their just struggles.

Port-au-Prince, December 28 — The call to students and militants came over our emails very early Wednesday morning, December 11:

Get cracking! This morning at 7 am, the workers are hitting the streets to demand a minimum wage of 500 gourdes [$11.30 per day]. Every student activist is expected outside the industrial park. We did it in 2009 [last big national struggle for the minimum wage], we can do it in 2013. Pass on the message!

It was the second day of workers’ demonstrations in Port-au-Prince for a minimum day’s wage of 500 gourdes ($11.30), a third of what a family of three needs for a subsistence living. The High Commission for Wages (CSS) had just set it at 225 gourdes ($5), an increase of 25 gourds, which is effectively wiped out by the current 10 percent inflation rate. Hundreds of demonstrators, mainly young women, assembled in front of the National Society of Industrial Parks (SONAPI) — the capital city’s industrial zone — to march to the Hotel Royal Oasis in Pétionville. In that luxury hotel in a rich area, some big shots and members of CSS were conducting a meeting (Alterpresse, 12/11/2013). “500 gourdes! You guys don’t want it; but we want it, we want it!” they chanted outside the hotel. This wage would, according to the marchers, “allow us to deal better with the rising cost of living.”
A speaker condemned the fact that “the bosses have refused to raise wages while increasing the work-rate and working hours in the factories.” The workers, women and men, denounced both their work-day of more than 10 hours and their so-called representatives on the CSS who had failed to defend them. They sought the support of Parliament in their struggle against the betrayal of the CSS, which is on the bosses’ side. They demanded a wage more adequate to their needs. They showed real unity in the struggle. The marchers were prevented from demonstrating in front of the president’s private residence by the U.S.-trained police.
 The struggle for wages under capitalism is a struggle to survive. Are workers here surviving under capitalism? Each day they face worsening problems: while the cost of living rises, they only earn a pittance. They lack access to food, health care, housing, education — everything! Two hundred twenty five gourdes a day is less than half the price of a main dish in a restaurant. How can workers send their children to school when their day’s wage cannot feed even a single person? Most workers in Haiti live in horrible areas with no electricity, no security. In fact, according to the NY Times (1/12/14), over 170,000 people are still living in tents four years after a devastating earthquake. Every day they travel miles on foot to get to the hell that is their workplace. They have no right to any form of welfare assistance.
Meanwhile, the bosses grow fat on their labor: the worldwide apparel and textile industry had 2011 revenues around $3 trillion (reportlinker.com), so you can imagine the profits from wages as low as these in Haiti or those in Bangladesh. It may be a “mature” industry where the profit rate is declining, but the misery of SONAPI workers still creates enormous profits for imperialist firms like GAP (2012 revenues of $15.7 billion). The average monthly spending on clothes by residents in glittering Manhattan is $362 (treehugger.com), three times the wage for making clothes in dusty Port-au-Prince.
This spontaneous struggle by garment workers shows the necessity of workers’ unity and organization, even as it also reveals the limit of forms of worker organization where the leaders are sometimes more on the bosses’ side rather than workers’. It raises several worrying questions.
Politicians, especially certain parliamentary deputies, benefit from and want to continue profiting from these mass mobilizations. In 2009, the fight for the minimum wage made one deputy, Steven Benôit, so popular it pushed him into a Senate seat and might even have carried him into the Presidency. And yet the workers and their supporters who were the main participants in the movement gained nothing from it. Such struggles without a communist party to give them direction are at the mercy of opportunists. They benefit bourgeois politicians looking for political and economic power.
The working class, in Haiti, Bangladesh, or Cambodia, becomes a force to be reckoned with when it gains communist political consciousness. The workers of Haiti — of the whole world — must unite under the leadership of the communist PLP to finish with the dictatorship of the bosses in all the stinking garment sweatshops of the tropical South and around the world.