ISRAEL, November 2 — Arab and Jewish women day-care workers are showing multi-racial unity by battling against their extreme sexist exploitation. While some are fighting only for a wage increase, others are also demanding direct employment with full wages and benefits, as well as for an end to their demeaning working conditions.

Day-care workers are employed through a kind of a scam. They’re considered “freelancers” and thus ineligible for a minimum wage and legal benefits. But the bosses treat them as employees. While they earn about $1,500-$2,000 a month and work far more than 50 hours a week, they’re forced to pay operational costs out of their own pockets, so their net wage is usually below $1,000. Their bosses constantly bombard them with increasingly irrational and expensive demands disguised as “safety regulations” but actually amount to wage-cuts.

Last July, more than 700 day-care workers from throughout the country rallied in front of the ministry of employment, commerce and industry in Jerusalem, fueling their struggle with great enthusiasm and energy. (There are about 2,400 day-care workers in this status; more than 1,000 are unionized).

After this successful demonstration, which displayed the workers’ strength, the government offered them a 4% annual wage increase, eventually totaling about 10%, as well as a pension arrangement and the formation of a trilateral forum. It will decide day-care system policy, including representatives of the workers, the government and the employing NGO’s.

It was pretty clear that the union leadership wanted and supported the government’s proposal, but the rank and file rejected it because it did not answer their needs. The proposed wage increase will start from an extremely low level since they’re considered to be “freelancers” and thus not eligible for minimum wage and benefits. The offered wage increase will not be a significant change in their current situation; it won’t even raise their salary above the minimum wage.

The workers also suspect that the ministries of finance and employment, commerce and industry will try to trick them, like the ministry of finance did when it simply ignored agreements with the students’ union.

Day-care workers must rely on their own unity and militancy to continue their struggle to win better conditions and make the bosses pay. But as long as the Israeli government and the capitalist system it defends holds power, any gains workers win can be taken back.

The unity of Arab and Jewish day-care workers is a beacon of the anti-racist and anti-sexist unity that’s needed to build a revolutionary movement to end the exploitation of all workers in the Middle East. 

DETROIT, MI, October 16 — “Eventually, we’ll all be Tier 2!” That’s what one woman said as about 200 autoworkers picketed outside the locked gates of UAW headquarters at Solidarity House today. They were protesting a 50% wage cut for 40% of the workforce at the Lake Orion GM assembly plant, UAW Local 5960. Workers came from a number of plants and locals, including Local 23 at the Indianapolis stamping plant where workers rejected wage-cuts, defied the Governor and ran UAW International reps out of their union hall.

Under the new contract, Tier 2 workers will make $14.50/hour and work alongside Tier 1 workers making $28/hour. Fearing a repeat of the Indianapolis rebellion, where wage-cuts were overwhelmingly voted down, 457 to 96, workers would not be allowed to vote on the wage-cuts. This is UAW President Bob King’s “UAW for the 21st Century,” where GM and the union “share common goals and a common vision” of keeping U.S. bosses on the top of the heap with a future of low wages and endless war.

The ability to cut wages without a ratification vote was implanted in the 2009 national contract, which was ratified, as a precondition for the Obama bailout and restructuring of GM and Chrysler. That contract slashed starting pay for new hires to $14.50/hour. In the fine print that was never included in the “highlights” distributed to workers as they voted, it also says that to produce sub-compacts at a profit, GM and the UAW “will work together...to arrive at innovative ways to staff these operations.”

The Lake Orion workers were laid off last November and GM began retooling the plant to build a subcompact and compact car. The first workers called back will work at full wages and benefits. The rest of the workforce will come back at Tier 2 wages and either wait for a Tier 1 opening due to retirement or try to transfer to another GM plant.

One worker said, “The union knew the plant was going to be two-tier…they just waited till the last minute to drop it on us.” And they plan to “drop it” on many more workers in order to keep members. “This is not going to go to other plants unless we are able to bring a [subcompact] car into Ford or Chrysler that we don’t currently have. We might look at something similar for that situation,” King said.

King forgot to mention imposing poverty wages on workers when he spoke at the October 2 March for Jobs and Justice. But that is really what it was all about. When you unite with the bosses and march behind them, you are on the slippery slope to fascism and world war, because that’s how they solve their crises. They blabber about Republican “extremists,” but it wasn’t the Tea Party who slashed 200,000 auto jobs and cut our wages in half. It is King and Obama, acting on behalf of the biggest bosses and bankers in the world. 

The liberals and union reformers also gave us the first non-union GM plant in the U.S. since the 1930’s; a new lithium-ion battery plant near Detroit. The plant is partly government subsidized, did not call back one unemployed UAW member and pays less than $14/hour.

Since the Chrysler bailout of 1979, the UAW has given up billions in concessions and more than a million jobs, all in the name of “job security.” Today they represent less than half of the U.S. auto industry and have lost two-thirds of our members. Class collaboration does not save jobs. Our security lies with the international working class, sharper and sharper class struggle and the development of mass communist consciousness. Ultimately we have to overthrow the bosses and abolish wage slavery with communist revolution. 

PARIS, October 31 — Two million workers and youth took to the streets in massive nation-wide demonstrations — 170,000 marching in Paris — to protest the ruling class’s raising the retirement age and the rising unemployment caused by the bosses’ economic crisis. A movement that began in the spring over pensions broadened to encompass a fight for jobs amid workers’ rage over the tremendous disparity in wealth between the ruling class and the working class.

Large numbers continue to join the anti-retirement demonstrations against low wages and President Sarkozy’s connivance with the wealthy. The focus on retirement “reform” stems from the fact that it affects the largest number of people. “The wage problem is overshadowed by the jobs problem which is overshadowed by the retirement problem,” explained Antoine, an unemployed worker in his forties. “It all results from the unequal distribution of wealth.” And all that is integral to capitalism’s drive for profits. Only a communist revolution that destroys this system and replaces it with one run by and for workers can end these evils.

Initially Sarkozy and the sellout union leaders had figured that some one-day strikes and demonstrations would allow the workers to vent their anger and then the pension changes would sail through. But this became a miscalculation when the rank and file pushed past the union leaders, organizing unlimited strikes, with polls reporting from 65% to 71% of the population supporting them. It then became difficult for the union hacks to back out of the struggle and to control it.

While falling short of a general strike resembling the uprising in 1968, this rank-and-file-led movement spread to accomplish the following:

• Halted 50% of industry due to a lack of raw materials and fuel;

• A 33-day strike which included dock and refinery workers, aided by other workers supporting them, paralyzed 40% of oil refinery production, idling 99 ships, including 20 crude oil tankers and 15 refined fuel tankers, in harbors from Fos (near Marseilles) to Le Havre, costing the oil companies up to 300 million euros ($420 million);

Blocked major highways leading to industrial parks and occupied toll booths, allowing free passage to drivers;

University cafeteria workers provided free meals to students;

Supportera joined with striking sanitation workers to dump garbage in front of the homes of leading CEOs;

Caused cancellation of half the flights at Orly Airport on October 28;

A hundred youth fought a police tear-gas attack after a demonstration in the ship-building city of Saint-Nazaire;

Student unions shut six universities;

Sanitation strikers blocked truck depots in Nantes and other cities, creating huge piles of garbage throughout the area.

Workers are very conscious of the tremendous disparity in wealth and blame the rich — and Sarkozy who they view as representing the rich — for the economic crisis and resulting threats to their jobs and to the gains made since World War II. Rank-and-file refinery strikers told a PL’er at the Total Company facilities on the Atlantic coast that their grandparents had fought for many of their gains in wages, vacations and pensions and that not fighting to retain them would be a betrayal of their forebears.

This fight against the government, and the workers’ view of the struggle as one between classes, to a certain degree reflected a political consciousness which the reformist union leaders did not foresee when they tried to limit the strikes to one-day walkouts. Many workers feel that the union officials are betraying the movement. The sentiment of auto and rail workers and truckers was expressed by one, saying the union leaders “have been doing that for 40 years. Urge people to go out on strike, wave red flags and then negotiate with the bosses. But who gives a damn about the union bureaucrats. At least we’re fighting and that’s all that counts. Won’t be a revolution but it [is a] chance to show them what we think.”

The union mis-leaders’ reformism was stark when including in a press statement a demand for “respect for private property” which implied a condemnation of the militant youth who were fighting the cops

But the inter-generational unity of the working class was mirrored in the support for the strikers shown by the youth who not only closed hundreds of high schools but showed up at picket lines to back the workers. The picketing workers point to that development with pride. Both young and old felt that by fighting Sarkozy’s raising the retirement age they were fighting for more jobs for first-time job-seekers.

However, a weakness in the struggle was reflected in the movement’s weak links with the 400,000 undocumented immigrant workers, but possibly even more importantly with the millions of documented immigrant and French-born largely Arab and black African workers who face daily racist discrimination. They are a potent force that could immeasurably strengthen the working class’s overall fight.

Workers at the docks and refineries and on the railroad have now voted to suspend their strikes. But meanwhile workers in six Air France unions have called for a strike for November 4 and another mass demonstration is planned for November 6, despite the passage of the pension law changes and Sarkozy’s expected signature.

Assuming the enactment of this law, and the presumed scaling down of the struggle, it will have reflected the failure of even this massive movement to defeat the rulers’ attack on workers’ pensions. On the other hand the movement has sharpened the class struggle and the class consciousness of millions of workers who have stood ready to fight the bosses and their government and recognize the tie between both.

This consciousness and anger of the working class in France cries out for revolutionary communist leadership. The absence of the latter is very evident. The French “Communist” Party, which has had a big influence in the main union, the CGT, long ago abandoned communist principles and actively tries to steer the rank-and-file’s militancy into voting for them.

Certainly fertile ground exists on which to advance revolutionary communist consciousness. This could lead to workers’ recognition of the need to destroy the entire profit system, the bosses and their government servants; and not just to try to maintain the reforms which the ruling class inevitably takes away as part of its attempt to deal with capitalism’s crisis. 

BOSTON, MA., October 29 — About 50 students and faculty from Roxbury Community College (RCC) marched to the police station today to protest the vicious October 22 police beating of a sixteen-year-old-youth in the Administration Building. The youth had run away from a Department of Youth Services facility in order to be present at the birth of his child.

A student recorded the incident with her cell-phone camera and posted it on Youtube while a cop attempted to intimidate her. If not for her, the incident would have been swept under the rug.  No one except those who had witnessed it knew it had happened. The RCC administration kept it silent for almost a week, helping the police cover up their crime. They didn’t address it on the campus until the Youtube video made it an issue in Boston.

At that point, the RCC President Gomes and VP Mercomes tried to distance the college from the ”bad press” since “the boy was not an RCC student.” They showed their true colors as lackeys of the local ruling class, who will do anything to protect the interests of capitalism. 

Students immediately organized a response, posted signs around the school announcing a march to the police station. Once there, students expressed their outrage at the police and college administration while demanding the firing of the cops guilty of the beating. One student spoke about the police “serving and protecting” the rich and not the working class, giving a political analysis to the class anger being expressed.

Now it remains the task of these student leaders along with PL’ers and other anti-racists to organize the whole RCC community to take a stand against racist police terror.