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Angry Transit Workers on Right Track But Need to Smash Profit System
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- 13 May 2010 91 hits
NEW YORK CITY, May 4 — More than a thousand angry transit workers surprised both Transportation Workers Union (TWU) Local 100 leaders and cops when they broke out of police pens at a Local 100 rally and marched to Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA) headquarters, blocking traffic along the 15-block walk.
These militant marchers had plenty to be upset about. In recent weeks tragedy and devastation have hit City transit workers:
• On April 27, track foreman Jimmy Knell fell on an unprotected energized third rail in a rain-soaked area, killing him;
• The next day train operator Domenick Occhiogrosso, 50, collapsed and died of a heart attack operating the G train;
• Nearly 1,500 MTA employees, mainly station agents and bus operators, received layoff notices in early May. A court injunction postponed them until the MTA holds public hearings but the Authority announced it plans to lay off some workers anyway. (The judge-ordered hearings are an opportunity to give the bosses a taste of workers’ power.)
These deaths and layoffs follow transit service cuts and MTA threats against student Metrocards and transit-worker raises. Capitalism — a racist system that kills and screws workers for money — spawns all these attacks.
The MTA budget gap stems from billions paid in profits to bankers in “debt service,” nearly one-fourth of the MTA’s budget. The bosses’ dictatorship guarantees that all these payments are legal requirements under NY State law. The bosses’ law says the MTA must pay bondholders before all other expenses and MTA agreements require that fares be sufficient “to cover all debt service.”
Still further, the MTA’s service cuts, fair hikes and attacks on transit workers are concentrated in the city, where workers and riders are overwhelming black, Latino and immigrant, even though the MTA also runs commuter rails through mostly white suburbs.
This racist drive for bank profits, historically always present in the City’s mass transit, contributes to a national workplace death rate for transit workers higher than the national death rate of coal miners!
Workplace stress likely contributed to heart disease that fatally struck Occhiogrosso.
Two track workers also died of heart attacks on the job within the past year.
Knells, although a low-level supervisor, was working long hours for the same reason most workers do, overtime pay. When he died he was rumored to have been on the job for over 23 hours, seven more than the maximum limit.
For management, safety rules are used to blame the worker after something happens. These rules are hardly ever enforced due to union-management deals that ensure productivity, and lower costs at the expense of workers’ safety on the job. But every life and job loss is a challenge that we must answer with militant class struggle.
Workers who are ready to break laws and unite with working-class students and riders are on the right track. But Local 100 president John Samuelson, supposedly a “militant,” arrived at the May 4th breakaway rally at MTA headquarters soon after it started and announced, “We came here, we said what we had to say. Let’s go home.”
One shocked worker blurted out, “What?!” Samuelson replied, “What? You want to stay here all night?” Workers can do without that kind of “leadership.” Workers, students and riders must unite to expose the unsafe conditions that threaten us all.
But more militancy alone isn’t enough. In fighting for safer conditions and jobs. We need to forge unity between workers, students and soldiers that will one day overthrow the bosses in revolution and build a communist society free of racist class exploitation.
The 1,500 layoffs of unionized workers are already the second wave of transit job cuts, following buyout offers for 600 non-union administrative employees. Local 100 heads want the new MTA boss Jay Walder fired and urge politicians and the MTA to use federal stimulus money to fill budget gaps. But capitalist competition, not individual bosses or mis-management, forces the MTA’s bosses to maximize debt service payments for banks.
Increased military and economic rivalry between imperialists — the world’s most powerful capitalist nations — is forcing bosses worldwide to exploit “their” workers harder than their competitors. U.S. bosses’ strategy to maintain supremacy against rival powers impels banks and politicians to squeeze private revenue from public agencies and forces racist unemployment onto the working class. Only a worker-run communist revolution can bury this profit system.
New York City
NEW YORK CITY, May 1 — May Day 2010 was a great day for the working class in NYC. Workers involved in class struggle against the bosses were a highlight of the spirited march in Manhattan and at three dinners throughout the city, which were attended by over 600 people. Stella D’Oro strikers, now PLP members, spoke at the dinners along with students involved in fighting the budget cuts in their schools
Several of these students and workers decided to join the Party, after having seen the multi-racial unity in the May Day activities and how PL’ers actively fought alongside them against the bosses in the spread of communist ideas, especially through the distribution of CHALLENGE.
Particularly outstanding this May Day was the participation and leadership of the youth who organized the march and the dinners, which bodes well for the growth of Progressive Labor Party. All told over 5,000 CHALLENGES were distributed, and received enthusiastically.
Comrades and friends led chants all along the route, calling for multi-racial worker unity and communist revolution to destroy capitalism, a system built on racism, sexism, police brutality and exploitation.
At all three dinners speakers clearly explained the state of the bosses’ crisis-ridden world and how workers, students and soldiers were beginning to step up to the plate to fight the misery it has produced, citing communism as the only answer. Other speakers described the history of May Day, born in the 1886 general strike for the 8-hour day in Chicago.
As always the food was excellent amid some super entertainment. Skits and songs prevailed throughout. At one dinner “What’s Going On” was sung along with a beautiful rendition of “Bella Ciao.” The walls at the dinner sites were decorated with vintage front pages from past CHALLENGES.
All the dinners closed with the singing of the international working-class anthem, The Internationale. Workers, students and soldiers, inspired by the day’s events, vowed to return to their factories, transit barns, barracks, schools and campuses more determined than ever to fight this murderous system with the only solution: the battle for communist revolution.J
Israel
A delegation of PLP’ers came to the May Day march in Tel-Aviv this year. We prepared more than 100 copies of the PL document “Road to Revolution IV” (in Hebrew translation), a May Day flier about the need for communist revolution to smash fascism and apartheid and a flier in Hebrew and English for immigrant workers under the slogan, “Deport the Bosses, not the Workers!” We also carried CHALLENGES.
Several hundred workers, including several dozen immigrant workers, also marched. However, it was organized by middle-class liberals and their revisionist (phony leftist) allies in the “Communist” Party who shouted reformist and trade-union slogans, avoiding the words “revolution” and “communism” like the plague. They also restricted most post-march speeches at the rally to reformist and liberal politicians. Almost no workers were given the stage.
Nonetheless we came forward with our fliers and leaflets to openly call for a workers’ communist revolution. We were the only ones who talked with the immigrant workers, who were blatantly ignored by the reformists and the liberals. While our materials and slogans scared the living hell out of the liberals, we were openly welcomed by some of the workers who were looking for a more militant answer to their problems. One worker — until recently a right-wing Zionist and now a left-leaning trade-union activist — phoned in after the march to say our May Day flier was spot-on!
Another comrade went to the May Day march in Nazareth, which was a standard “C”P reformist show, and raised our slogans there as well. We lacked a flier in Arabic, but still managed to distribute our materials among the Nazareth workers.
Next year we will struggle to organize an even larger group to bring communist politics to May Day.
A comrade in Israel-Palestine
Los Angeles
LOS ANGELES, CA, May 1 — Raising PLP’s red flags against the backdrop of tens of thousands of white shirts and flags of various nationalities, several
dozen students and workers formed PLP’s contingent in this year’s May Day march in downtown Los Angeles. In the wake of Arizona passing an openly fascist immigration law, many angry workers marched. Our enthusiastic group created a visible alternative to the pro-ruling-class organizers of the march who called for immigration reform that would lead to long indentured servitude for immigrants. PLP called on workers from around the world to unite, fight back against deportations, borders and racism, and to build a revolutionary movement for communism.
This year the PLP contingent was organized and led mainly by young students and workers from Los Angeles and the San Francisco Bay area. Along with veteran comrades and many friends, we made quite a presence. Throughout the march workers responded well to our chants. Several workers decided to join our contingent, wear our red shirts and carry our red flags. One worker, with his own megaphone, joined our group during the march, repeating our chants and encouraging others to do so. These workers expressed interest in our communist politics and asked to stay in touch with us. We distributed 1,500 leaflets and about 900 CHALLENGES. We left the march energized and invigorated for a coming year of struggle.
At our dinner, following the march we were able to express that enthusiasm and the specifics of Progressive Labor Party’s line: “May Day is OUR day, a day to talk about workers’ struggles and workers’ power!” “More than ever, we need to see the world as it really is… cut-backs, unemployment, wars… The Progressive Labor Party has a plan to work with industrial workers, transportation workers, soldiers… and we take this very seriously.” “Every day things remind me more and more of fascist Germany. We cannot sit back and let fascism grow. We must fight back!”
A multi-racial group of over 60 workers, students and teachers joined with the Party to celebrate the international workers’ holiday, May Day. We all met up after marching to eat and celebrate with our comrades. We had music, poetry and discussion alongside speeches describing the world situation, the history of May Day and the things our comrades are going through right now at work, at home or at school. Everyone who came agreed: this year more than ever it is so important to be a part of a fighting organization like PLP. Capitalism’s attacks are becoming more reminiscent of fascism every day and we must stand up and fight back as a unified force. We are reinvigorated by the energy and determination of our new young leadership and look forward to the potential for growth in the years to come. J
Texas
FT. WORTH, TX — May Day celebrations in our city were a huge success. Our day began with us preparing to bring communist ideas to the city’s immigration march. We printed flyers that connected immigration, unemployment and imperialist war to capitalism and made signs that read “Smash the Border” as we waited for friends from around the city, out of state, and from other countries to arrive.
The city’s liberal misleaders organized the march, and had no intention of making this a day about workers’ power. Among the speakers were the city’s mayor and the Chief of Police. The main thrust of the event was to attack the recent racist immigration law passed in Arizona guaranteeing racial profiling and to promote Obama’s “Comprehensive Immigration Reform,” which is equally racist. Nowhere in any of the speeches was May Day acknowledged as an international workers’ day. Their calls for “comprehensive immigration reform now!” and to rally around the American flag were contrasted with our flyer calling for unity among the international working class in the face of increasing attacks from the bosses.
We distributed 500 flyers and close to 70 CHALLENGES. As the march commenced, its organizers led chants like “Si se Puede!” We handed out chant sheets to everyone in the vicinity and with our bullhorn began leading more militant chants like “Las luchas obreras no tienen fronteras!” (Workers’ struggles have no borders!) and “Abajo con banderas, afuera con fronteras!” (Down with [bosses’] flags, smash all borders!). We connected the dots of capitalist exploitation further, chanting, “War in Iraq means… Fight back, and Racist unemployment means… fight back!”
Before, during and after the march we met up with old friends and made some new ones. One example was a student of one of our comrades who had come to the march with a local janitors’ union. At first he was hesitant to take a flyer; he wasn’t sure what he thought about attacking capitalism as the main problem in the world. After a lengthy discussion, pointing out the difference between the nationalist, pro-capitalist politics of the march’s organizers and the internationalist, working-class politics in the flyer, he took one. He also took a CHALLENGE.
As the march came to an end, we regrouped for our PL dinner. Two months of planning paid off as friends and co-workers began showing up. Our event was truly an international experience as we had friends in attendance not only from around the state and country, but from as far away as Guatemala and Turkey.
We had a barbeque that was prepared by a Pl’er and a long-time friend who stepped up and has become more committed despite his initial disagreements with the Party’s ideas. Others brought side dishes, and by the time everyone arrived we had more than enough food. We ate and talked politics for an hour and then everyone made their way indoors for speeches and music.
People filled the living and dining room to hear the welcoming speech and the history of May Day. A woman new to our club gave the welcome and May Day history, emphasizing both the internationalism of May Day and of PLP. Her speech was followed by three more: a report on the international situation, a speech about where the real power to change the world lies and a final speech about commitment to the Party. A comrade who has been working to improve his ability to translate Party literature translated for our friends from Latin America. The speeches were followed by applause and some words from our international friends who discussed the history of May Day in Turkey.
We ended with a music program that included both original songs and some PL classics. A new song about CHALLENGE, the communist paper, got the audience laughing. This was followed by an improv performance of Bella Ciao. An original reggae song about the Party’s line got the audience singing along and was a major hit. We ended by singing the Internationale in English, Spanish and Turkish!
Although the attendance was a bit smaller than last year’s, many of the guests commented that the quality was much better. We are trying to keep the momentum from the planning for this year’s May Day alive, by continuing to write and record our Party music and to document all the speeches. We plan to put all the speeches and music onto CDs for friends who were not able to attend. J
Seattle
SEATTLE, May 8 — The reformist May Day rally on May 1st attracted a crowd of 10,000 people. PLP members marched with a contingent of 30 university students and staff in preparation for a student strike the following Monday. (see page 8).
For the past three years, a contingent of this school’s students and workers has been absent from the May Day march. It was good this year to see such a large contingent arrive, with militant signs in hand, ready to march. This May Day march, under leadership of the Catholic Church and the Democratic Party, always threatens to be dragged into the doldrums of pure nationalist, flag-waving reformism.
Students and campus workers, already mobilized to fight against the racist budget cuts and tuition hikes at the campus, saw the need to bring their militancy to it. For many of the students the idea of marching on May Day wasn’t particularly intimidating. It had simply never occurred to them to do it, a result of the capitalist indoctrination of the university system itself. Now they want to go back next year.
While reform chants like “si se puede” (yes, we can) could not be contained, the university contingent did bring a more militant force to the march. A comrade’s coworker marched for the first time, bringing along his young daughter. School custodians marched alongside students and graduate student workers, and nobody showed up waving American flags. At the end of the march when three Nazi knuckleheads showed up to antagonize and intimidate the marchers, the students and workers fought back. A young woman in the group, energized by the chants, took the bullhorn to continue a verbal assault on the racists and their police protectors.
After the march some students and a comrade’s coworker and his family came to our May Day BBQ. Informal discussions were had all around regarding the march, the international marches, what they mean and where we are going as a class. We listened to the Internationale during the presentation of a special May Day cake made by a coworker’s wife and when the night was over two new people took CHALLENGES.
The march proved the perfect lead-in to the student strike on Monday in which custodians once again came out, despite threats of termination, to support students and graduate students (see p. 8). This week of events shows the need for workers and students to unite to fight back, smash capitalism and build a mass communist PLP. J
Indiana
INDIANAPOLIS, IN — We celebrated May Day with industrial, service and educational workers and students. One comrade opened the event explaining why the May Day dinner was important for our class. Another comrade presented the history of the international communist movement from 1945-1965, reviewing its ups and downs. The high point was how Stalin and the communist-led anti-fascist struggle defeated Nazism and Japanese fascism during World War II, the low point being the revisionist (phony leftist) Khruschev leadership restoring capitalism in the Soviet Union.
PLP was born out of the global class struggles and today is trying to rebuild the international communist movement.
Workers were encouraged to join the Party and help spread the revolutionary ideas of communism and revolution to our working-class brothers and sisters so that we can build a new society and world free of racism, sexism, and imperialist war. We closed the celebration with everyone singing the communist Internationale.
JOIGNY, FRANCE, May 5 — Eighty-six undocumented immigrants arrived in this town in Burgundy today, as they pursue a one-month, 850-mile trek from Paris to Nice on the Mediterranean coast. The protest marchers aim to win support for the “legalization” of all undocumented immigrants. They all pay taxes or send their children to school in France.
The marchers left Paris on May Day. May Day was chosen “as a powerful symbol to say that undocumented workers are foreign slave laborers who are legally turned over to slave-trader bosses by the racist laws of the French government,” the National Coordination of Undocumented Immigrants said in a press statement.
The marchers’ itinerary is determined by the local support associations and municipalities that offer them meals and lodging along the way. The march has been organized by the “ministry for the legalization of all undocumented immigrants.” The “ministry” is a federation of several collectives of undocumented immigrants, and is supported by twelve associations and three trade union confederations (CGT, Solidaires, and CNT).
Demonstrations and rallies will be staged at each stopping point. In Nice the marchers intend to demonstrate at the France-Africa summit there. France has invited 51 African heads of state to the summit; so far 20 stated they’ll come. The “ministry” declared that marchers will “denounce the collaboration of African heads of state in the French policy of ‘selective immigration,’ with its mass deportations of, and suffering for, undocumented immigrants.” They will “demand the ‘legalization’ of all undocumented immigrants as well as an end to neo-colonialism and misdevelopment.”
“Thus,” the “ministry” continued, “the African heads of state will be challenged on their silent collusion in the racist, xenophobic, inhuman and degrading treatment of Africans.”
While the march has attracted widespread attention in the broadcast and print media here, its real success will lie in the links forged with rank-and-file workers across France. As vital as it is to denounce French neo-colonialism and French super-exploitation of immigrant workers, it’s even more vital to expose capitalism as the source of both. Firstly, failure to do so may open the door to the idea that there can be “good nationalist, anti-colonialist but pro-capitalist” leaders. Secondly, exposing capitalism helps lead to an understanding that its abolition through communist revolution is the only way to end neo-colonialism and the super-exploitation of immigrants.
GERMANY, May 1 — Nearly a half million people marched on May Day in many cities for workers’ demands while confronting and blocking neo-Nazi demonstrations protected by hundreds of cops.
In Berlin, up to 10,000 marchers blockaded the Nazis, stopping the latter’s march after 500 yards of a planned 3.5-mile parade.
In Hamburg, May Day demonstrators hurled stones and bottles at cops trying to stop their march; 13 cops were injured. One May Day banner read in part, “Class Struggle….For a world without crises, war and capitalism.”
In Munich, left-wing-led marchers called for the overthrow of capitalism. “We don’t want to waste 40 or more hours a week…in capitalist modes of production,” said one speaker.
In Erfurt, 2,000 workers stopped 450 neo-Nazis who were unable to march more than a few hundred yards.
In Bremen, two police cars were burned by marchers angry at the cops for protecting the neo-Nazis.
ATHENS, May 1 — “Those that robbed us must pay!” chanted thousands of May Day marchers demonstrating against the austerity imposed by Greece’s ruling class following orders of the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Overall 20,000 marched, with many rank-and-file workers pressing for the unions to call a general strike to protest having to pay for the bosses’ financial crisis, manipulated by none other than Wall Street’s Goldman Sachs.
In Athens, dozens of youth armed with sticks attacked riot cops protecting the Finance Ministry. In Salonica, street fighting erupted when the cops tear-gassed youth who were smashing the windows of banks. In Piraeus, seamen blocked the harbor, after the IMF demanded the closing of several hospitals. The working class in Greece is up in arms against an “ailing system,” only needing communist leadership to overthrow that system.
PARIS, May 1 — Over 350,000 marched on May Day in 284 cities throughout the country, 45,000 in this city, mostly for economic demands of jobs, higher wages and no change in retirement, denouncing the bosses’ attempts to shift their economic crisis onto workers’ backs. Many of the demonstrations expressed solidarity with the working class in Greece.
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Defeat of Greek Austerity Robbery a Must for All Workers
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- 13 May 2010 94 hits
Across the European Union, the bosses’ governments have been announcing cutbacks in government services:
• In Ireland, the government adopted two austerity plans in 2009, cutting benefits across the board by 7 billion euros (US$8.75 billion). Government workers’ wages have been cut 5 to 15%, depending on their department and pay category.
• In January, German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble warned that public spending would be cut in 2011 and that “grave decisions lie ahead.”
• On January 29, Spanish Finance Minister Elena Salgado announced 50 billion euros (US$62.5 billion) in budget cuts over the next three years. The government plans to “reform” the labor market and raise the legal retirement age from 65 to 67.
• On April 29, Mervyn King, the Bank of England governor, said the austerity measures needed to tackle Britain’s budget deficit will be so unpopular that whoever wins the elections will not get back into government for a generation.
• On May 5, French Prime Minister François Fillon announced an austerity plan to freeze government expenses from 2011 to 2013. Taking inflation into account, this amounts to a 10% budget cut over three years. Bourgeois economist Jacques Attali put the cut at 50 billion euros (US$62.5 billion).
• The Portuguese government has frozen government workers’ wages (around 12% of the working population). It’s planning layoffs, privatizations and a two-year increase in the retirement age.
Racist Cutbacks
In every case, these measures and cutbacks are racist because they hit the poorest workers hardest, and in every European country the poorest workers include a disproportionate number of workers belonging to a “racial,” “ethnic” or “national” minority.
In each of these countries, the ruling class is carefully watching how much the Greek bosses will manage to take away from the workers. If the Greek government imposes its austerity package of 30 billion euros (US$37.5 billion) in budget cuts over the next three years, bosses across Europe will order their governments to ratchet down workers’ incomes accordingly.
Indeed, government services like health care, pensions, education, etc., are a part of workers’ income, i.e. payment for their labor power. The only difference is that these services are financed and distributed indirectly, through taxes and the government, whereas wages are paid directly by the boss.
As Karl Marx explains in chapter VI of “Capital,” the value of a worker’s labor power has two components: First, the satisfaction of “natural wants, such as food, clothing, fuel, and housing, [which] vary according to the climatic and other physical conditions of his country.” Secondly, “the number and extent of his so-called necessary wants” depend to a great extent “on the habits and degree of comfort in which the class of free laborers has been formed.” Obviously, the “degree of comfort” that we expect as “normal” results from the class struggles of past generations of workers.
This means that, under capitalism, workers’ standard of living depends on the level of class struggle. The more workers fight, the more crumbs they may get, either directly from the boss or indirectly through the government. However, the bosses constantly attack to maintain or increase their profits by pushing back workers’ living standards. Whatever gains workers may win are usually reversed when the ruling class, using its control of state power, decides it can no longer allow these gains to limit their profits. Only with communist revolution can workers collectively distribute the full value they produce to our class, according to need.
The budget deficits that the bosses’ media are wailing about can be reduced in two ways: through budget cuts (taking income from the workers) or by taking income from the bosses (through taxes). The class struggle decides who will pay and how much.
In France, for example, a recent Senate finance committee report states that company exemptions on social security contributions cost the government 42 billion euros in 2009; while a National Assembly finance committee report states that tax breaks for the rich cost 73 billion euros. By eliminating tax breaks to the rich and their companies, the French government could take in 345 billion euros over three years, instead of cutting 50 billion euros in services to the working class over the same period!
Now is the time for workers across Europe to demonstrate concrete solidarity with workers in Greece. Defeating the austerity plan in Greece could help defeat similar plans being prepared in every country in Europe. And the international solidarity forged in fighting these austerity plans can — with communist leadership — become the sort of school for communism that will get our class out of the reformist traffic circle and onto the revolutionary highway to ending capitalism once and for all.
