Worldwide Fight vs. Crisis Needs Communist Leadership:Workers in Europe Seize Factories, Bosses

Militant, mass demonstrations hit London and other European cities protesting the G20 meetings while the big imperialist powers bickered about how to handle the capitalist economic meltdown. There was also a demonstration attacked by the cops in Strasbourg, France, during NATO’s 60th Anniversary meeting where the European rulers decided to send a very limited amount of extra troops to aid the U.S. war over oil-gas pipelines in Afghanistan.

Workers are angry. A common chant in many of their protests — from Dublin to Paris, from Rome to Athens — is, “We won’t pay for their crisis!” Workers in the U.S. and elsewhere should follow their example in upping the ante of class struggle against the capitalist attacks. However, the anger and class hatred of these workers are being misled by union hacks, fake leftists and ruling-class politicians who build nationalism and illusions that voting for a “lesser evil” capitalist is the solution.

Nationalism and racism hold back these struggles. GM workers in Germany and Sweden limited their demands to to keeping their plants open since they are “more efficient” than others, which weakens and divides international workers’ solidarity. Meanwhile, racism against immigrants and non-white citizen workers is growing throughout the continent. Anti-racism is vital to these fight-backs.

General Strike in Greece

On April 2, a massive general strike in all industries shut down Greece, with huge marches in Athens and nationwide, protesting G20 policies and their own right-wing government of Prime Minister Karamanlis. Most schools, ports and department stores in most big cities closed down. TV, radio and newspapers were affected.

In Athens there were three marches by different union groups, including heavy contingents of workers — mostly women — from the United Textile company whose 14 factories are suffering mass layoffs. The Finance Minister is demanding United Textiles fire 950 of the 1200 workers at these plants before approving a “survival plan” for the company. Hacks of two unions are accusing each other of betraying this struggle, but neither are supporting workers’ occupation of the plants. This is no surprise, since these sellouts also refused to support the mass rebellions of young workers and students that hit Greece last year when the cops killed a young student.

France: Caterpillar Workers Seize Bosses, Continental Workers Burn Tires in Paris

Striking Caterpillar (CAT) workers at the Grenoble and Echirolles plants held five bosses in their offices after management refused to discuss a 733 jobs-cut in a workforce of 2,800. After netting a $3.5-billion profit in 2008, CAT announced it would eliminate 22,000 jobs worldwide based on an estimated 55% drop in orders.

CAT, the world’s largest manufacturer of construction equipment, produces much of that large machinery in France and provides armored vehicles for the British army and several other countries. It also makes the D9 armored bulldozers with which the Israeli army razed Palestinian housing. CAT CEO James Owens was Bush’s nominee to a trade advisory board and is now on Obama’s Economic Recovery Advisory Board.

The “CAT-napping” is just the latest in a series of similar actions throughout France:
• March, 2009 — The boss of Sony France was forcibly held at the Pontons-sur-Adour plant.
• Workers seized the industrial manager of the 3M factory at Pithiviers near Orléans.
• Riot police had to rescue the billionaire chief executive of the retail and luxury group PPR after workers protesting 1,200 job cuts blocked his taxi for over an hour as he left a meeting.
• Union delegates at the FCI plant near Paris held two directors in the meeting room until police intervened. They were supported by striking workers who have been picketing around the clock for six weeks against layoffs and plant closings.

On March 25, workers from the German-owned Continental Tire factory in Clairoix converged on Paris to burn tires on the city’s main boulevard, demanding the government bail out the company. Continental is moving its work to Timisoara, Romania where the average monthly wage is 280-420 Euros ($375-$500). In Clairoix it’s 1,700 Euros (over $2,000). Continental is closing two plants in France and another in Germany. It broke its promise to keep work at the Clairoix factory through 2012 after workers had made big concessions in 2006.

On March 16, angry workers burst into a board meeting and pelted the bosses with eggs and shoes. The bosses held their next meeting, under strict security, 600 miles away in Nice.

These bold actions are good but demanding to “save our jobs” without international solidarity with workers in Romania is a dead-end for the working class.

Visteon Workers Occupy Factories from London to Belfast

“They’ve treated us like dogs….But the workers in Ireland occupied so we thought now it’s our turn to do something,” declared a British Visteon worker as he and 100 of his co-workers occupied the Enfield factory in north London. Another added, “While [British Prime Minister] Gordon Brown was living it up with the G-20, we were losing our jobs. Brown says he has a big plan to save the world, but how about…our jobs?”

The plant’s 200 workers built parts for Jaguar and Land Rover. On April 1, they were fired ten minutes before the end of their shift, and told they would have to ask the government for their last seven days’ pay and would not collect any benefits.

Workers also occupied two Visteon plants in Basildon and Belfast Ireland. Over 50 workers slept inside the Basildon plant and many more were on the road outside. About 100 workers protested outside the Visteon Customer and Technology Centre. Showing solidarity, the office staff there walked out to join them.

Visteon was spun off by Ford in 2000; the majority are ex-Ford workers. One who worked for both companies for 25 years warned, “We know that if we’re going to get anything we’ll have to fight for it. Over the years we’ve given a lot of ground, maybe too much. We’ve even bought our own tools on occasion, just to help the company. And this is how they repay us.” Another declared, “A lot of us are in danger of losing our homes. We’re determined to stay because we have nothing to lose.”

All workers, students and youth should send messages of support to the Visteon workers to: stevehart@unitetheunion.com.

Huge March Against Fascist Berlusconi

On April 3, hundreds of thousands of workers protested the economic policies of Silvio Berlusconi’s fascist government. (His ruling party recently fused with remnants of Mussolini’s old fascist movement.) The huge march in Rome started from five different points and converged on the Coliseum.

The marchers opposed government plans for mass cutbacks in education and public services and demanded an improved policy towards immigrants — super-exploited and persecuted because of racism. But the CGIL union federation leading the march, and the different politicians addressing the rally, just want to replace Berlusconi with their own brand of capitalist rule. They have no real solutions to the deep crisis of Italian capitalism hit hard by the worldwide financial meltdown.

The bosses and their pundits parroted nonsense about the “end of history” — meaning the end of class struggle — after the implosion of the Soviet Union, but workers never stop fighting as the system bails out billionaires’ while millions lose their jobs. But to turn that fight into the beginning of the end of capitalism, the main ingredient needed is a revolutionary communist leadership. May Day 2009 is the day to raise the red flag of communist revolution worldwide. That is the lesson CHALLENGE and PLP bring to the world’s workers. Join us in making it possible!

Building for May Day Amid Capitalist Carnage in Detroit

DETROIT, April 6 — “Why are we marching? What are we going to get out of it?” she asked. A PLP member responded, “We’re marching to build a movement. We’re marching to show the workers in NYC, and those we bring, that there’s a movement growing that’s out to overthrow this system and fight for communism, equality, no bosses and no profits.”

“YES!” shouted the American Axle worker from the couch. “That’s what we need!”

That exchange captured the mood of the May Day committee meeting here last week. Bringing a busload of workers and youth to march on May Day will be our answer to the overwhelming racist oppression that has laid waste to Detroit and stolen the future from our youth. This is our answer to the bankers and auto bosses who grab billions in salaries and bonuses while destroying jobs and boarding up homes.

Here, more than 50% of all black males are unemployed and the jails are full. There are no supermarkets or movie theaters but there are curfews against our youth and plainclothes cops harass students inside the schools. Forty thousand homes are boarded up, more empty homes than homeless people, because under capitalism if the bosses can’t sell it for a profit, it can’t be used, no matter what the need.

We met in the shadow of GM world headquarters, while the Obama auto task force, led by two former investment bankers, was forcing chairman and CEO Rick Wagoner into a retirement worth about $23 million. With the global financial crisis deepening, the federal government is taking direct control of the fascist restructuring of the shrinking auto industry. GM was given 60 days to come back with a bigger list of plant closings and job cuts, and still more wage, health care and pension cuts from the UAW. Chrysler was given 30 days to form a partnership with Fiat. These conditions must be met in order to get more government money. If not, both companies will be forced into that financial chop shop known as bankruptcy court.

The ruling class is using Obama to whip the auto industry into fighting shape after having been routed on their home turf. CEO Wagoner’s ouster means an even more fascist crackdown on GM workers who should realize they are in great danger. GM’s pro-capitalist UAW “partners” will be asked to deliver even deeper wage and benefit concessions, including retiree health benefits. The message to the workers is clear: if you don’t give it up, we’ll take it in bankruptcy court. Many illusions that auto workers have in Obama are being challenged, if not smashed.

Fiat said it was eager to merge with Chrysler, especially after Obama said he would bless the deal with $6 billion in federal aid. G.M. said it would “take whatever steps are necessary to successfully restructure the company.” So far, all is quiet at UAW headquarters at Solidarity House, as these miserable low-lifes finally face their own mortality. They hitched their wagon to U.S. imperialism 50 years ago, and now they are feeling every bit of the decline of their masters.

Unlike them, we shed no tears for the bosses. We will build a new communist world on their graves. We fight for the laid-off truck driver and his family, the high school students, the hospital, county and hotel workers, the American Axle worker and his partner and their 8-month old baby boy. After the four-month American Axle strike in the winter of ‘07-’08, two-thirds of the workers lost their jobs, and wages were cut in half. At the ratification meeting at King H.S., workers tore up the contract and shouted down their leaders. One year later, the flicker of communist revolution still burns. This May Day it will burn a little brighter.

Racist D.C. Metro Bosses Attack Transit Workers, Riders

The bosses are using the financial crisis to bludgeon workers all over the country, and the action has begun at the D.C. Metro Transit system. The Metro bosses have declared that there is a $154 million operating deficit for the coming fiscal year. That could mean layoffs and position reductions of up to 15% of the workforce. Despite the rising demand for mass transit, the local governments that own Metro have decided to cut service and lay off workers. Whether this is their real plan or just a ploy to justify a fare increase is yet to be seen.

Rank-and-file workers at Metro are getting ready to fight back. A public hearing on cutting back Metro runs in D.C. is planned for February 19 at Metro Headquarters. Workers will be there in large numbers to say no to cutbacks in service, no to layoffs, and no to fare increases, with no help from the union leadership. Although the union contract expired on June 30, 2008, a new one has not been negotiated. The union has refused to mobilize the membership to fight for a new contract. The union president’s excuse is that the workers don’t want to fight, and instead is relying on her political friends. Some good that will do! But many workers remember the mass demonstration we had with communist leadership during the last contract fight and declare that we should do more bold and militant actions.

A fight-back is needed! In addition to service cuts and layoffs, the workers’ pension fund is in trouble, having lost about 1/3 of its value due to the crash, and the bosses are trying to weasel out of their contractual responsibility to make the fund whole. The bosses are building racism by using the crisis to pit D.C. area workers against the mainly black workforce of Metro.

Metro bosses have joined in this racist onslaught and have begun a terror campaign against operators. Minor safety violations, which have always been punished with a written warning, now result in a five-day suspension. Talking on a cell phone while laying over is now a five-day suspension. An operator with a poor work record as defined by the bosses can be terminated without warning, i.e. no final warning. These attacks are to soften up the workers to be savaged by the bosses who want to take out their crisis on our class.

There have been no actual layoffs at Metro since 1995. At that time, we organized large numbers of workers and riders to protest the cuts in service and the loss of jobs. The bosses backed down and reduced their plans for cutbacks. This time the crisis is much more serious, and our efforts must reflect that.

We must unite with the community as well to oppose any fare increase that the bosses may be planning. Our brother and sister workers who use Metro are being squeezed from all sides by the bosses. We must not be part of this.

A system that can find billions (and even trillions!) of dollars for oil wars and to bail out bankers who still get billions in bonuses — but can’t pay Metro workers without further soaking the working class — such a system needs to be smashed with communist revolution. Metro workers and riders should join in this fight.

AUTO BAILOUT MEANS MORE RACIST ATTACKS

DETROIT, MI, December 8 — It appears GM, Ford and Chrysler will get about half the $34 billion bailout they went begging for, enough to ensure they don’t collapse over the next 90 days. They presented their “business plans” to Congress on the same day the Labor Dept. reported a loss of 533,000 jobs in November, the largest monthly loss in 34 years.

The money may come attached to a new federal “Car Czar” who will oversee the industry’s restructuring. This would be another step in the development of fascism as the bankers use their state power to protect their investments.

It also appears that the full weight of the crisis will be placed on the backs of auto workers. GM will eliminate up to 30,000 white and blue collar jobs in North America and close 11 more factories by 2012. GM will start 2009 with layoffs at three plants in Michigan, Ohio and Ontario. They will be idled throughout January and will resume production each with one less shift and a total of 4,400 fewer workers.

The “new General Motors” will have sold or closed Hummer, Saab or Saturn. Pontiac will be greatly reduced. GM CEO Wagoner should have no trouble getting by on his $1 salary for 2009. He stole $24 million in 2006 and again in 2007, and squeezed by with $2.2 million in 2008.

Auto workers won’t be so lucky. Our contracts will be reopened and gutted. We will face severe wage and benefit cuts, and many workers could lose homes as a result. No one will be spared, including retirees.

In the 2007 contract, the auto companies and the UAW set up the Voluntary Employee Benefit Association (VEBA) that was supposed to “guarantee” retirees’ healthcare, even if the industry went bankrupt. The Big Three were to contribute the bulk of the $60 billion fund. Also, a 3% wage increase for current UAW workers is being deferred to VEBA. But the global credit and financial crises plunged domestic auto sales to their lowest rate in 25 years. GM already failed to make a $1.7 billion payment in July, and canceled healthcare for all white-collar GM retirees. This may be the beginning of the end for retiree health care.

These layoffs and plant closings have a deadly racist character. According to a report from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Center for Economic Development, black males, ages 16 to 64, have an unemployment rate over 50% in the industrial cities of Buffalo (51.4%), Milwaukee (51.1%) and Detroit (50.6%). Marc Levine, the Center’s founding director, said, “And given perilous economic conditions on the horizon, we have every reason to fear that conditions may get even worse.” The bailout of the auto bosses will only mean more racist poverty, terror and homelessness for the working class.

Currently, the entire working class is taking it on the chin. The attacks are coming so fast that the situation appears to be overwhelming. We must do everything possible where we are to launch a fight-back that ultimately can challenge the bosses for power. We should try to set up unemployment committees in our factories and unions to ensure those laid off remain part of the struggle. In local unions, we should fight all-out to strike against any more concessions to current, future or retired workers. We can take the fight against racist unemployment to our community and immigrant organizations, schools and churches, uniting black, Latin and white workers.

Where there is a mass base of CHALLENGE readers and distributors, we should move them into action and into PLP, and work to establish more such bases. This economic crisis and auto bailout plays a big part in the inter-imperialist rivalry that is pushing the bosses towards world war. A PLP-led fight back can lead us towards communist revolution.

Boeing Welcomes Back Workers With Layoffs

SEATTLE, November 23 — The ink has yet to dry on the new Boeing contract, but the bosses are already waging class war against aerospace workers. In the process, the bosses are making it clearer than ever that workers can win this war only with a revolution for communism.

Within days of returning to work, the company told Facilities Maintenance workers it planned to cut the workforce 10%, using outside contractors to do the work more cheaply. Commercial Chief Carson implied layoffs would start for the rest of us by the end of next year and now Boeing announced 800 layoffs at its Witchata plant. So much for job security! But the sharpest attacks were reserved for subcontractors.

As reported in CHALLENGE, 1,000 Vought subcontractor workers in Nashville, Tenn. struck a few weeks after we did. These Boeing subcontractors soon had to face busloads of scabs, escorted into the plants by local cops. Last week, the union got the Federal Mediator to resume talks with the company. They quickly fell apart when company negotiators arrived with armed guards.

In South Carolina’s Vought plant, which makes the 787 Dreamliner’s rear fuselage, 240 workers joined the International Association of Machinists (IAM) over a year ago. This was touted as a huge victory for unionism in the largely non-union southern aerospace corridor. But after a year the union had still not ratified a contract.

Not wanting negotiations to drag on past the first anniversary (when the company could call for a new certification vote), IAM Grand Lodge Representative Joe Greaser called an “emergency meeting” for 4 PM Friday, November 7. Few workers knew about it.

Later, Greaser announced 92% of the membership had accepted the new contract. He failed to mention that only 13 workers showed up, according to quality inspector Paul Gaudrault, who was the sole dissenting vote.
Vought was “surprised to learn that its employees apparently ratified a contract that was not its final offer.” The workers were furious.

Mechanic Pam DeGarmo said the 1½% annual guaranteed wage increase wouldn’t even cover the new union dues and inflation. About 200 workers will be laid off temporarily because of the two-month strike at the Puget Sound plants. Gaudrault said some of his fellow workers are thinking about not returning “because the contract is so horrible.”

The union leadership here refuses to talk about these outbreaks of class struggle — and these workers are in the same union! “They [the union misleaders] are more than willing to complain about the poor fate of 751 [our District Lodge],” declared a member of our CHALLENGE readers group, “but they won’t talk about others. We’re all part of the working class!” CHALLENGE readers here plan to fight for a more class-conscious response in the union and among workers on the floor.

Had there been CHALLENGE readers groups in South Carolina, like those being consolidated in Seattle, they could have mobilized workers nationwide to back this “watershed” organizing effort; led solidarity rallies and picketing; and organized illegal strikes to fight the company’s terms.

Most importantly, these fight-backs could have been turned into schools for communism with large sales of our paper and a struggle to bring communist ideas to life. Such fight-backs alone can’t solve capitalism’s crises of overproduction. The attacks, like those on autoworkers, can only sharpen. Ultimately, the rivalry among the world’s imperialists will lead to world war. CHALLENGE readers groups can advance the struggle to help turn this into class war, with communist revolution.

France-wide Protests Hit Bosses’ Meltdown of Wages

PARIS, October 7 — Some 100,000 workers demonstrated in 90 protests across France demanding workers not pay for world capitalism’s banking meltdown, the worst economic crisis since the 1930s. Over 13,000 trade unionists marched in Paris. Three hundred unionists from 14 European countries met for the World Day for Decent Work sponsored by the International Trade Union Confederation.

PSA Aulnay auto workers were among the loudest in the Paris march, chanting: “To get out of the crisis, it’s not the banks that need to be helped, it’s wages that have to be raised.” This reflected the fear of millions of workers worldwide who are forced to pay to save the bankers and bosses with untold billions in bailouts.

A government worker in the Paris suburb of Stains defines himself first and foremost as a worker. His monthly salary, 1380 euros ($2,000) is his household’s only income, with unpaid bills piling up. He questioned why “banks that are up to their necks in debt are getting billions,” whereas no one’s bailing out his debts. “But,” he sighed, “that’s the way it always is for us workers.”

Nearby, another worker retorted: “That’s the way it is, but that’s not the way it should be!”
To be sure, but workers must realize the nature of the crisis. The union leaders, whose goal is a few more crumbs from a “reformed capitalism,” are part of the problem. They build illusions that a “lesser-evil” ruler can make things better for workers — “Dump Sarkozy, dump Bush and things can get better.” But it doesn’t matter who rules.

It’s not just some greedy bankers in Paris, London or New York; it’s not even the anti-working class, racist policies of Bush and Sarkozy — although they surely are at fault. It is capitalism itself. The nature of the system, social production but private profits for a tiny minority, creates the basis for these periodic crises.
With each successive crisis, workers pay more and more. Workers must learn from the lessons of the past. Global economic turmoil will sharpen all the inter-imperialist contradictions.

During the 1930s, the Nazis came to power and built a war economy to “solve” the Great Depression. Roosevelt’s New Deal created government-sponsored job programs, but another recession followed in 1937. World War II’s military draft “solved” the Depression’s mass unemployment problem in the U.S.

Only the then communist-led Soviet Union was untouched by the Great Depression, in sharp contrast to Putin’s Russia today. The USSR was also the only European country on the continent that didn’t fold or surrender when the Nazis invaded, and then defeated Hitler’s war machine.

Today, there’s no Soviet Union to inspire the world’s workers, but the threat of global imperialist war is now sharper. The world’s working class has a gigantic task: break with all the agents of the ruling class, regain class consciousness and learn from the past achievements and errors of the revolutionaries who preceded us. Fight for the only real solution to this capitalist hellhole: communism. That’s PLP’s goal. Join us!

Imperialist War Needs Dictate Fascist Financial System Take-Over

Lenin explained many years ago the stage of capitalism where the big bankers eat up the smaller ones: Imperialism is capitalism at that stage of development at which the dominance of monopolies and finance capital is established; in which the export of capital has acquired pronounced importance; in which the division of the world among the international trusts has begun, in which the division of all territories of the globe among the biggest capitalist powers has been completed. (Lenin, Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism, 1916)

FACING WORST CRISIS SINCE GREAT DEPRESSION

U.S. capitalists caused the financial crisis they now seek to solve with drastic measures like the stalled $700-billion bank bailout. Over the past 30 years, they drove house prices sky-high and workers’ wages down, creating the conditions for subprime loans. Financiers got rich, for a while, by trading these worthless instruments as if they were pure gold. But that joy ride has ended and left U.S. banks in a deep hole. The staggering consequences include a $1.2 trillion New York Stock Exchange plunge on Sept. 29th amid a spate of bank failures. And U.S. bankers’ woes extend far beyond Wall Street.

The profit system ties a nation’s capacity to exploit foreign labor, markets, and raw materials by armed force to the strength of its financial institutions. The Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), U.S. imperialism’s leading think-tank, is worried. “The issue today is whether Wall Street turmoil will produce similar pressure for the United States to look inward—and indeed whether its capacity to sustain an international role may have been compromised” (CFR website 9/29/08).

To maintain their global dominance, U.S. bosses are undertaking an unprecedented restructuring of their troubled financial system. Wealth and power are concentrating more and more into a handful of megabanks like J.P. Morgan Chase, Citigroup, and BankAmerica. The bank bailout, a massive infusion of capital to such firms from a Treasury run by Wall Street stalwart [See box.] Henry Paulson, is part of the plan. The big money boys continue to fight for it despite its Sept. 29th rejection on Capitol Hill. They also call for stricter government regulation of markets.

Through these proposed new regulations and massive consolidation that will give the ruling class more direct control over the financial sytem than ever before, the major U.S. capitalists are advancing economic fascism.

RULERS WANT CONGRESS UNDER MILITARY DISCIPLINE

The bailout’s failure in Congress (which may prove temporary) highlights a major obstacle on the finance capitalists’ road to fascism and war. An inefficient political system, especially the House of Representatives, hinders actions they sorely need. With every house seat up for grabs in five weeks, most reps opportunistically pandered to their voting bases rather than support the bankers’ vastly unpopular bill.

U.S. rulers formed the Hart-Rudman (H-R) commission in 1999 to guarantee their world supremacy well into the 21st century. In 2001, it had proposed downgrading Congress’s cumbersome one-member-one vote rule in favor of a five person “leadership team” to “review the totality of Executive-Legislative relations.” It was to consist of “the Speaker of the House, the Majority and Minority leaders of the House, and the Majority and Minority leaders of the Senate” and consult directly with the “the President, the Vice President, the National Security Advisor, and senior cabinet officers.” Complaining of self-serving reps, Hart-Rudman said “Only by having the five most powerful members of the Congress directly involved is there any hope of real reform.” One “reform” was that “every member of Congress…participate in one or more war games per two-year cycle”  at the National Defense University.

Bush dropped the ball after 9/11, implementing only one of H-R’s 50 provisions (Homeland Security). Expect more ruling-class calls to clean up Congress following the bailout debacle.

As for the White House, the rulers hope the presidential race will produce a protector of the U.S. empire far more capable than Bush. The CFR is “looking for signals from both campaigns on how Obama and McCain would restore the economy, and thus maintain the ability to project power abroad” (website, 9/26/08). But the Establishment’s New York Times (9/30/08) laments, “Senator John McCain and Senator Barack Obama were far from Washington, bit actors at best in helping to resolve a crisis that one of them will inherit.”

As this economic tsunami is hitting U.S. bosses harder than any other imperialist, the constant allusions in the media to the 1930s are telling. U.S. rulers long for a Roosevelt-style president who can implement the economic discipline they need before they can mobilize to confront rivals like China and Russia militarily. Over the course of a decade of far-reaching economic programs, FDR was able to raise taxes on the ruling class to pay for the consolidation and militarization of U.S. capitalism in preparation for WW II.  So we can expect more drastic finance-capital sourced initiatives, like the bailout, under the next administration.

The ruling class, in the midst of a crisis, looks for opportunities to prepare for future conflict. For workers, the financial mess shows voting is a dead end. Obama and McCain are in fact competing to see who can best serve the most powerful camp of war-hungry bankers. We have to take advantage  of every opportunity to expose the failure of capitalism and build confidence in our class and our Party as the future of humanity.  Investing time and effort in building the revolutionary, communist Progressive Labor Party represents a far better “growth strategy” for our class. Financial disasters and wars are built into the profit system. It will take a long time to get rid of it. But efforts today will reward generations to come.

The Decision of a Lifetime

“How do things change?” a comrade asked in the summer project study group.
“It takes power,” I answered.

The idea is to unite the working class and overthrow the bosses. So here I am, rushing between cars on the parking lot of Atomic Denim, a garment factory in South L.A, to sell Challenge/Desafio. “I need more Challenges!” I yell to my fellow comrades. Workers consistently take the paper while moving quickly past us to get to work.

The boss and the secretary come out and yell as they snatch the Challenges out of two workers’ hands and throw them on the ground. “TRASH IT!” the secretary yells. A worker then whispers to a comrade, “Maybe you guys can bring little pocket cards with your message and contact info, so the bosses can’t see.”
I am really excited to see the workers accepting the literature as I watch them walk into the factory with their eyes glued to the Challenges.

We left Atomic Denim with about 150 Challenges and leaflets in the workers’ hands. We left with two police cars called on us because we were trying to organize the workers. We left with the bosses angry and most of all, I left feeling accomplished in my goal of reaching out to the working class.

So I think to myself, how can I break these imaginary walls that are separating my commitment from the Progressive Labor Party. How can these walls be broken? I’m thinking over and over.

I am fighting for the working class. I am sick and tired of the bosses exploiting the working class. I am revolutionary. I am an advocate of equality. Am I in full agreement with the PLP’s beliefs about communism? Am I willing to dedicate my life to PLP at this moment? The question has not yet been answered. I often hear of party members joining and then dropping out. One thing for certain, when it’s time for my commitment, I’ll be here, and here for good!

Daddy’s Girl

‘Market Reality’ Fascism Hits Axle Strikers Jobs, Wages Cut in Half

DETROIT, June 1 — The recent sellout contract signed between American Axle and the UAW is a perfect example of how capitalism works and where its priorities lie: destroying the lives of thousands of workers and turning U.S. industry into a low-wage haven. The immigration raids spreading throughout the Midwest and Southwest are no accident. They’re aimed at terrorizing ALL industrial workers, immigrants, undocumented or citizens, into accepting even lower wages. A worker who falls for any kind of racism is betraying his/her own class interests.

Axle workers are the latest victims of this fascist attack. The Axle bosses say the new contract “addresses market reality.” (NY Times, 5/29/08, and all following quotes) After their 87-day strike, this is how that “reality” hits the workers:

• Within a year, 2,000 of 3,650 union jobs will be eliminated.
• “Wages and benefits would be cut at least in half.”
• “Most new work will be going outside the United States.”
And this is how “reality” meets the company’s bottom line:
• “It expected to save about $300 million a year under its new contract.”
• “American Axle…lined up $1.4 billion in new…business for the next five years and…85 percent of it would be sourced abroad.” (“Operations in Mexico and overseas helped the company earn $37 million in 2007.”)
• Wages in Axle’s new plant in Guanajato, Mexico will be barely $1.50 AN HOUR.

What about the union? The bosses say the UAW “jointly addressed” this market reality “in this new set of agreements.” Yes, it “addressed” more than half the workers onto the street and cut the wages and benefits of the remainder more than half. To say the company has the union leadership in its hip pocket is putting it mildly.

This swindle follows the pattern set by the Big Three automakers and the union. GM just announced that one-fourth of its workers, 19,000 (adding to the 34,410 who left in 2006), are taking the company-offered buyout. Of these 19,000, JPMorgan auto analyst Himanushu Patel “predicted GM won’t replace 15,000…and will hire 4,000 [at half the pay] for total annual savings of $2.1 billion.” (Associated Press, 5/31)
Forty years ago, UAW President Walter Reuther was acclaimed for signing a contract with a “guaranteed annual wage.” Hundreds of thousands of laid-off U.S. autoworkers can now testify that the only “guarantee” under capitalism is job- and wage-cuts for workers and maximum profits for the bosses. And the racism of the bosses and UAW hacks has hit black autoworkers even harder, devastating cities like Detroit and Flint.

Since 1999, Michigan has lost 143,000 auto jobs — 45 percent of the total lost nationwide.

No matter what gains  workers make through bitter struggle, when capitalism’s market asserts itself — through global competition, the drive for maximum profits, economic crisis and the needs of imperialist wars — the workers wind up at the bottom of the heap. After all, the bosses control the government and this state power is used to enforce the laws of the capitalist market. That’s why PLP says this system can’t be reformed. “Market reality” won’t permit it.

The only lasting victory that can be won from the Axle workers’ three-month battle is for the workers who bought and read CHALLENGE and came to PLP’s May Day events to join the Party in building a movement that aims to eliminate this system and its profit-driven markets so workers can hold state power and use it on behalf of the working class. Our goal is to establish a communist society in which workers come first and there is no “second” — profits, bosses and their labor lieutenants will be buried six feet under.

Axle Strikers Battle 50% Pay-Cut, Slash GM Production

DETROIT, MI March 11 – The strike by 3,600 UAW workers at five American Axle Manufacturing (AAM) plants is into its third week. This is the latest aftershock in the restructuring of the U.S. auto industry, which has seen starting wages cut in half at GM, Ford and Chrysler at the same time that they have eliminated over 80,000 jobs. This is the result of the sharpening competition between the world’s auto billionaires for markets, resources and cheap labor. The U.S. market is under siege by Asian and European auto bosses. U.S. bosses, with the UAW in their pocket, are slashing wages and benefits which took workers 70 years to win.

Actually, it’s more like two strikes. The workers are striking against the bosses’ demands to cut wages in half, cut health care, and end pensions. The UAW leadership is striking over how much it will cost AAM in buyouts, “buy-downs” (lump-sum payments in return for permanent pay cuts) and other schemes, to get what they want.

“How are we supposed to live like this? Is gas going to be cut in half, or groceries, or our house and car notes? And the company’s making profits. They are attacking us to ‘stay competitive.’” That’s how two black strikers with 15 years at AAM saw it.

The mostly black workforce at the Detroit plant is already struggling to survive in a city ravaged by racism. With soaring unemployment and the highest foreclosure rate in the country, more mouths than ever depend on each and every paycheck. Cutting them in half is devastating.

Meanwhile at Solidarity House, UAW President Ron Gettelfinger said, “Our members cannot be expected to make the extreme sacrifices American Axle is asking for with nothing in return.”

AAM wants to cut wages in half, increase co-pays for prescription drugs, eliminate vision coverage and freeze pension benefits, replacing them with a 401(k) plan. This would lower overall compensation from $65 an hour to $27, costing AAM workers $200 million a year. It would cut wages to $11.50-$14.50 an hour, matching what the UAW negotiated at Delphi, GM, Ford and Chrysler.

AAM also wants to close some union factories and move the work to non-union plants in the U.S. paying $10.00/hour, and a plant in Mexico paying 70 cents/hour.

As of today, the strike has forced GM to shut or cut production at 29 plants, involving over 37,000 workers. This has had a ripple effect closing many supplier plants. Unfortunately, the effects of this have been blunted because GM has a 90-day backlog of unsold cars and sales are even slower at this time of year.

Nevertheless, this shows the potential power we have in our hands. A small number of determined workers can shut down a significant part of the industry with ripple effects that go far beyond. If these workers were led by a revolutionary vision of class war, with their eyes on the prize of abolishing wage slavery with communist revolution, this could be the “spark that starts a prairie fire,” and the stakes could quickly rise.

But without that revolutionary vision, this strike will be just one more speed bump on the road to fascism, racist terror, poverty and war. PLP is introducing and re-introducing CHALLENGE to some new and old friends on the picket line. We will try to win them to march with us on May Day. This strike is not going to have a happy ending. The good guys are not going to win. The deck is stacked. But by building a base for PLP, we will have a chance to turn a bad thing into its opposite.

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Capitalism’s Twin Crises Flatten Wages, Jobs

The net U.S. job loss for February was 63,000, the largest falloff since the last recession. (NY Times, 3/7/08) Fifty-two thousand manufacturing jobs and 39,000 construction jobs were wiped out, offsetting small gains in other sectors.
Bush and many bourgeois economists still maintain “there’s no recession.” Workers know better — polls show more than half say the recession has already begun.
According to Jared Bernstein of the Economic Policy Institute, the labor market has been “clearly infected by the contagion” from capitalism’s twin mortgage and financial crises. Worker