Stella D’Oro Diary 3: Strikers Continue to Fight

Bronx, NY, June 17 —

For the wife of J.F. -

En la vida todo es ir

In life everything is going

A lo que el tiempo deshace.

towards what time is undoing.

Sabe el hombre donde nace

Where we are born we know,

Y no dónde va a morir.

not where we’re going to die.

This dialectical poem by the revolutionary Juan Antonio Corretjer1 captures the experience of Puerto Rican workers’ migration to New York, and treats life itself as an endless migration from our birthplace into unknown time. It speaks to the poignant experience of time in any migrating worker’s life. We heard that in the memorial tribute by his brother to Marcelo Lucero, the Ecuadoran immigrant worker murdered by racists in Long Island last year. And we hear it in the strike of the Stella workers, 97% of whom were born outside the U.S.. The strikers tell us that not knowing how a long strike will end is a hard thing to live through.

If you ask them what is the worst thing about their strike many speak of the dragging, endless time waiting on their corner of north Broadway for the strike to be resolved. “Ten months!  In two months it’ll be a whole year!”  “We started in summer… into the fall… winter… spring… and now it’s summer again — another summer!” They shake their heads, put their hands on your arm and ask “Are all strikes this long?  How long are other strikes?” Where is it going? Is all this time undoing their lives?  Is everything coming undone because of the boss’s heartlessness and refusal to listen to them even when they speak in the chants of a thousand supporters?

Sitting near us in the courtroom last month, while the Brynwood lawyer and the hated manager Dan Meyers droned on with their racist contempt for the workers, an older woman from Africa looked so sad we asked her what she was feeling, and she said she was thinking about her life ending this way, destroyed by these people. That’s one ending to the strike people are thinking about, that it might be the end of their working lives, the death of their common life together in the factory which, exploitation and all, was nevertheless a life where they shared good feelings as well as hard times, and had pride in their collective strength as unionized workers who had struck twice already for their demands. Will they ever go back to that time?

The Brynwood bosses, snug in their Connecticut suburbs, of course count on a strike wearing down the workers, but the strikers say grimly that Brynwood has underestimated them all along and that they will never give in. And strike time is not all unrelieved waiting. It is punctuated by a big rally that lifts their spirits; the last was twice the size of the previous one and they see they are gaining momentum. Every day other workers come with coffee and they know they are not alone. Yesterday a TWU busdriver blasted his horn going by and yelled through the window “Down with the scabs!” Those scabs walk brazenly past and they get up from the crates they’re sitting on and yell at them, competing to make up witty insults.

They see their fellow workers step up and develop as leaders growing in political knowledge and skill (one man on her shift bought one of these new women strike leaders a bullhorn of her own, as testimony to her fighting for all the workers). They know they are being talked about by radical workers in Germany and Guatemala and Spain and France and wherever CHALLENGE is read around the wide world they come from. Some come to meetings with PLP and discuss it all at length, as we make it possible for them to know one another, and speak together, in new, politically informed ways. But others sit there on their crates. A striker’s time drags and drags and drags towards its unknown end.

People are getting tired and worn down; they get sick again and again.  (It’s good that tomorrow some doctors are coming to the line to do free checkups.)  Some are thinking about bankruptcy or looking for other jobs — will another job be the end of their time at Stella? A spouse’s grave illness removes one of the most militant workers from strike activity and we don’t see him for more than two months. A woman speaks of how hard it is to answer her five-year-old grandson’s question, “Where are you going?  Is that strike still on?” The strikers don’t know the end of the process, but they know the way, their struggle is making the road by walking. All of a worker’s struggling life is going, going forward, and starting from their political “birth” place at Stella D’Oro some of these workers may die as revolutionaries. We, and they don’t know where we individually will end, but we and they do know that the working class itself will never die. J

(Endnote)

1. Corretjer left the revisionist Puerto Rican Communist party to found the Liga Socialista, which for a time in the 1960s was a fraternal party of the young PLP. You can find on the internet Roy Brown’s musical setting of this poem in decima style sung by him, the group Haciendo Punto, and the Catalán singer Joan Manuel Serrat.

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!

As Economic Crisis Looms Over Contract Fight: Forging Communist Base Among LA Transit Workers

LOS ANGELES, April 6 — “One of the first things I do each day is put CHALLENGES or leaflets in my backpack,” said a PLP member. “I think about who I’m going to get the paper to today or what kind of political discussion I’ll try to develop. I am motivated by a deepening anger against the storms of crisis, war and fascism that confronts our class, an anger that is growing in many of my co-workers.”
Building a base of communist workers for the Party means knitting together a network of CHALLENGE readers, organizing study groups, forums, and personal social and political visits, as well as becoming part of class struggle. It also involves our own families, in trying to have the time and space for all this. Ideally it means integrating our family’s participation in this process.
We’ve been working in the transportation industry for 10 years. Our PLP club now regularly distributes 55 CHALLENGES — having six veteran members, four new members and another five readers who help distribute one or two papers each.

We’ve worked with many workers over time. Some have responded immediately. Later, when they understand the seriousness of the situation, they may pause to think about it. Others are more cautious from the beginning and slowly get closer to us. Others want our literature and to help the Party in some way, without committing themselves completely. Others have joined and are advancing, taking more leadership.

Recently we’ve organized four forums involving 30 different workers —Latino, African American and white, and some from Russia and the Middle East. The forums concerned the history of the working class and the need for PLP and the fight for communism as the only viable alternative to the world-wide crisis of capitalism, imperialist war and fascism.

There’s a great potential to recruit new members in a short time. Building a communist base requires patience and urgency — patience because it’s not so easy to change workers’ minds. Much consistency and persistence are needed.

Consistency: we can’t just take people CHALLENGE once and then, after a few months, bring them another one. We have to take the political development of each worker seriously and follow up, but without being mechanical. Many times we want to force the process of development because we’re not viewing things dialectically. If you plant a fruit tree, you can’t expect to be eating mangos in one month. It won’t happen! Then you could decide to abandon it and leap to a new one, and on and on, without success.

We’re involved in the class struggle. We’re forming a strike committee, with PL’ers, readers and co-workers to fight around the contract this summer. Three years ago, during the last contract fight, we formed a committee that gave communist political leadership during the strike, organizing protests, meetings, leafleting, articles and CHALLENGE sales, and bringing other workers and students to the picket lines. The current economic crisis — which our contract fight is a part of — is an opportunity to expose the capitalist system and show workers the vision of a new communist world.

Besides inviting all the CHALLENGE readers to the May Day Dinner, we’re also struggling with them to invite their friends and families. May Day offers the chance to clarify PLP’s communist ideas, enabling us to build a mass communist party of the working class. To achieve that, we need many communists, and for that we need an expanding network of CHALLENGE readers that becomes a mass network.
These advances come from sharpening the political struggle inside the club and the leadership to spread PLP’s communist politics.

“When are we going to talk about politics?” a transit driver asked a CHALLENGE seller at a work site. “I’ve got a lot to say and some questions to ask you.” In the past, this driver occasionally took a paper. He was friendly but not particularly interested in PLP’s communist ideas. Today that’s changed. He, his wife and two children are all victims of capitalism’s crisis. In the “tender” phrase of the bankers, this family is “underwater” — they owe substantially more on their house than it’s worth, even after paying $100,000 down. He’s one of millions being sacrificed to bail out the billionaire swindlers. Stung by the betrayal of his “American Dream,” we hope this driver and more like him will come to the May Day Dinner where he can learn about the historic battles against capitalism and begin to participate in the current movement. We plan to involve him in PLP activities during the contract struggle and upcoming Summer Project.

Now, even before the contract expires, the collapsing U.S. economy is falling on our heads and on the rest of the world’s workers. The bosses’ media complain about the speed of the collapse of manufacturing, but transit workers could be next on the chopping block if they need us to transport fewer workers to the factories. The economic meltdown increases our opportunities to win these workers to PLP’s politics while fighting the attacks on our co-workers’ and riders’ lives.

During the last contract struggle we encouraged drivers and riders to unite, held social events and explained that “Contracts only spell out the terms of our oppression; they don’t stop exploitation.” Some transit workers who participated in these activities became more interested in the long-term possibility of communist revolution.

We say everyone can help fight for communism. A retired comrade, no longer driving, has helped circulate CHALLENGE and communist leaflets to transit workers. Not being tied to the time clock, he can visit drivers and mechanics on all shifts. Guys ask him, “How is retirement?” He replies, “I love not being a wage-slave, but this system is after us old folks too. A pension based on capitalist investments is a contract written on toilet paper. The contract struggle will involve retiree issues. The company will try to play active transit workers against retirees by saying there isn’t enough money for both with this budget deficit. Sure, I retired from the company but you can’t retire from the class struggle and the fight for communism.”

One thing is certain. The capitalist crisis will continue to push workers “underwater.” As bosses under Bush allowed workers to drown in Hurricane Katrina, the bosses under Obama will not, and cannot, rescue our class from the ravages of this economic hurricane. PLP’s goal of communist revolution is the only lifeline in these storms.

Union Turf War Leaves Workers Hanging

CHICAGO, IL March 30 – On March 21, the SEIU held a secret meeting and removed four militant women leaders from being stewards and chief stewards at Stroger (Cook County) Hospital. This is SEIU’s revenge for these women’s role in a recently failed organizing drive. The four stewards and chief stewards, Sonja Sanson, Bernadette Cornejo, Angie Ballard and Dimples Hughes-Williams, are going to need the active support of their co-workers to answer the County/SEIU attacks that are coming. More than anything, we need a stronger PLP at County.

For the past eight months, Cook County healthcare workers were caught in a turf war between the giant SEIU and the California Nurses Association’s (CNA) national organization, National Nurses Organizing Committee (NNOC). After two years of budget cuts that cost over 2,000 jobs and closed half the clinics that serve the more than one million uninsured workers and children here, SEIU and NNOC decided to spend millions raiding each other for a bigger share of a shrinking pie instead of organizing a massive strike of workers and patients against racist cutbacks. These pro-capitalist unions compete with each other just like the bosses do.

The most militant and class-conscious workers put their necks on the line for NNOC’s workers union, the Caregivers and Health Employees Union (CHEU). Despite their “progressive” reputation, NNOC maintains separate unions for nurses and workers. Based on the active support of these most militant rank and file leaders, the CHEU organizing drive became a mutiny against the SEIU leadership that had supported the budget cutters and sabotaged any fight back. Elections were scheduled in all four SEIU bargaining units.

On February 20, just days before the scheduled elections, CHEU pulled out, without any discussion with the workers involved. SEIU and CNA, who had been battling each other all over the country, formed an “alliance” to end the feud. While SEIU president Andy Stern and CNA president Rose Ann DeMoro were shaking hands and passing checks, the most militant County workers were left holding the bag. Some CHEU supporters had already been fired, and SEIU has no intention of fighting to bring them back.

As the economy continues to crumble, workers face more racist unemployment and cutbacks while the bosses get trillion-dollar bailouts. As workers have been forced to accept speed-up, wage-cuts, increases in our healthcare premiums and loss of pensions, the unions serve the bosses. We cannot expect anything different. No union can end the global crisis of capitalism. No contract can negotiate away the growing fascism, racist terror and war that the capitalists will need to force us to pay for their crisis. We are turning these attacks, and the growing anger of the workers, into a bigger base for PLP and more May Day marchers. Communist revolution is our answer to these attacks, and to the bosses’ crisis.

500 Marchers Back Stella D’Oro Strikers ‘NO CONTRACT, NO COOKIES!’

BRONX, NY, January 31 — Braving freezing temperatures, 500 Stella D’Oro strikers and supporters marched down Broadway chanting, “No Contract, No Cookies!”

As CHALLENGE readers know, the 135 Stella strikers are 100% solid on the line. They’ve been out for nearly six months but are determined not to let the Brynwood bosses (who own Stella D’Oro) bust their union and take away holidays, healthcare benefits and sick days, while demanding annual wage-cuts for the next five years.

While the strike involves a limited number of workers, it is significant on two counts: (1) it not only sets an example of militant workers fighting back against the bosses’ attempts to make workers take the losses resulting from the bosses’ crisis; and (2) it involves predominantly black and Latino workers — who, because of racism, suffer disproportionately from the bosses’ attacks — giving leadership to the whole working class.

This march and rally was larger and more spirited than previous ones. Supporters came from the PSC (Professional Staff Congress-CUNY), the teachers union, District Council 37, RWDSU (supermarket employees), nurses from the NYS Nurses Association, other unions and the community. But critically important, most speeches at the closing rally were by the strikers, not politicians who had dominated earlier rallies.

PSC’s president vowed continuing support for the struggle, telling Stella strikers that, “You must win; we cannot allow you to lose.” A George Washington H.S. student took the mic and showed the crowd support letters from his fellow students and funds collected at their school.

In sharp contrast to this genuine display of solidarity from working-class youth was the shameful performance of Ed Ott, NYC Central Labor Council director. He appeared for only a few minutes at the pre-march rally. When someone in the crowd called out, “Ed, Ed, tell us how much money the Central Labor Council has given to support the struggle,” his pathetic answer was, “We haven’t been asked yet.”

PLP members have played an active role throughout the strike. At the closing rally, a PL speaker explained how the Stella workers inspired all workers and how communist revolution is necessary to eliminate the bosses and their system. During the rallies and march, 555 people bought CHALLENGES.

When some phony leftists chanted, “People’s power,” PL’ers overrode it with “Workers’ Power!” And when they said, “People, united, will never be defeated,” PL’ers responded with, “Workers, united…” In both cases, the great majority of the crowd joined PL’s most class-conscious chants. PLP opposes the slogan of “people’s power” because it means an alliance of workers with bosses and politicians.

One weakness in the strike is scabs working in the plant. It’s estimated that production in 30% of normal. With mass support at the picket line, stopping scabs becomes possible. While workers try to build a successful city-wide boycott of Stella products, the bosses’ strategy may be to take losses until August when the strikers’ benefits run out.

PL organizers are encouraging greater militancy. The Stella workers can reach out to other members of Local 50 in other bakeries and to other locals of the bakers’ international union.

In picket line conversations we have found that the workers are interested in discussing political questions, such as the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the collapse of Wall Street, and how these events will affect the working class. One worker e-mailed us a set of pictures showing the horrors resulting from the Israeli invasion and massacre in Gaza.

Many strikers are reading CHALLENGE. We plan to organize a contingent of Stella workers and their families and friends to attend this year’s

May Day dinner. Fight the bosses! Build the Party!

$20 Billion Mayor Laying Off 23,000 NYC Workers

NEW YORK — Billionaire Mayor Mike Bloomberg has unveiled his doomsday budget proposal for workers here. To close a projected $4 billion budget deficit, Bloomberg — whose private fortune totals $20 billion (Forbes, 10/6/2008 ) — wants to lay off 23,000 workers and get the city worker unions to give back $1 billion from pensions, health benefits, etc. He counts on the union leaders to convince members to take all these attacks without fighting back. That’s exactly what happened during the NYC fiscal crisis of the 1970s. Union workers were told they were saving the city. What they really saved was capitalism. They never regained the contract givebacks from thirty years ago. The working people of NYC lived with a level of city services that didn’t come close to meeting their needs. As is always the case, black and Latin workers were hit the hardest by both layoffs and the resulting service cuts. Let’s not make the same mistake this time.

Strikers at the Stella D’Oro bakery show that some workers are willing to fight against their vicious bosses. Communists in PLP vow to give leadership in the struggle to fight Bloomberg’s proposed layoffs. We will help to build the unity needed to fight the cutback plans. We will explain the nature of the capitalist system that exploits us and destroys our lives. We will explain how a communist revolution will put an end to racism, inequality and oppression.

Workers here as elsewhere are already reeling from the financial meltdown, home foreclosure crisis and an uncertain future for themselves and their children. During 2008, city agencies twice had their operating budgets slashed by $1.5 billion. What do an additional 23,000 layoffs mean? 15,000 of the layoffs target the city schools. They mean more students per teacher, less support staff and longer waiting time for needed repairs in school buildings. In city hospitals, people will literally die from the layoffs. That’s what happens when wards, rooms and halls are not kept clean. That’s what happens when patient-to-staff ratios increase. Every city agency will see similar results as they become less able to provide needed services from providing clean water to repairing pot holes.

What about the so-called fat pensions, health benefits and pay those on city payroll get? “Good government” types say that the average city worker earns about $100,000 per year. In reality, the average wage of 120,000 District Council 37 city workers is about $33,000 per year. Since 1995, they have lost between 7-10 % in real wages because their pay hasn’t kept up with the rising cost of living. Contrast that to the pay of New Yorkers making $200,000 and over. They saw a real increase in pay of 96% during the same period (3/28/08 Chief Leader).  Since pensions are a fraction of gross pay, DC 37 members can hardly have fat pensions. Likewise, city workers have been forced to pay an ever increasing share of their medical costs. If this seems similar to what’s happening to you, it’s because workers all over this country and around the world are facing a similar attack on their living standards.

We shouldn’t pay for the problems that capitalism creates. We didn’t cause the financial crisis. We should make the bosses take the losses caused by their system and their greed. If the union leaders call for sharing the pain of cutbacks “fairly,” we should say no! Rather than saving this racist, exploitative rotten system, we should be fighting to overthrow it. We should be planning to replace it with communism, a society of production to meet human needs not greed, a society where working-class unity is built while racism and sexism is outlawed.

The Devil Does Wear Prada

As I write this letter, I can’t help but feel like an imposter. Employed in fashion — the pulpit that promotes luxury, vanity, classism and consumption — my world would appear to be in diametric opposition to the PLP cause. I live and work in the industry’s capital, New York City (yes the devil does wear Prada). I have a front row seat to all the goings on behind the curtain — the anorexia, the egos, and the inflated salaries.

While it is the fruits of the seamstress’s labor (mostly women but a few are also men) being marketed, the budget for a day’s photo shoot dwarfs her yearly salary. She toils, in many countries including the U.S., often under illegal conditions. The immigrant/sweatshop worker will not be celebrated, much less invited to the downtown soiree to be toasted alongside the boss. Her sons and daughters will be extracted to go and fight this country’s “patriotic” wars, and possibly return maimed or in a box.

I’ve grown disillusioned and angry not only at this “world” but at myself — for subjecting myself to such a bloated and extravagant existence. Consciousness was always within me though — empathizing with people from different walks of life — but doing what I could and the efforts I found myself engaged in were not enough. A new approach to the problem from a different angle was needed.

I had the good fortune to be invited to a PLP study group. I was captivated by the discussion amongst these young people: racism as capitalism’s tool to divide and separate, war for oil, the U.S.’s class system — an especially taboo subject in today’s society.

Now I can’t deny that the working class is systematically kept down and controlled by the bosses. My resignation has been replaced by the question: “Is it possible to build this new Utopia, and if so, how could I make a difference?” I want to be a part of the hope and the action, on the front line.

One stormy evening I stood in solidarity with the Stella D’Oro workers who had been on strike for four months. I was inspired and awed by their commitment to stand for what they believed in, and the sacrifices made by the few for all.

As I wrestle with what it means to join PLP, its ideas and its struggle, as well as with my own struggles and contradictions, I am all the more empowered. I feel assured to be part of the collective standing steadfast committed to fight inequality, racism, classism, capitalism, and imperialism.

Part of the collective

Capitalist ‘SILO’ Tax Schemes Threaten All Transit Workers and Riders

LOS ANGELES, CA — You may never have heard of SILO, but this tax evasion scheme of the MTA is one of the reasons why school children lack books and clinics and hospitals in working-class neighborhoods have closed down. Taxes that should have gone to pay for these services were pocketed by the corporations in SILO: Sale In, Lease Out. Now that it has blown up in their face, the MTA and the public officials are going to make the riders and MTA workers pay in the upcoming contract.

Starting in the late 1980’s, Los Angeles MTA and Rapid Tranist Division (RTD) entered into rip-off tax deals with private investors. Over the years MTA sold $1.5 billion worth of transit assets to large banks for $65 million. In all, 1,000 LA Metro buses, trains, five transit divisions and even a parking lot were sold. (LA Times 10/18/ 08) After buying government property for pennies on the dollar, the banks stood to make extra money by leasing the property back to MTA. But, the big prize was the $4.4 billion nationwide tax swindle that these banks gobbled up.

LA MTA is one of the largest players in these illegal tax scams. After repeated IRS warnings, SILO’s were ruled an abusive tax shelter in late 2003. The investors had until the end of 2008 to settle up. Losing their huge tax break, banks searched for a way out.

As the U.S. capitalist economy plunged, the banks found their escape hatch. The insurer for the SILO’s was AIG, who crapped out so big they required two federal bailouts at $150 billion. When AIG’s credit rating dropped, the banks were off the hook. Thirty-one of the biggest public transit agencies in the U.S. were left holding the bag. Banks now own trains, buses and transit property valued at $16 billion that they no longer want to keep on leasing to the transit agencies but that these can’t afford to buy back.

Like the nearly bankrupt Detroit auto bosses, but with much less publicity, the heads of major transit agencies, including MTA’s Roger Snoble, scurried to Washington for help to buy back the equipment. Unlike the auto bosses, they didn’t get it.

They need public transit to get workers to work. But as with the auto industry, whether bailout or bankruptcy, a re-organization will land squarely on the backs of the workers and riders of public transit. Black and Latino workers who rely on public transit to get to their jobs will be disproportionately affected by racist cuts. If we look at the give -backs forced on auto workers by union misleaders, we can see what capitalism is planning for workers at LA Metro: lower wages, trashed work rules, costlier medical and pension plans.

The grinding economic train wreck is teaching us an old lesson anew: we have nothing to lose and everything to gain by getting rid of a system that has one ugly surprise after another for masses of workers, including those of us who work in and use public transit.

Our CHALLENGE in LA Transit

All three LA Metro contracts are up June 30, 2009. The heads of the unions, together with MTA’s new boss, will prepare take-away contracts for us. Our PLP transit club met to plan how to put CHALLENGE, in the hands of many more of our co-workers. By raising the number of readers and communist political discussions, transit drivers, mechanics, and clerks can advance under attack. With CHALLENGE’s revolutionary outlook and with deep, long-term relationships with our friends who read the paper, we can fight the bosses’ attacks and build a growing hatred of the racist profit system that threatens us, and finally steer it to the junkyard of history where it belongs.

27 Million Jobless in U.S.: Racist Unemployment an Attack on All Workers

U.S. capitalism — the “world’s greatest superpower” and “history’s most powerful economy” — is sinking into another Great Depression. Its Total Unemployment figure (see below) is nearly 25 million, 13.5% of the labor force (NY Times, 1/10/09, and all following quotes) and by early next year could conceivably hit 20%. “This recession is going to be…long and…deep,” the longest since the 1930s. Millions of workers are also losing their jobs, from Spain to China.

Great Depression II is causing untold hardships for tens of millions of workers, and double that for black and Latino workers because of the racist nature of unemployment (see below). Lost wages, stolen pensions, workers losing their homes in the 8th “recession” in 60 years: that’s the “fruit” of an anarchic economic system driven by profits. Despite the bosses’ claims that “communism doesn’t work,” that “communism is dead,” it is capitalism that is destroying the lives of hundreds of millions worldwide, through Depressions and imperialist wars for oil and pipelines to defend their system. Only a massive communist-led workers’ revolution will end this capitalist nightmare.

In the Great Depression 75 years ago, the capitalist world threw tens of millions onto the streets. Only one country had no unemployment: the Soviet Union. Its system was not motivated by profit but by collective actions of its working class to produce for the needs of the whole class, not for the profits of a few bosses, which is why world capitalism tried to destroy it. Although that revolution was reversed, the ideas that produced it did not die and will live again based on the revolutionary ideas and actions of the communist Progressive Labor Party.

Well over a century ago, Karl Marx discovered the source of capitalism’s anarchy, of the never-ending cycle of boom and bust, of periodic depressions: the over-production of the means of production. Within every industry, in the drive for maximum profits, each capitalist builds factory after factory, attempting to capture as much of the market as possible without any overall plan, trying to slow the falling rate of profit. The result? Far more is produced than the market can absorb. So in their attempt to maintain profits, or even survive, bosses must reduce costs, the “easiest” being labor costs. This is precisely what’s happening now, and without mentioning Marx, the capitalist pundits agree.

NY Times columnist Paul Krugman, one of the system’s leading economists, wrote (1/9/09): “A huge gap is opening up between what the American economy can produce and what it’s able to sell.” Krugman quotes the Congressional Budget Office statement that “economic output over the next two years will average 6.8% below its potential,” which Krugman says “translates into $2.1 trillion of lost production.” And the bosses’ latest hand-picked defender of their system, Barack Obama — in attempting to close this gap between what capitalism can produce and what it can sell — has a plan that Krugman says “could easily end up doing less than a third of the job.”

So the bosses handle this crisis of overproduction “The simplest way…drain their inventories and fire their workers.” The Times says there is “a pervasive fear among employers that if they fail to shed workers quickly, their companies may go under in a recession poised to become the worst since the 1930s” — “everywhere you look that is what is happening now.” For the bosses, “laying off [workers] is an effort to survive.” Bosses “solve” their crises on the backs of workers. (For PLP’s fight-back plan, see editorial page 4)

The “official” figure of 11.1 million unemployed, plus 8 million part-timers unable to find full-time jobs, plus 5.2 million “discouraged” workers — those who have given up looking for non-existent jobs — the Times calls this “Total Unemployment” — or 24.3 million. Add 1.7 million imprisoned for non-violent offenses (70% black and Latino), who would be unable to find work in this crisis, plus possibly another million who joined the military because they couldn’t find jobs, and a Grand Total Unemployment” becomes 27 million! (This excludes those on welfare because they can’t find jobs.)

Such is “American prosperity” in the 21st Century.
This recession for workers overall is already a depression for black and Latino workers because of racist discrimination: last hired, first fired. Their jobless rates are twice that of white workers. If the Total Unemployment rate quoted above is 13.5% for workers in general, it is 27% for black workers. The Big 3 meltdown is even deadlier for black auto workers in cities like Detroit and Flint. This super-exploitation of black and Latino workers — central to the existence of U.S. capitalism — produces super-profits for the bosses, through lower wages and benefits, accounting for one-third of the nearly $700 billion of U.S. net corporate profits in 2003.

The bosses’ media say the Madoffs, the sub-prime mortgage scam and the housing bubble led to this crisis. But overall, these swindlers are motivated by the drive for maximum profit as fast as they can get it. That profit drive is behind the overproduction leading to periodic recession/depressions. U.S. capitalism had no unemployment during World War II when it “solved” the 1930s Great Depression by putting 14 million workers and youth into the military. “Peacetime” capitalism has always created millions of jobless and always will.

It is in the class interest of all workers to fight racist unemployment because the bosses use this political and economic weapon to divide and super-exploit ALL workers. Many workers support union leaders’ claim that immigrant and “foreign” workers “steal ‘our’ jobs.” This racism lets the bosses carry out mass firings, weakening the entire working class.

The anti-racist, international unity of all workers is crucial in the fight for a system without any profit-hungry bosses and their racist unemployment. Only with a system based on workers reaping the full benefit of their collective production and allotting it according to need — communism — will the working class realize our full potential, free of the horrors of capitalist depressions and wars. That’s PLP’s goal. Join us.

FIGHT VS. BOSSES’ RACIST UNEMPLOYMENT

“Our future is looking bleak, to say the least!” email from a Chicago Ford Worker.
For two consecutive weeks, more than 500,000 workers made new claims for unemployment insurance. The UN’s International Labor Organization estimates that the current crisis will increase the unemployment lines by tens of millions worldwide. This will be a terrible strain for the hundreds of millions deeply affected by this crisis.

Galveston, Texas has gone through many hurricanes and always recovered. Not this time. The workers and jobs are gone, people’s lives devastated. The University of Texas is laying off 3,800 workers at the University of Texas Medical Branch. The layoffs will destroy what was one the country’s premier hospitals and Galveston’s largest employer. Renown for its trauma unit, the hospital served mainly working-class patients, and was an economic center on the island. While a shrunken hospital will continue to operate, it will in all likelihood never return to what it was.

“Karen H. Sexton, vice president for hospitals and clinics was caught in a trap…acknowledged the cutbacks might be permanent. ‘We know we have to be a lot smaller now.’” (NYT 11/14/08)
Like in New Orleans before it, Galveston’s workers are scattered to the wind with no shot at recovery. We cannot take this lying down, not again, because much more is still to come as the bosses “solve” their crisis on the backs of the working class.

We must learn to respond to these attacks and fight back. There is much we can do. Whether we are in unions or not, we can set up unemployment committees to keep laid-off workers in the struggle and united with their brothers and sisters at work. We can fight to make every part-time worker a full-timer and organize factory committees, union or not, to fight evictions and make sure no co-worker is homeless.

We can move evicted families back into their homes and organize to defend them from a return visit by the sheriffs. In the high schools and colleges, students and teachers can do the same. We can participate in community centers and churches that organize soup kitchens and food pantries.

These centers and struggles can become schools for communism as we engage volunteers and those in need of assistance in political discussion about the nature of the profit system and the need to destroy it.  We can expand the circulation of CHALLENGE and make our paper the flag of those fighting back. We can build the PLP out of these struggles.

No worker, woman or man, black, Latino or white, immigrant or citizen, will escape the growing depression. Racist unemployment, which is double for black workers than for white (and four times higher for black youth), will soar as wages and services collapse. These are not only racist attacks in terms of those workers losing their jobs, but also for those most affected by service cuts. About two-thirds of the unemployed receive no benefits. Chicago’s Cook County Health Bureau,which closed half the clinics for uninsured workers and slashed 2,000 jobs in 2007, is destroying another 500 jobs on January 1. Billionaire NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg just ordered the closing of all free city-run children’s dental clinics and is laying off 5,000 workers.

Smash Racist Unemployment With Communist Revolution

The real unemployment numbers are twice as high as those reported when you figure in the under-employed, 2.4 million mainly 70% black and Latin in jail, and 12 million undocumented workers and youth facing racist detention camps and deportations just for looking for work. “And as bad as these numbers are, they may look good a year from now because things are going to get much worse,” said Sung Won Sohn, an economist at California State University. (Detroit Free Press, 11/14)

All the politicians, policy-makers and pundits are calling this the most serious crisis since the Great Depression of the 1930s. That crisis led to Hitler and the growth of fascism in much of the world, and World War II. It also led to the Chinese Revolution and the dramatic growth of the world communist movement, which ultimately crumbled under the weight of its own internal weaknesses and mistakes. The current crisis is pushing the world closer to World War III. What we do or don’t do will largely determine whether or not we are on the road to revolution. We must fight back.

The racist rulers will use Obama to try to buy time and win millions of black, Latino and white youth to invade Afghanistan and Pakistan. We can do better at leading our friends and CHALLENGE readers into the class war, and turn every battle, large and small, into a school for communist revolution. As Karl Marx said, “The point is not just to understand the world. The point is to change it.”