University of California Students and Faculty Fight Back:

STRIKE AGAINST A SYSTEM THAT CUTS EDUCATION TO EXPAND WAR AND BAIL OUT BANKS!

What kind of system puts the needs of oil profiteers and capitalist bankers over the health, safety and education of the rest of us? A capitalist profit system.

As the University of California increases tuition by 9% now and a total of 32% in the spring, faculty salaries are being cut and campus workers laid off. The current cut in the state budget for higher education (UC’s, CSU’s and community colleges) is $3 billion. Financial aid, loans, and work study are all being cut. The UC’s have reduced freshman enrollment by 6%. Faculty and staff at the UC’s and CSU’s are forced to take unpaid days off, and part time teachers have been laid off or had their hours reduced. The higher student fees will buy larger classes.

These cuts are racist and anti-working class, targeting black, Latino and all low income students and workers the hardest, those who find it harder to pay for school. The cuts come as the official unemployment rate in California is 12% and the actual rate is at least double that, including those who have given up looking for work. The current capitalist crisis is greater than any since the Great Depression of the 1930’s. The California legislature has cut more than $15 billion from the state budget, which includes large cuts for welfare and health care, especially the Healthy Families program serving low income children.

Banks and corporations like General Motors have been bailed out for trillions of dollars of workers’ taxes. The federal budget for expanding wars in Iraq ad Afghanistan for control of oil, oil pipelines and profits is increasing. Since the Iraq war started in 2003, federal grants to the states have fallen steadily, while money spent on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan has constantly risen. The Federal government has been sucking money out of the states to pay for its imperialist wars. In addition, the California prison population has increased about 75% since 1990, three times faster than the adult population. California spends more on prisons than any other state, with $10.3 billion budgeted for “Corrections and Rehabilitation” in 2008-2009 compared with $14.5 billion for higher education.

The priorities of the US Federal and state government are imperialist war, prisons, and fascist social control. Last week, LA cops and Sheriffs killed 4 black workers and youth in separate racist killings. Racist police terror is increasing to try to terrorize youth and workers and keep us from fight back against these attacks.  At the same time, Obama and all the politicians and administrators are pushing the patriotic idea of “shared sacrifice”, that we should all pull together in this economic crisis to share the cuts. But the bankers and the top UC and CSU administrators are not sacrificing—we are! This patriotism only serves the capitalists and imperialists, not us.

The budget cuts and economic crisis are not a natural disaster, or the result of a few greedy speculators (they were certainly greedy!). This crisis is built into the greedy, reckless capitalist system itself, a system whose main goal is profit for the capitalists through exploiting the vast majority, the working class, and through ever-wider wars to defend their empire from rival capitalists. Waiting for the crisis to end is not a plan. In fact, administrators have been told that the current cuts are permanent.

We can’t fall for the administrations’ divide and conquer tactics. We need to build unity between students, faculty, and campus workers to fight any and all cuts and attacks. This unity needs to be expanded to include unity with workers, high school students and soldiers beyond the Universities, all of whom are suffering from this capitalist crisis and expanding wars. We should build actions and strikes, including a statewide strike against the cuts.

Even more important, we should use our unity to strike and fight back against this system, capitalism, that only serves the needs of the capitalists at the expense of the vast majority of workers, students, teachers and soldiers the world over.

Our goal should be to fight for a system that meets the needs of the international working class and its allies among students and professionals. That system is a true communist system, where we produce, learn and fight to meet the needs of our class, not the profits of the bosses. For education to serve the needs of the majority, we need a system based on meeting those needs. Capitalism is based on exploitation, racism, crises and war, moving to wider war leading to WWIII. We need to fight to end it and build a system where those who produce all value also run society. Socialism maintained too many aspects of capitalism, like wages and inequality. Progressive Labor Party fights for communism, where we will produce and share what we produce based on need, not wages or profit.

Read CHALLENGE, PLP’s newspaper. Join us! Call 323-491-5125, www.plp.org

HUELGA CONTRA SISTEMA CAPITALISTA RACISTA QUE NOS NIEGA EL DERECHO A VIVIR CON DESPIDOS, FASCISMO Y GUERRA IMPERIALISTA

UC esta despidiendo a muchos trabajadores  debido a la crisis economica. Pero, los patrones crean sus crisis economicas y nosotros pagamos por ellas,  Por ejemplo:

• • ¿Creen Uds. que Mark Yudof, el presidente de UC tiene problemas economicos? Crisis o no crisis, esta recibiendo intacto su salario anual de $800,000 dolares. Ademas, recibe $200 mil dolares al año para alquiler de su casa, mientras la mansion donde va a vivir es remodelada a un costo de $10 millones de dolares,
  • La UC tiene en fondo de $4 mil 500 millones que no estan siendo tocados. Aunque les sobra el dinero, estan atacando a los trabajadores con despidos y a los estudiantes con grandes aumentos de cuoatas.

Que la UC no tenga problems economicos no quiere decir que no haya crisis economica. El mundo capitalista enfrenta su peor crisis economica desde la GranDepresion de los 1930. Pero la crisis CAPITALISTA ES UNA CRISIS DE SOBRE PRODUCCION – NO DE ESCASES O sea, los capitalistas han producido mas mercancias de las que pueden vender. Por ejemplo, hay millones de casas pudriéndose vacias, millones de toneladas de comida que son tiradas diariamente y a los USAgricultores se les paga por no sembrar. Sin embargo, mas de 3.5 millones de USAmericanos – 1.6 millones de ellos niños – estan desamparados durante el año y 30 millones – 12 millones de ellos niños – se acuestan con hambre todas las noches.

DINERO PARA BANCOS-POLICIAS – MIGRA FASCISTA Y GUERRA IMPERIALISTA Los patrones no tienen dinero para nosotros pero si para sus cuerpos represivos que usan para aterrorizarnos y obligarnos a aceptar pasivamente sus recortes, despidos y explotacion racista. Mientras Villaraigosa despide trabajadores esta contratando a mil nuevos policias. Obama tiere dinero para rescatar bancos, emplear mas agentes de la Migra y gastar cientos de miles de millones en las guerras imperialistas por petroleo en el Oriente Medio. Sin embargo, les está recortando el presupuesto a las escuelas y universidades, y dejando que millones pierdan sus casas, sus empleos y no tengan cobertura medica.

Ademas, guarda silencio ante los asesinatos impunes de trabajadores negros por sus escuadrones de la muerte gubernamentales – como los cuatro trabajadores negros recientemente asesinados a sangre fria en el area de LA por el Sherifato. Todos los trabajadores y estudiantes debemos protestar estos asesinatos racistas y comprender que es su mensaje para nosotros: ¡No osen rebelarse porque les pasara los mismo!

SOLUCION CAPITALISTA A SU CRISIS: FASCISMO Y GUERRA MUNDIAL La 2ª Guerra Mundial fue necesaria para ponerle fin a la Gran Depresion de los 1930 a un costo de mas de 100 millones de trabajadores y soldados muertos. Ahora los patrones preparan una 3ª Guerra Mundial para salir de su crisis y decidir quien de ellos va a dominar  el mundo. Quieren usar el patriotismo para ganarnos a trabajarles como esclavos y a morir y matar en sus campos de batalla. Si el patriotismo no es suficiente, usaran el terror fascista.

Los trabajadores  no tenemos nada que ganar en esta pelea de buitres y todo que perder. Nuestros intereses yacen en organizarnos con estuditantes y soldados – nacional e internacionalmete – para ponerle fin a este sistema infernal capitalista con una revolucion comunista. Nosotros podemos y debemos construir un mundo donde el sudor de nuestro trabajo sirva  para llenar las necesidades de nuestra clase trabajadora internacional, no los bolsillos de los patrones. Necesitamos un mundo sin patrones, dinero, esclavitud asalariada, racismo, sexismo, explotacion, fronteras y guerras imperialistas. Para lograr eso necesitmaos ingresar y contruir al PLP en un movimiento masivo de estudiantes, soldados y trabajadores.  ¡Unetenos!

Bosses’ Labor Day Can’t Displace Workers’ May Day:

Stella D’Oro Struggle, Not Labor Fakers, Is Model to Follow

NEW YORK CITY, September 1 — In a feeble response to workers’ anger at the bosses’ financial crisis, this city’s Central Labor Council (CLC) has this year labeled the hollow ritual of their patriotic Labor Day Parade a “march” for healthcare reform and union rights (meaning Obama’s healthcare bill and the Employee Free Choice Act, EFCA). The parade, led by Grand Sellout Lillian Roberts, is also “supposed” to honor the eleven-month strike of the Stella D’Oro workers, now fighting to keep their jobs as the bakery threatens to shut down and move. But following the militant lead of the Stella D’Oro bakers does not mean parading behind the CLC fakers, nor supporting the bosses’ attempt to eke out just enough medical care to keep us able to churn out their profits and fight their wars — while making us pay for it.

The Stella workers’ unity across racial and gender lines, their solid rank-and-file organization and determination to fight on, their resistance to scabs and cops (“scabs in blue”) and ability to win other workers’ support are indeed models to follow. But their union relied on a legal strategy to win the strike. They did achieve a victory in the labor
courts — but then what?

The bosses’ laws are geared to protect the capitalists’ right to do what they want with their property. So they can run away looking for lower-wage workers, or just close down and dump workers in the street. Now Stella workers are up against the essence of capitalism, the bosses’ ownership of the means of production.

PLP calls on all workers to back the Stella D’Oro bakers all the way, with all the strength of our class.

Unknown to many, the U.S. Labor Day holiday originated in Canada, but its original significance was turned on its head by U.S. bosses and their union flunkies. In Canada, workers launched it in the 1870s as part of the fight for the 9-hour day. A U.S. labor “leader” attended it in Toronto in 1882 and brought it back to the U.S. on September 5, 1882.

When the International Workingmen’s Association, led by Karl Marx, saluted the U.S. working-class’s May 1, 1886 general strike in Chicago for the 8-hour day by establishing May 1st as an international workers’ day, marches were held worldwide, including in the U.S.

Then May Day in the U.S. in1894 erupted in street battles between workers and cops, so two months later the bosses, fearing a militant workers’ movement, had the U.S. Congress establish Labor Day as a federal holiday on the first Monday in September that same year as an “answer” to May Day.

The first half of the 20th century saw militant May Days, most led by communists, drawing tens of millions around the world. In 1947, the U.S. Communist Party (CP) organized 250,000 to march in New York City. But soon the CP sold out its principles and abandoned May Day. However, in 1971, PLP picked up the banners of May Day and has organized marches every year since.

Meanwhile, the bosses’ Labor Day became a holiday completely bereft of any working-class content, mainly “saluting” the corrupt labor misleaders, servants of the bosses. Despite these fakers, and their counterparts internationally, May Day remains the true celebration of working-class solidarity and anti-racist unity, pointing towards a future of workers’ power when the bosses’ Labor Day will be tossed into the ashcan of history.

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.

Strike Diary: ‘Peaceman’ and ‘Hopeman’ — Gaza and Stella D’Oro

BRONX, NY, January 13 — Today, a multi-racial group of 500 Stella D’Oro strikers and supporters, including PLP’ers, marched to a Target store that’s selling scab-made cookies. In thinking about this strike, much in the world situation comes to mind: the economic meltdown, the imperialist oil wars, racist unemployment, and in particular, the Israeli invasion of Gaza and this strike — two sieges in a long class war — so this diary is dedicated to Peaceman and Hopeman, two friends on either side of the Gaza border who write a blog together: http://gaza-sderot.blogspot.com

They’re ordinary folks (Hopeman is a student who can’t get out of Gaza to attend his college), not very “political,” who maintain their friendship to have something to rebuild with when the war and siege forced on them are over. Of course that’s very political!

They’re showing how workers can build solidarity across borders, dodging Israeli bombs and Hamas rockets to find cell phone reception so they can talk, at least when Hopeman has enough electricity to charge his phone. Most of the Stella strikers who are becoming my friends are like that — they’re building a base for the future. Communism does that too.

Recently A. told a young teacher and community arts organizer (who’s planning a video documentary about the strike) that it was forced on the workers. The Israeli fascists and Hamas religious nationalists did the same thing to Palestinian and Israeli workers with their war.

But hidden behind the Israeli and Palestinian politicians who the bloggers despise are all the rival imperialists who’ve shaped the Middle East: the Ottoman emperors who ruled there until World War I; the British Mandate rulers who set up this impossible situation by guiding the founding of Israel as a European settler colony; the U.S. rulers funding Israel as their client state and military proxy; and all the others (the EU, Russia, China, Japan, Iran, India) feeling their way into a serious challenge to the declining U.S. empire.

Those same clashing imperialist elephants are trampling the grass in this bakery strike too, hard to see until some communist comes and talks it up. Three strikers are now reading the article “A Class Analysis of the Israel/Palestine Conflict” from PL’s journal “The Communist.”

Imperialist rivalry caused the economic crisis smashing into the Bronx bakers and also intensifies it. Brynwood Partners, which own Stella D’Oro, is a Wall Street speculator like those who brought us this deepening depression, a “vulture capitalist” who swoops down on struggling companies to strip and flip them for resale.

Economists call it “financialization,” turning real plants into fictitious capital and trading them like bad mortgages or baseball cards. The capitalist economic pressures that forced this strike are the same ones producing war in Gaza.

A. tells the young video artists the strike was forced on them, but there’s nothing forced about how these workers love and honor one another, just as no one is forcing or even organizing Peaceman and Hopeman to continue their blog. The strikers stick together, like Peaceman and Hopeman, so there’s something to rebuild with when the strike ends (win or lose). This solidarity grows from their working together so long, but it’s really for the future, as they pull on their long johns and layer up for picket duty on the five-month anniversary of their brave strike.

General Strike Jolts France: 2.5 Million Marchers Say Make the Bosses Take the Losses

SAINT-NAZAIRE, FRANCE, February 7 — On January 29, as part of a massive general strike of hundreds of thousands of workers, 2.5 million people marched for jobs and against government cutbacks in almost 200 cities across France, with 300,000 demonstrating in Paris and 200,000 in Marseilles.

At least 18,000 demonstrated in this ship-building port in western France. When the sub-prefect (the local representative of the national government) refused to receive a union delegation, protesters began throwing beer cans at the riot police protecting the sub-prefecture. When the police attacked with tear gas, workers tore down the entry gate and four hours of street fighting ensued. The cops injured a number of protesters, one seriously and rounded up 16 people, partly at random, some of whom have already been sentenced to jail.

The bosses in France are very nervous. Even the government’s under-stated figures show nine months of rising unemployment have left 2.1 million workers jobless, while another 2.8 million have given up finding a job. Result: a real unemployment rate of at least 17.5%!

This high unemployment has made workers anxious and angry, sparking this huge general strike and demonstrations called by eight union confederations. From 20% to 40% of public sector workers — hospital, telephone, postal and electric company workers and half or more of secondary and elementary school teachers — walked out.

All the major state radio networks shut down, and a third of television network workers struck. Almost one-third of flights from Orly airport were cancelled. Almost all the Paris commuter train workers, half the Métro (subway) workers and at least a third of urban transport workers in the rest of France went on strike.

In addition, unexpectedly large numbers of private-sector workers went out, in the banks, Renault auto plants and at Alcatel-Lucent (the world’s second-biggest telecommunications equipment-maker). Autoworkers completely shut down PSA’s Poissy and Rennes factories, and partly closed the Sochaux plant.

Private-sector workers do not enjoy the same job security as public workers and consequently strike less. Thus, many Auchan supermarket, Celanese chemicals, Dynastar ski, Ford auto, Free telecommunications and Tefal kitchenware workers used their holiday time to join the protest marches.

Many marchers bore signs saying, “Can you see this strike, you stupid jerk?” — a reference to French president Nicolas Sarkozy’s July statement that “nowadays, when there’s a strike in France, nobody notices” and his telling a farmer who refused to shake hands with him in February, 2008 to “beat it, you stupid jerk.”

As usual, union leaders here are tailing the militancy of the working class. The bosses wanted to reduce the duration of unemployment benefits. The signature of two trade unions was necessary for the measure to pass, so on February 2 the traitorous CFDT and CFE-CGC obliged the government and signed.

President Sarkozy responded to the workers’ strike with insult and scorn, reflecting the ruling class’s estimation that any deviation from the set course could lead to their losing control. In his February 5 speech, his “answer” to the general strike, Sarkozy offered another, 8-billion-euro tax break ($9.5 billion) to French bosses and told the working class he would continue to push through his neo-conservative counter-reforms, notably the non-replacement of half the public workers who retire. He announced a meeting with union leaders on February 18.

The more radical unions want to stage another strike and protest before the 18th, a move the conservative unions are resisting.

These struggles need to confront racism since police repression, mass unemployment, among other problems have hit non-white and immigrant workers here for a long time. International solidarity with strikers in Martinique and Guadeloupe must also be part of the struggle. In this age of endless imperialist wars and economic meltdown, this means developing a revolutionary anti-racist communist leadership of these militant struggles, breaking with the union misleaders and fake leftist electoral parties.

Teachers Shut Universities

On February 2, teachers struck at over half the 83 French universities on February 2, with the strike continuing and general assemblies being held on February 4 on many campuses. Students are gradually joining the protest movement.

The teachers are opposing counter-reforms which make it harder for members of the working class to become primary and secondary school teachers and give university presidents greater control over faculty working conditions and careers. These counter-reforms are the French enactment of a May, 2006 European Commission decision to force all European universities to serve the capitalist class more directly. A national university protest is scheduled for February 10

Strikers, PLP Agree: ‘MAKE THE BOSSES TAKE THE LOSSES’

BRONX, NY, January 26 — “It may be freezing…but they will not shut us down!” declared one Stella D’Oro striker. These bold workers just passed the 5-month mark of their strike. The vicious bosses, the private equity firm Brynwood Partners, have tried “…to slash these workers wages by 25%, do away with Saturday overtime and impose a new, crushing 20% employee contribution to worker health care benefits” (NY Daily News 1/22), plus eliminate four holidays, one week of vacation and all 12 paid sick days!

The strikers talk constantly about their hatred for the new owners, who broke up their lives trying to destroy the union and resell the plant as a low-wage, non-union operation. “We’re there to work hard, we didn’t want to be out here in the cold; they pushed us out the doors.”

Although these scumbag bosses have tried to bring the strikers to their knees, while replacing them with scabs (supposedly limited to two months), not one worker has crossed the picket line. “I agree that the best way to get them [the Brynwood bosses] where it hurts is by taking our labor power away from them,” one worker told a PLP teacher.

Class struggle is a harsh, punishing master of workers’ lives. It crashes into our lives in the form of wars and lockouts, layoffs and medical bills. And, in this case, racism, as the overwhelming majority of the strikers are black and Latino, super-oppressed by these bosses to rake in super-profits.

The strikers have no more health insurance. COBRA costs $1,200/month for family coverage. Applying for it doesn’t guarantee being accepted. Not having health insurance is a worry generally, but especially when you’re on picket duty in 21º weather.

“No contract, no cookies!” remains the slogan of 136 striking workers. “The support from people in the neighborhood has kept us going,” explained another striker as he took another stack of 40 CHALLENGES and placed them next to the coffee and donuts.

Within minutes most workers picked them up and began reading. “I like this paper!” exclaimed one striker. She said, “It really talks about fighting back!” She then asked if PL would help them build for their march and rally at Target here on January 31. They thanked us again for raising $5,000 dollars for their local. We said we’d try to announce the march at the next teachers union Delegate Assembly and ask for more money to support their strike. In addition to bringing the usual coffee and donuts, we also donated a bunch of hand- and foot-warmers.

“A” is one of the most active strikers, a modest guy who’s also a natural workers’ leader, leading by example. When we first met him last October, he was distributing flyers on the picket line and did so whenever the union brought some. They stopped coming a long time ago and few got printed anyway — no resources. The International gives nothing beyond strike pay. They had the gall to offer the Local a loan at interest rates higher than a bank’s!

When discussing the risk of getting sick on these four-hour mid-winter shifts, “A” told us he’d gone to a clinic run by the Espada family of Bronx politicians, seeking the free care that Espada, Sr. had promised the strikers at a rally. At the clinic Espada, Jr. became very hostile: “How do I know my father told you that? Do you have it in writing? Where’s the paper? Why has no one else come in?” So there was no free care, only insults. “A” turned his back on Espada and left.

He says “bad people” provoked the strike, people so greedy they’re crazed, almost inhuman: “Why do they want more, more, more when they’re already rich? Why do they want to ruin our lives for a few more dollars? Why are they like that?”

When the cops made the strikers tear down their well-made protective tarp and dump their chairs; when they refused a permit for a warming van; when Brynwood owner Hank Hartung lied and had a striker arrested and jailed for five days on a charge that has little chance of sticking in court — why are they like that? Is this just how people are? No, it’s capitalism as a system.

When talking to “A” about it, it feels good to be a communist, with a Party that’s studied these things and a tradition going back 160 years. Maybe “A” will join PLP in the future, take communist ideas and run with them and bring his leadership ability into the Party and the class war way beyond one strike and one company and one bosses’ nation.

Maybe along the road to revolution these strikers will join hands with workers in Israel and Gaza, and “the workers of the world will rise again.” Then the mystery of why bosses and cops and politicians and International union officials are like that will become clear to them all.
Many of the strikers openly support the slogan, “Make the bosses take the losses!”

France: Workers Must Unite Immigrants, Youth in Looming General Strike

PARIS, January 24 — A 24-hour general strike called by eight trade union confederations is set to rock France. Both government and private-sector workers are likely to participate in large numbers. Demands include: limiting job cuts; reducing income from stocks and bonds to increase wages; changing European Union policy to bolster consumption, the welfare state, and social housing; and regulating international finance.

These tepid reformist demands show that, in the name of “unity,” the most radical confederations are once again lining up behind the lowest common denominator acceptable to the right-wing unions. Even in their independent position statements, the radical unions go no further than calling for renewing the general strike, day by day, and “refusing to pay for the capitalist crisis.”

All this is a far cry from what workers here really need: revolutionary leadership to overthrow capitalism and establish communist workers’ rule.
In addition to private-sector workers in the metal trades, mining, banking, telecommunications and retailing, public workers in health, rail and urban transport, the post office, gas and electricity and education will join the strike.

The January 29 walkout will also hit the campuses, where teachers and researchers are feeling the lash of an increasingly authoritarian government. In December, French president Nicolas Sarkozy increased his control over the broadcast media. This month he shattered illusions of “judicial impartiality” by eliminating the examining magistrates who supposedly counter-balance executive power. Now he’s moving to bring the education system under greater autocratic control.

This constitutes a three-pronged attack: (1) changing the status of faculty, (2) changing the recruitment of primary and secondary school teachers, and (3) reinforcing religious education.

Previously, all faculty pursued research and teaching in equal measure. Now university presidents will use their new powers under last year’s LRU law to give the “best minds” more time for research and administrative tasks, while the others take up the slack and teach longer hours. Thus the presidents will be able to advance teachers who side with the bosses.

In the past, many teaching positions were filled by national competitive exams. Successful candidates were then paid during one year of teacher training. Now, three roadblocks will make it harder for working-class people to become teachers: (1)candidates will have to write a master’s thesis while studying for the competitive exam (difficult if you’re working to pay your way through school — as do 70% of the students in the working-class Paris suburbs, many of whom are of North or sub-Saharan African origin); (2) candidates’ “files” (their social background), will become a selection criterion, in addition to exam results; and (3) there will be no paid year of teacher training.

Before, the French government did not recognize diplomas awarded by Vatican-controlled universities on a par with those from state universities. Now a treaty with the Vatican will allow conservative Catholic institutions to play a bigger role in shaping the French “meritocracy.”

The situation on the campuses is a microcosm of French society. With inter-imperialist rivalry mounting in recent years, the French bosses have steadily increased their state’s capacity to regiment and control society. This accelerated with the May 2007 election of President Sarkozy. Now the financial and economic crises are pushing the bosses to move even faster, with full-blown fascism becoming an increasingly probable outcome.

In the past, the union leaders and many workers have looked the other way while immigrant workers and youth from the former French colonies in Africa suffered police terror and racist super-exploitation. The lack of anti-racist unity with these immigrant workers and youth has weakened ALL workers. The best outcome that can emerge from this general strike and many other struggles is the building of an anti-racist, multi-ethnic revolutionary leadership to fight the sharper attacks the working class is facing. That’s the road that will lead to building a society without any racist bosses: communism!

Organize School Strike; Don’t Pay for Bosses’ Crisis

LOS ANGELES, November 20 — The LA teachers’ union and the board of education are in endless negotiations. Superintendent Brewer has sent out a memo to all employees saying that “without substantial, systematic, responsible District-wide cuts and help from Sacramento, Los  Angeles United School District (LAUSD) will not be able to make payroll by the end of the school year.” They have instituted a freeze on field trips and purchases of school supplies. Brewer demands sacrifice from teachers: a sacrifice of our families’ health benefits, of the reduction in class size won last year, of a cost-of-living increase. He says, “Crises demand focus and unity of purpose” — while he’s making $300,000 a year, we should take these cuts lying down.

The bosses’ economy is in crisis, the inevitable result of the capitalist system, a crisis that leads inevitably to depression and world war among rival imperialists. (See article, page 8.)

Billions are spent on oil wars, and to bail out bankers while we face deeper attacks on clinics, libraries, schools and the community college, state college and University of California system.

A system that removes hard-working people from their homes and jobs and cuts back education and healthcare while increasing spending on cops, prisons and the military must be destroyed!

The sellout union leadership moans about the crisis and tells us not to expect too much! Their plan is “Faxing the Facts” of district waste to the Board of Education. They say nothing about mobilizing the members to join with students and parents to fight the district’s blatant attack on the working class to pay for the bosses’ crisis!

At local area meetings we said “organize for a strike: we shouldn’t have to pay for the bosses’ crisis” and received a lot of support. Many teachers were disgusted by the union leaders’ passivity, and spoke so strongly that a union leader at one meeting was forced to pretend to support a strike as well. We said that understanding the nature of the crisis and the failure of the capitalist system will give teachers and other workers the understanding and commitment to fight for their class. During this crisis we’ve increased CHALLENGE distribution to teachers, staff and students, and linked the need for a strike to the need to build the long-term struggle for workers’ power.

In organizing with students against these cutbacks, we’re building unity between students and teachers. The union plans a picket line on December 10 at the local district offices to expose the district’s waste. We’re encouraging students and teachers to go to these rallies to fight for a strike against the cutbacks and for a long-term struggle for communist revolution. The main victory is the unity and confidence to build a struggle against the whole capitalism system which means getting closer to putting an end to capitalism once and for all and building a new, communist world.

PL’er Spurs Union Backing of Stella D’Oro Strikers

The Local 1199 SEIU Healthcare Workers East Delegates’ Assembly unanimously passed a resolution to support the Stella D’Oro bakery strikers, as part of the PLP initiative to build working-class unity and support for striking workers. The Delegates’ Assembly agreed to send a contribution to the bakers’ local and encourage workers to visit their picket lines at the Bronx bakery.

After hearing that the bakery was employing scabs to break the strike, demanding huge wage-cuts, and is victimizing a group of largely Latino women and minority workers, several workers got up to second the resolution. The SEIU leadership had spent the previous hour and a half extolling the virtues of the Obama electoral campaign.

The PLP delegate introducing the Stella D’Oro resolution had been in Pennsylvania with the Obama campaign working to build ties with co-workers and other union delegates and to expose the dead-end of building capitalism to fight racism. He prefaced the resolution by stating that what struck him most during his time with the Obama campaign was when he saw a white working-class family in Chester, PA pulling up in a station wagon to a black family’s home to spend the day together. He remarked that “Change comes from the workers, not from the top.”

This resolution is only a first step. Building the close ties with co-workers and other union members is essential to advancing the basic truth that the only solution is communist revolution. We are in the process of building our CHALLENGE networks and having our readers become distributors of PLP’s ideas.

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.