About 32,000 members of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAM) struck Boeing on September 13. The strike began after 96 percent of the members voted to reject a tentative agreement that failed to make up for a decade of lost wages or restore members’ pensions, while Boeing sits on $12.6 Billion cash-on-hand (The Nation) As we go to press, Boeing strikers have been joined by 45,000 dock workers, members of the International Longshoremen's Association (ILA) who are on strike for the first time in 50 years.
Building communism through strike action
As the crisis of this system gives way to WWIII and fascism grows we must double down on our efforts and struggle mightily to grow our presence in transit and industry to deepen our coworkers’ political understanding and getting our class siblings strike-ready while at the same time promoting transit-rider-dockworker-plant worker solidarity, winning our class siblings to communist ideas. In Progressive Labor Party (PLP) we say strikes are schools for building communism. Strikes help our class realize the enormous power and potential to shut the system down and bring capital to its knees. From every dock, shipping lane, and manufacturing plant, to transit industrial workers armed with communist ideas will help bring our class closer to smashing capitalism once and for all!
Billions for imperialist bosses, nada for workers
While Biden/Harris and Congress throw billions at the war industry and the imperialist supply chain for wars around the world to prop up their empire, workers are feeling restless and are in motion. In the past year, we have seen workers strike or threaten to strike on the railroads, at UPS, in auto, in the hotel industry, and a four-month strike of actors and screenwriters to name a few. Like the wildfires in California, the bosses, politicians, and union leaders are doing everything they can to make sure these fires don’t connect.
Boeing workers have been trapped in a sellout contract since 2013, when Boeing demanded $8.7 billion in tax breaks from Washington State and major concessions from the workers, despite recording record profits at the time. If the politicians and union leaders didn’t meet their demands, Boeing threatened to move thousands of production jobs out of state. They got what they wanted. The Democratic Party controlled state legislature gave Boeing the largest tax break in U.S. history, and the IAM leadership pushed through a 10-year contract that froze pensions for current workers and eliminated them for all new-hires while cutting pay. Boeing rewarded them by cutting over 12,000 jobs anyway.
Turn imperialist war into class war!
Boeing & Co. have not just been waging war around the world, they are waging war against workers in the U.S. as well. With more than 75,000 industrial workers on strike and wars dramatically escalating in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, now would be the perfect time for the U.S. labor leaders and AFL-CIO to call a general strike against wars abroad and war at home, linking the struggles from Seattle to Gaza and Beirut. But don’t hold your breath. The current union leadership is supporting the war makers, even as some pay lip service for a ceasefire.
We can do better. We urge all of our members and friends to walk the Boeing and ILA picket lines wherever possible. Try to get your co-workers and union members to join you. Organize discussions in school and on campus, linking the buildup to imperialist war to the sharpening class struggle. In other words, build communist consciousness and the Progressive Labor Party wherever we are. A fighting working class is opening the door.
