- Information
On the Job Report: Uber Workers’ Confidence Soars Through Struggle
- Information
- 17 January 2016 33 hits
I recently participated in my first job action, helping organize bike messengers for Uber RUSH, a delivery network the on-demand company started in New York City in April 2014.
Since I joined RUSH last year, Uber has constantly cut messenger rates. They justified these cuts by saying more customers would use RUSH because it is cheaper, meaning more money.
Uber’s drivers—largely African and Middle-Eastern men who left their cab jobs for Uber’s promise of higher wages in less hours—have experienced the same racist cuts under the same premise, and have to work much longer hours now to make ends meet.
NYC messengers in general are young Black and Latin workers. Bike messenger work is dangerous. We constantly have to navigate crazy traffic, potholed streets and overzealous kkkops giving us motor vehicle tickets to generate profit for the bosses. Most messengers work as independent contractors, meaning they receive no benefits (i.e. health insurance, disability, unemployment).
In mid-November, nine RUSH messengers confronted RUSH’s manager at Uber’s Manhattan office, demanding he release tips owed to the fleet: literally wage theft!
One messenger even threatened him with a chair if he kept ignoring them! Later that day, the manager announced Uber would dispense the tips. That showed the power workers have when we unite against the bosses!
The messenger who lead this action announced the strike for December 1. He created a Facebook page promoting it. The plan was for all RUSH messengers to take no jobs for the entire day, then show up at the office in the afternoon to make our demands clear.
Though I found out about the action days later, I sprang into action, leafleting with our list of demands from a post on the FB page.
I held routine conversations with other messengers about how capitalism exploits us as workers and Uber is making money off our efforts. This demanded the need for us to fight back!
I underestimated how much organizing comes into a successful strike. Fourteen days was too little time. Worse, we never held meetings before the action. This meant our “strike” was a disjointed effort that didn’t resonate well.
Most people who clicked “Going” on the FB page didn’t show up. While Facebook can be a organizing tool, it will never replace building true interpersonal relationships with workers.
Uber, in an attempt to curb the strike, offered an extra $50 bribe to messengers who completed five runs that day.
The RUSH manager heard our case in the office before stating the original rates were too expensive for the company to keep up with its massive delivery fleet, and quickly left.
Though I distributed a few CHALLENGEs, I felt upset. Self-critically, I began calling the workers sellouts. Thankfully, fellow comrades struggled with me to understand why that was the wrong line and why this action failed.
I have learned much from this experience.
Paramount is that we should not blame workers, whose minds have been poisoned by capitalist individualism and passivity. And that these actions need real organizing.
But I am making progress. One person I gave CHALLENGE to was turned out to be already familiar with and receptive to the paper. Even better, I gained the courage during this struggle to openly reveal to another worker that I’m a communist—another first for me.
I plan on forming better relationships with my co-workers, and get them to understand that communism is the ultimate solution to this garbage system.
Though I am generally asocial, I’m struggling to change that. Hopefully, I’ll make things happen.
- Information
On the Job Report: Electrical Workers Call Out Sexist Bosses
- Information
- 17 January 2016 34 hits
I work for a private electrical contractor as a “helper.” I run wires, work on live circuits, break down walls and the like. I’ve been in this field for two years and nothing about it has been easy. I’m in a field with a group of international workers, from China to Ghana, who are all being screwed over by the boss. Despite our terrible wages, many of these workers still suffer from capitalist ideologies. One of those ideas is sexism.
While we’ve had many conversations on the job, many of my co-workers are influenced by the foreman—a real sexist pig, to put it mildly. When you’re green like myself, you get teased a lot and the foreman loves picking on me. For one, he thinks that all wives cheat on their spouses. I told him, “No, not in my marriage.”
When you’re in a relationship where you share not just your bodies but also your minds, politics, hopes and fears, there’s nothing that could break that trust. He told me, “You’ll see when James comes.” (“James” is the equivalent of the milkman joke that exploits the fear of adultery.)
“Why is that?” I asked.
“Because you look like your woman wears the pants. I bet when you come in, you say, ‘Honey can I have some sex, please? No! Oh, okay then.’”
By that time, a big crowd had formed. I told the foreman that my wife isn’t my property and I understand when she isn’t in the mood. The foreman shouted, “When I’m ready, she has to be ready!”
I said, “That’s horrible,” and walked away.
“Because I’m a man!” I heard him shout in the distance.
Later, on the train ride home with one of my co-workers, I asked what he thought. “I don’t know, man,” he said. I told him that I thought the foreman sounded like a rapist. My co-worker just laughed and looked away. I thought that maybe his response showed that he was afraid of saying something against the foreman, or, worse, that he might feel that type of behavior is okay.
Contracting is traditionally a male-dominated field, and there were no women present at the worksite. It’s an environment that breeds sexist, misogynist, disgusting ideas about women. Under communism, we would have a different kind of workplace. We won’t be segregated by race, sex or sexual orientation. Working people will just work together, without foremen.
The next day, to my surprise, a co-worker approached me and said he really admired and respected the way I handled myself, and that I didn’t have to disrespect my wife to do so. When you fight sexism, your co-workers will pay attention and might even take your anti-sexist cue. Today, we argued with the foreman over his sexism till he walked away (see more next issue). This co-worker is now my friend and a CHALLENGE reader.
I learned many things from this small struggle—most of all, that we must not give in to capitalist ideas. We must stay confident in our Party’s anti-sexist, anti-racist line. The working class is listening, and ready to strike back!
BROOKLYN, January 8—Teachers and their friends had a delicious dinner and an even more scintillating conversation about possible presidential candidate Bernie Sanders and the current elections. This teacher discussion group was focused on the how elections are used by capitalism. We began by discussing how things were going in each other’s schools, getting to know one another, and introducing ourselves. This was the second time for most that they were all meeting, but there were some new people for the first time. We all watched a video on Trump from The Guardian and read CHALLENGE’s July 2015 editorial that discussed Sanders in depth.
One parent, also a school psychologist, provided some insight into the current contradictions in schools when she said that “some kids just aren’t ready for college.” This led into a fruitful discussion about how bosses use education to sort out the working class. Though Sanders promised free college tuition to those who earned the right to go to college, this would actually be used to reinforce the idea that those who didn’t make it into college deserve the struggles, oppression, and exploitation that they get. We identified this policy as racist, because primarily Black and Latin students are excluded from college.
We then connected free college to imperialist war. How? In order to pay for college tuition, Sanders would have to discipline the rich and effectively raise taxes. That way, when the time comes for imperialist war with China and Russia, the U.S. will have the money to fix the U.S.’s failing infrastructure and fund the military. So, if Sanders ever actually provided free college tuition, it may benefit the working class some, but it would actually benefit the bosses more in the long run.
With this in mind, we continued by discussing who was the bigger danger for the working class: a gutter racist like Trump or a left-leaning liberal like Bernie Sanders.
On the surface, it seems that Trump is the main danger. He whips up racism and openly talks about deporting millions of immigrants. A teacher and friend of the Party said that Sanders made a lot of promises and had a lot of appeal, followed up by another friend who said that he gave her hope. A PL’er countered that he still served the ruling class and was a career politician. When it was brought up that he didn’t want to take the Super Pac money, we discussed that he was doing this in order to build his image as against corporations. This is no different than some rappers who refused to sign to a major label in order to maintain his “cred” and ultimately continue to sell lots of albums the way that he had been. Sanders Sanders will not fight against the Democratic Party in the interests of the working class when the rich will be the ones financing him and putting him in the White House. Rather, he will play right into their hands: he pacifies the working class and gets them to work within the system, all the while building for imperialist war.
One PL’er highlighted that Bernie Sanders does not have a pro-worker history. His voting record is not anti-war. Sanders had anti-war protesters arrested when they occupied his office as they were protesting his support for the Bill Clinton’s bombing of Kosovo. He also supports the apartheid state of Israel. In fact, Sanders wants to be commander-in-chief of the most powerful military responsible for millions of deaths in Iraq, Syria, Mexico, El Salvador, Haiti, Vietnam, and so many other countries.
Many well-meaning anti-racists are lining up to support Sanders because they see him as the lesser evil. CHALLENGE was a major instrument in unmasking Sanders as yet another tool of the imperialists during our discussion. Though not every person there was convinced of the need to build for communist revolution by joining PLP, they did agree to come to our next discussion in February. Small Victory! By getting teachers to consistently come and discuss these important political ideas, we will eventually be able to solidify our understanding of the world as well. We have much to learn from our friends just as they have much to learn from us.
All politicians are masters of war, or aspiring to be. “Come you masters of war, you that hide behind desks. I just want you to know I can see through your masks” Sanders is just another politician in a long line of misleaders who wears a worker-friendly mask. Support working-class struggle, not politicians and their war agendas. Learn to fight, fight to learn!
BOSTON—Black, Latin and immigrant students from working class families at a small urban community college in Boston are experiencing sharpening racist attack. The U.S. capitalists’ imperialist war machine is taking money away from workers’ education now, and soon it will try to take their lives in the coming imperialist wars. Community colleges, with their disproportionate percentage of Black, Latin and immigrant workers, are on the front line of these imperialist cuts!
Racist Farce of ‘Workforce Development’
College courses that do not serve the bosses’ agenda to train unskilled, obedient workers are considered “inappropriate” and not in alignment with the curriculum at the community college level.
In the U.S., many students come to community colleges to gain entrance to a four-year university in the hopes of achieving the racist capitalist illusion of the “American Dream.” This is a tool of division the bosses used to strengthen apartheid. Workers blame themselves when they can’t overcome the systematic racist, sexist conditions of capitalism. It pacifies them into studying their way out of the working class, instead of organizing against the bosses.
Today, four-year graduates are no longer in great demand and the trend is against encouraging working class students to actively pursue a four-year degree. Nowadays, the meaning of “workforce development” is code for “close the gateway” to the four year colleges and universities. Degree programs that provide access to four-year schools are being starved as budget cuts continue.
Working class access to public higher education has been decreasing dramatically. In this small urban community college in Boston, a course in science research was allowed to run with three to five students for individual instruction on science research projects. The program was a highly successful, and produced student winning national academic awards at undergraduate conferences. Recently, the course was shut down to save money—mainly because it could not meet the college administration’s cutoff of about ten students per section. Students rallied last spring to save this and other courses cut, gathering over 300 signatures in a petition. A small victory may be that the course may be allowed to run again in the spring of 2016—but the challenge to prepare at least 10 students for the course and maintain high quality instruction with so many students remains.
Internationalizing the Struggle
Historically, the role of the universities and colleges in the U.S. is to serve the ruling class need to maintain social control and to support their imperialist war agenda. In the 1970s, the urban community colleges were utilized to quell future urban rebellions. They used community colleges to win Black, Latin and white workers the “American Dream” left behind to support capitalism. Today, in face of the challenges to U.S. imperialism, a new agenda has emerged: train working class youth for low-skill, low level manual labor jobs that have little job security and/or require unreasonable work and obedience to the system. This leaves many urban youth struggling with dead-end dreams, low-income jobs, less control over their lives, and open targets for the U.S. military’s recruitment efforts.
Students at this college gained practical experience in this science course, and a chance to develop critical thinking skills to help them achieve a deeper level of learning in the sciences.
Fighting back in organizing an anti-racist student movement is a science too! This year, no education cuts were announced in South Africa, after massive strikes and demonstrations rocked the liberal misleadership on their heels. In Chicago, high school teachers have overwhelmingly voted to authorize another strike against racism, while in New York City and California, students, professors and staff may declare strikes this spring. Capitalism will never educate the majority of workers. We need to unite workers and students together to fight not just these attacks on the ability to learn, but against capitalism itself!
- Information
MLA Conference: PL’ers to Spur Class Struggle in Academia
- Information
- 10 January 2016 33 hits
Members and friends of PLP in the Radical Caucus of the Modern Language Association (MLA) will be doing important political work at the annual MLA convention in Austin, TX on January 6-10,2016. Brutal budget cuts, involuntary “furloughs,” rapidly rising tuition, threats to academic freedom, increasing pauperization of non-tenure track faculty: these are the consequences of cutbacks and escalating Middle East wars.
The annual convention of the MLA, the professional organization of teachers of language and literature, brings together over 8,000 professors, graduate students and adjuncts—most seriously affected by the current crisis. Many tenured professors face stagnant incomes or pay cuts and threatened or actual closings of humanities departments.
The non-tenure track teachers who staff most college-level writing, language and literature courses are hurt more by the attacks. Working for as little as $2,500 per semester course, disproportionately female, these super-exploited academic laborers—often excellent and committed teachers—have little or no chance of ever obtaining adequately-compensated or secure work. These attacks on education workers are also attacks on the students they serve.
For Ph.D. graduate students, the MLA Convention is known as the “meat market.” Many go to great expense to send resumes and travel to the convention to interview for the shrinking number of tenure-track jobs.
The Radical Caucus will protest the current assault on public higher education. Three-quarters of all US academics teach off the tenure track, earning less than a living wage usually with no health care, sick days, unemployment, or retirement benefits.
The context for these drastic cutbacks in Higher Education is the attack on the working class nationally and internationally:
- The US and NATO continue imperialist, murderous wars. The US would like to invade the Middle East but can’t afford to do so right now. Politicians build anti-Arab and anti-Muslim racism. Thin turn breeds more racism, making it hard for US rulers to field an army depending largely on Black and Latin soldiers.
- The unprecedented attack on women’s reproductive rights – anti-abortion bills in many states and attacks on Planned Parenthood – shows that the Pentagon's decision to allow women in “combat roles” is not a victory for women’s equality but part of the imperialist strategy.
- The “Trans-Pacific Partnership” (TPP) is a declaration of trade war against China and Russia. Can a shooting war be far behind? A recent headline on Russia’s Sputnik News reads: “You Want War? Russia Is Ready for War.”
The American Dream is a pile of dust for some, a nightmare for many. One in 4 American children are on food stamps; 1 in 7 Americans overall.
But mass opposition is growing: demonstrations across the country against rising tuition and racism on campus, including multiracial protests on campuses and in communities against police brutality. The “Boycott-Divest-Sanction” movement against Israeli and US imperialist killing and oppression of Palestinians is growing in professional organizations. PLP has been in the forefront of the protests against police killings across country, including in Ferguson MO and NYC. PLP is also active at the City University of New York (CUNY), where a strike movement is growing.
The voice and aim of the Radical Caucus is a call to action. The RC is considering emergency resolutions: criticizing the governor of Texas for barring Syrian immigrants; opposing attacks on Muslims; against Supreme Court Justice Scalia’s suggestion that Black students are not qualified to attend university; against the “campus carry” laws permitting concealed guns on college campuses; the consequences of all these hurts education.
Everywhere and always, we must support students, especially in anti-racist struggles, the blocking of tuition increases, and the continued super-exploitation of adjunct faculty. We must point out the threat of imperialist and inter-imperialist was. The capitalist system is built on exploitation and can never be reformed to provide a decent life for working people and intellectuals. We stress the need for communist revolution, based in the international working-class.
The MLA Executive Council has made it much harder to get such resolutions approved in recent years. But the ongoing struggle to get the MLA to oppose the imperialist racism of the U.S. government is crucially important. We will continue to struggle with our friends in the Radical Caucus to set forth these or other issues in a principled, forceful, and comradely way.
PLP members in the MLA will be distributing CHALLENGE and participating in the activities of the Radical Caucus, which has emerged as a home for the many leftist humanities professors and graduate students who attend the convention. As the class struggle on college campuses gets more intense, communist teachers and students have an increasingly vital role to play.