WESTERN CAPE PROVINCE, SOUTH AFRICA, January 12 — Thousands of farm workers toiling in this area’s vineyards and on grape and fruit farms have been wildcatting since October 30, demanding doubling of their starvation wages. The region is of huge financial importance to both wine production and tourism, but the farm workers still feel the brunt of Apartheid abuses, which is netting huge profits for the vineyard owners, in a $3.3 billion industry.
The strikers have clashed with bosses, scabs, private security goons and the police who have fired rubber bullets at the workers and called in helicopters for reinforcements. But the workers have answered back.
In the town of Grabow the strikers armed with clubs have been fighting running battles with riot cops. They have barricaded key highways to cause maximum disruption and to prevent scabs from getting to the farms. It was only when they set fire to bushes, caravans, bulldozers and police cars that the government began to pay attention.
The strikers blocked the major highway running through DeDoorms, hurling stones. The town is in the center of one of the biggest vineyard areas producing for the grape export industry. On January 9, the wildcatters burnt tires and cars and threw stones at the police firing tear gas and rubber bullets. The battle closed the main highway linking Cape Town and Johannesburg.
The workers are demanding a wage hike to $17.65 per day, more than double their current $8 daily wage. One worker told Reuters he had worked on the farms since the 1970s when the daily wage was 45 rand [$5]. “Now we get 65 rand [$8]. What is that?” he said. “We want 150 rand [$17.65].”
 A strike leader, Shaun Janca, told the Daily Maverick, “We work our whole lives but still we have nothing.”
The area is one of the most affluent and financially viable produce areas in the country but pay the workers hunger wages. An August 2011 report from Human Rights Watch detailed the horrendous working and living conditions practiced by local farm owners: housing unfit for living; exposure to fertilizers and pesticides without proper safety equipment; lack of access to water while working in dehydrating conditions; lack of toilet facilities; threats of evictions and pressure on workers to stop them from joining unions.
The bosses also hire immigrant workers from outside the country who often don’t have passports. This enables profit-hungry farm owners to super-exploit a vulnerable migrant labor force and set them against local workers.
This uprising follows on the heels of widespread strikes of platinum miners and truckers who suffer from similar conditions and battled for some of the same demands several months ago, seeing the cops murder 34 of their brothers. South Africa is seething from the continuation of the Apartheid of the old white regime that is now run by the African National Congress government. Black oppressors have joind white ones and capitalism’s racist exploitation reigns on. A strike leader told the BBC that they have been met with nothing but “naked racism and white arrogance.”
Such militant struggle by these farm workers needs to be turned into class struggle against the whole racist capitalist system to emancipate the working class from the hell of the profit system.

NEW YORK CITY, January 16 — The worldwide capitalist system is facing an economic crisis that the bosses are trying to solve on the backs of workers. Here, this means high unemployment, hospital and school closings and attacks against many of the few remaining good-paying jobs. Therefore, it’s significant that 8,800 school bus drivers and matrons are striking against cutbacks by New York’s ruling class.
Billionaire Mayor Bloomberg and Chancellor Walcott pretend to care about students, but their lies shine through, given that they’ve slashed the budget for public schools. Furthermore, Bloomberg has overseen attacks on city workers, higher transit fares and less funding for hospitals — all of which means that the entire working class will suffer. Meanwhile the city spared no expense in getting Wall Street back up and running after hurricane Sandy. In this context, it’s a great thing that bus drivers and matrons are standing strong.
This strike should be viewed as a good thing for students. When workers stand up and resist, we are teaching young people about the importance of not accepting capitalism’s injustices. A school bus strike has not occurred in NYC since 1979. When workers don’t resort to strikes, it only encourages the bosses to take more from us. Only when we strike do we force them to recognize our importance, that it’s we workers who produce all value. And we remind ourselves and the next generation of our potential power.
It is no mere coincidence that the city government’s attempt to open up city contracts affects mainly black and Latino workers and students. Capitalism’s racist nature means that in times of crisis it is black and Latino workers who suffer the most. In employment, health care and education, racism acts to super-exploit a section of the working class. Bloomberg & Co.’s attempts to undermine bus driver/matron job security will make school bus companies places with higher turnover and unsafe conditions. The bosses hope this will then weaken unions and reduce wages.
Unfortunately, even if this strike forces the bosses to concede the workers’ current demands, more fights lie ahead. No matter what gains unions and social movements achieve under capitalism, the bosses will always use their state power to take them back. This is because their system is inherently unstable and competitive. When the economy crashes, workers are expected to pay the price. The constant competition among the bosses in the U.S., China and Europe leads to wars worldwide over oil, markets and other resources. This then spells more cutbacks for publically funded workers here. This is the future that capitalism offers workers of the world: war and poverty.
 That is why the Progressive Labor Party fights for communism. We want to build a world free of the bosses and their exploitation. We want to smash racism, the main tool of the bosses to maintain their power. As we encourage all New Yorkers to stand in solidarity with the striking bus workers, we invite you to join us.

CHICAGO, January 3 — Racist police terror is a tool of the bosses to keep workers under control. Cops only serve and protect the capitalist class. On December 15, the Chicago kkkops shot and murdered 23-year-old Jamaal Moore. After crashing Jamaal’s car, the cops shot the young man twice in the back — all while the entire community watched in horror.
CPD (Chicago Police Department) claims he was involved with an armed robbery. Yet Jamaal was unarmed. His “gun” turned out to be a flashlight. The police murdered Jamaal in cold blood because capitalism does not value the lives of workers. These racist cops will continue to get away with murder until we smash capitalism and establish a communist society run by and for the working class.
This racist murder did not go unanswered; a rebellion ensued as residents threw bottles, bricks, rocks and whatever they could lay their hands on.  They smashed police car windows and forced the cops to retreat. After Jamaal was murdered, the community made a memorial at the scene, which the CPD have torn down multiple times. One plan of action is to rebuild the memorial and add to it during our weekly rallies.
In response to Jamaal’s murder, PLP has been holding weekly rallies and CHALLENGE sales on the corner where Jamaal was gunned down. We have met dozens of workers who witnessed the police killing and are furious at the constant harassment and mistreatment they face from these racist police. We are in contact with workers who are eager to organize for a better world because they recognize that this system has nothing but misery to offer. One young worker said, “We are like prey out here.” We are organizing these workers to continue the fight-back that they started and advance the struggle with the communist idea to take state power away from the bosses who use the police to brutalize and murder our class. We recognize that police murders occur not only in the black and Latino neighborhoods of Chicago but also worldwide. In 2012 alone, thousands of families have been victimized by these racist killings, including:
Manuel Diaz (Anaheim, CA)
Stephon Watts (Calumet City, IL)
Reynaldo Cuevas (Bronx, NY)
Shantel Davis (Brooklyn, NY)
Damael D’Haiti (Port-au-Price, Haiti)
Ramarley Graham (Bronx, NY)
These crimes by the police must end, but the racist court system will never bring us the justice we need. We must give everyone, not just the few, a chance at a better life. Only through struggle and communist revolution will this change.
PLP is helping to lead fight-backs against the police and the rich masters they serve. Racist terror is an integral part of capitalism; it is how the bosses keep us workers divided, scared, and submissive. Exploitation, racism and sexism are intrinsic to capitalism. In a communist society those things would be illegal and punishable. PLP is organizing workers to destroy this system to replace it with a communist society.

ALGIERS, January 11 — Ninety-five percent of Algeria’s postal workers are defying the government and continuing their illegal wildcat strike for the twelfth straight day. They’re demanding the firing of both the general director of Algérie Poste and the general secretary of the official trade union, an affiliate of the General Union of Algerian Workers (UGTA).
The strikers are demanding payment of a 30% wage hike due since January 1, 2008; payment of overtime hours worked in 2011; respect for all the demands won in their June 2011 strike; payment of the 2011 bonus; a wage raise and an investigation of Mohamed Laid Mahloul’s mismanagement, particularly of the promotions granted since he became general director. Eighty percent of the 30,000 postal workers say they’ve not received promotions due them.
The postal strike could seriously affect the functioning of the nation. Over two million retirees receive their retirement checks through the postal service. Some 13 million people of the country’s 34 million bank at the postal offices.
On January 10, post offices remained closed, without even minimum service. Strikers ignored repeated calls by the UGTA, the only union the government recognizes, to return to work. Promises by the minister for the postal service to carry out the January 7 agreement between the government and the UGTA fell on deaf ears.
“We’re fed up with ‘we’re going to do this, we’re going to do that.’ It’s been going on for years, and today, we want something concrete and not press releases,” a striker shouted at a January 10 rally outside the Grande Poste, an Algiers landmark.
A strikers’ committee is supposed to meet with ministry officials on January 12 but the minister won’t be there. “No, he doesn’t have the time,” the workers said. “He prefers to go to the Club des pins [the exclusive, tightly guarded Algiers luxury beachfront].”
People who believed the false information about the strike’s effect broadcast by national and local radio stations were frustrated at finding the Ain Defla city post office closed, but they expressed their solidarity with the strikers and held the government responsible. One person shouted:  “They should give the workers their rights and stop penalizing the users!”
 On January 9, hundreds of postal workers from every corner of Algeria demonstrated in front of the Grande Poste, chanting “We are workers, we are not thieves!” Workers were continuing their sit-in. Strikers were waving signs and engaging in lively discussion with the public.
“By manipulating the media and public opinion, they’re setting the citizens against us,” a 40-year-old postal worker said indignantly. “Management makes us seem irresponsible and lazy!”
The postal ministry and the UGTA keep saying the conflict is “settled, that “major advances have been chalked up” and that demands will be met, but the strikers view these as empty promises since government ministers are implicated in widespread corruption while enjoying total immunity. That’s why postal workers insist that the corrupt general director of Algérie Poste and the corrupt general secretary of the postworkers’ union resign.
The strikers refuse to be bought off with the January 7 agreement that granted the 2011 bonus, promotions due them and a $382 “encouragement” bonus if the workers returned. They have been lied to time after time.
The militancy and defiance of the government by the wildcatting strikers is to be applauded. Their walkout and resulting shutdown of the postal service only proves that without the working class capitalism cannot function. But since the capitalists hold state power, any reforms the strikers do win are subject to be taken away, whether through higher taxes, layoffs or privatization or any of the myriad of ways the bosses can manipulate their system.
As long as the profit system exists, workers will find themselves in a continuous struggle to keep their heads above water. Only the complete destruction of this hellish system and creation of a worker-controlled society — communism — will free the working class from this exploitative treadmill.
Late Bulletin, January 13 — Strikers ended their 13-day strike, winning their retroactive pay hike, providing for promotions based on the work they actually perform, integration of the annual bonus into the union contract and provision for early retirement on substantial pensions.