OAKLAND, CA — The ruling class, through its politicians and the collaboration of union leaders in California, has moved to steal billions from the working class by decimating the future of retired workers.  Governor Jerry Brown, with the assistance of Democrats who control both houses of the legislature, has passed the Public Employees Pension Reform Act (PEPRA). It could go into effect at AC Transit as early as July 1, when our contract expires.
This “reform” hurts new hires immediately. While current workers don’t face changes yet, after 2018 all of our pensions will be affected. First, PEPRA mandates that all new workers pay a minimum of half their pension costs or 6.75% of wages. That’s a wage cut of $3,000 to $5,000 a year. AC Transit workers took lower wages in the past to maintain their benefits.
Second, it bases pensions on 40 hours per week, while the average work-week of a bus driver is actually closer to 50 hours, due to split shifts and long hours in the seat. Lastly, it reduces the compensation schedule at the end by as much as 35 percent. At 55 years old, a current pension is 2 percent per year of the average of your top three years times years worked. Under PEPRA, it’s 1.3 percent. With all the changes, the pension could be reduced by almost half. Since AC has no cost-of-living allowance in its pension it means a meager pension, will be worth even less in years to come. 
While Amalgamated Transit Union (ATU) Local 192 called a special meeting of over 300 members to “fight” this attack, its strategy mainly revolves around relying on lawyers to argue that PEPRA violates federal law, or on legislation from the same state Democratic politicians to exempt transit workers. It refused to organize any mass protest at a recent Board of Directors’ meeting, which voted to adopt PEPRA.
Further, there has been no coordination among other transit unions — especially at BART, the regional subway system — whose contract also expires July 1. At the same time, AC Transit bosses plan to raise fares again on July 1st, as much as 33 percent for monthly passes for youth, seniors and disabled riders. 
PLP has put out the only information about the attack.  Our Transit CHALLENGE focused on the message “It’s up to us, the working class!” No law, no savior politicians and no “special exemptions” will rescue us! Unity across the whole Bay Area and a fight for the whole working class is our strategy. We have engaged transit workers to join with community groups to reach out to youth to fight these outrageous higher fares and service cuts. 
The membership of ATU Local 192 also passed a resolution to demand Justice for Alan Blueford, an 18-year-old high school student murdered by Oakland cops last May. The resolution flies in the face of a mass media campaign to make youth violence and crime in Oakland a “State of Emergency” with the implication that “effective community police” is the solution. The media campaign does not address continual racist police actions (four officers were involved in the shooting on the weekend of 03\01\13 in the Bay area) and massive racist unemployment among black and Latin youth.
This resolution is a small step to making a fight for the whole working class, tied to immediate issues that face our membership. Transit workers attended the March 5 rally to stop racist police terror and demand prosecution of cop Masso who shot the unarmed Blueford. The Governor, the Legislature, the cops, and the media are all part of the bosses’ system of capitalism and its state apparatus whose laws enforce profit-making by exploiting the working class. The months ahead will offer us many opportunities to struggle over the need for a communist society without exploitation and racist terror.

AULNAY-SOUS-BOIS, FRANCE, March 9 — Over 2,800 striking auto workers have paralyzed the Peugeot plant in this Paris suburb since January 16. They’re protesting company plans to close the factory next year, which will eliminate 8,000 jobs. On March 8, nearly 200 strikers occupied the Paris offices of the bosses’ metal trades association.
“We are workers, we aren’t vandals, the bosses are the vandals,” chanted the workers in the hall of the seat of the metal trades bosses.
 “We’re not coming out until our demands have been heard,” one union steward told Reuters. “We want a permanent job for everyone and early retirement for those 55 and over.”
An agreement signed by several union officials was rejected by the rank and file. “We are determined,” declared Mohammed Diver, a worker at the plant. “We want a guarantee of employment.”
The bosses have hired two rent-a-cop strike-breaking outfits to intimidate the workers. They have also threatened to fire some of the strike leaders. Meanwhile,the Peugeot bosses who claim they must close the plant and wipe out 8,000 jobs because they can’t make a profit from this plant are paying themselves handsomely. Peugeot’s CEO tripled his salary in 2010 to to $4.2 million; two directors doubled their’s to $1.62 million; and a director stationed in Asia raked in $1.75 million — altogether a total of nearly $10 million a a year for just four bosses!
The Peugot workers are also supporting the struggles of other workers, including those at Renault who are experiencing the same problems. On january 28, they stood in soldiairty in front of the French Natonal Assembly in a united demonstration with workers from Goodyear, Air France, Virgin and Sanofi.
However, the CGT union has undercut the workers’ position by accusing the government of “mak[ing] itself management’s accomplice” for refusing to name a mediator. No doubt the government is in bed with the bosses, but mediators will not win the workers’ demands. Only the power of the rank and file to shut off the bosses’ profits can have any chance of achieving that objective. Instead of depending on mediation, the workers must try to spread the strike across the metal trades industry since all workers will be suffering under the austerity program being promoted by the Socialist government.
The Peugeot bosses claim they must dump the workforce because they can’t make a profit from this plant. But this just exposes the need for the working class to exterminate capitalism, a system based on exploitation for the profit of the few sucked out of the labor of the masses that produce everything of value. Only a revolutionary party composed of millions of workers can accomplish that goal.

The Peugeot strikers are asking for financial support, donations to be sent to:
Association de soutien aux salaries
de l’automobile du 93
19-21 rue Jacques Duclos
93600 Aulnay-sous-Bois, France 

U.S. ruling-class politicians, both Republican and Democrats, seem now to have decided to work together to implement the immigration reform initially proposed by President Obama. They’ve given few details, and perhaps never will, but the proposals under consideration are well known and predictable. One must just read between the lines of the statements by those driving the reform.
(1) Seal and militarize the border. “Immediately reform border security with new technology,” i.e. drones; ramp up both military and border agents’ presence on the border; increase the legal processes which control border exits and entrances.
(2) Legalize and contain immigrant workers as a segregated sub-class in slave-like working conditions. “At the same time as we reform the border security, those immigrants here ‘illegally’ must register with the government.” They must pass background checks and pay back taxes and fines. Immigrants will then receive a “period of legal probation” during which they can live and work legally in the U.S. but will be ineligible to receive Federal benefits. This is a rehash of the “guest worker” program under which immigrants remain in the U.S. at the whim of their bosses.
(3) A path to citizenship? Some Senators are demanding a mandatory program to check the legal status of all new employees throughout the U.S. (Expansion of E-Verify). These “reformers” also insist that immigrants who get “legal status” under this legislation and pass their period of probation must then “go to the back of the line” behind those who have come through legal channels and are seeking citizenship. This could take decades. It also leaves these “guest workers” subject to the manipulation of visa and citizenship quotas due to country of origin or education and job skills. So-called “permanent residency” and “citizenship” are at the end of a long tunnel. Many will never find their way out.
(4) Arrange for a large number of young people to join the military. While many politicians and government think tanks know this could provide a path to citizenship for many younger workers, those who hold power in the U.S. understand the need for a bigger war machine to defend their empire in a period of continuous wars. What better way to get “willing” recruits than to dangle the potential for citizenship before many young immigrants? The so-called Dream Act incorporates this process.
The rampant segregation of immigrant workers concerning their work location, residence site and their cultural and political life, leaves many immigrants vulnerable to the false promises in this movement for immigration reform.
But there’s another side: Workers worldwide have always fought back and continue to fight for a better life. However, if we just see ourselves as immigrants, we lose. If we just see ourselves as citizens, we lose. The bosses win when immigrants and their supporters organize to fight back on “their issues.” Immigrants and citizens belong to only one class — we are the producers of all the world’s riches. When we unite as one class, which does not recognize the rulers’ borders or ethnic\heritage\“racial”\gender differences, this unity immediately puts us on the offensive against the attacks by the capitalist class.
March on May Day, May 1, for the unity of the international working class.

Barack Obama’s pivot to Asia puts the U.S. on a collision course with Beijing. At the same time, the U.S. bosses’ economic crisis could threaten their long-term ability to prevail militarily over China. As a result, they’re seeking a worldwide coalition against their imperialist rivals.
Meanwhile, Chinese expansionism is already threatening near-term conflict that the U.S. ruling class may be unable to avoid, ready or not. Obama is “rebalancing” U.S. forces to East Asia while maintaining bases in the Middle East to control oil and gas resources and supply lines — the reason it has fought two wars in the region and murdered millions of workers since 1991. But China’s bosses need the same resources to supply their expanding economy, another threat to U.S. domination.
That’s why China’s capitalists, in addition to launching a blue-water (deep-sea) navy, are forcibly claiming title to oil-rich islands in the South China and East China seas. Their goal is to turn their rivals’ operations in the area into acts of war. In fact, ExxonMobil and Chevron are already drilling there, both for oil and to enlist potential U.S. war partners the Philippines, Japan and Vietnam.
Ironically, these three nations have all suffered mass murder by the U.S. war machine: the conquest of the Philippines in 1898, which launched the U.S. as an imperialist power; Japan in World War II, with the atom-bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and fire-bombing of other Japanese cities; the invasion of Vietnam two decades later, which killed three million workers and peasants there.
The nationalist outlook among leaders in these countries (criticized by the Progressive Labor Party as far back as the Vietnam War) could lead them into an alliance with the capitalist butchers of the U.S. Then again, popular opposition to uniting with U.S. bosses could upset the applecart.
U.S. Bosses’ Main Option:The Military
Given this emerging crisis, U.S. rulers must rely on their military. New Navy warships, originally designed for inshore fighting in Iran and Saudi Arabia, have been redirected to the east. On March 1, the first four of 55 U.S. Navy Littoral Combat Ships left San Diego for Singapore. According to Foreign Policy magazine, “the fast-moving ships are intended to patrol maritime traffic with allied navies, including private oceangoing cargo ships and pirate threats, while monitoring the increasingly tenuous intent of Chinese vessels, all at the contested southern door to the South China Sea” (2/28/13). Singapore commands not only the strategic China seas but also the Malacca Straits, a major chokepoint for Middle East energy supplies headed to China.
On the webpage of Foreign Affairs magazine (2/22/13), the mouthpiece of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) and U.S. finance capital, Professor Michael Klare of liberal Hampshire College foresaw less than smooth sailing:
In the East China Sea, China and Japan are squabbling over a cluster of small, uninhabited islands called the Diaoyu by the Chinese and the Senkaku by the Japanese. Japan has administered the islands since the end of World War II, but China, Taiwan, and Japan all lay claim to them. In the South China Sea, meanwhile, tensions have flared over several island groups, most notably the Spratly and Paracel islands.... China, Taiwan, and Vietnam claim all of these islands, and Brunei, Malaysia, and the Philippines claim some of them. Little more than rock formations, the islands possess hardly any value in and of themselves. But they are believed to sit astride vast undersea reserves of oil and natural gas — lucrative caches for whichever country can get to them. Beyond the economic boon it would be, the Chinese view acquisition of the islands (along with the recovery of Taiwan) as the final dismantling of the imperial yoke of Western powers and Japan.
According to a recent report from the U.S. Department of Energy, major firms such as Chevron, ConocoPhillips, and ExxonMobil have partnered with the state-owned oil companies of Malaysia, Vietnam, and the Philippines to develop promising reserves in maritime territories claimed by these countries as well as China.
[R]egardless of whether it was Obama’s intention when he pivoted to the Pacific, he has surely increased the chances that rash and potentially incendiary behavior by any one of the countries hashing it out in the South and East China seas could lead to war.
Rulers Prepare for Future Wider War
U.S. rulers recognize the probability — and the necessity — of a future wider war with China. Though they may not be fully prepared for it at present, they may soon be drawn into one. Their economy is stagnating. Bitter if unfocused anti-capitalist anger rules popular sentiment. According to Major Fernando Lujan, an Army strategy planner and fellow at the imperialist CFR, the bosses would prefer U.S. War Lite, where Special Forces troops can go anywhere at a moment’s notice:
Looming budget cuts, ground forces worn down by years of repeated deployments, and a range of ever evolving security challenges from Mali to Libya and Yemen are quickly making “light footprint” military interventions a central part of American strategy. Instead of “nation building” with large, traditional military formations, civilian policymakers are increasingly opting for a discrete combination of air power, special operators, intelligence agents, indigenous armed groups, and contractors, often leveraging relationships with allies and enabling partner militaries to take more active roles (Foreign Policy, 3/8/13).
But if things heat up in, say, the South China Sea, a quick remobilization is on the boards, regardless of budgetary or political constraints:
As the Army and Marines begin to cut 100,000 personnel during the next few years, policymakers and senior military leaders have announced plans to retain an expansible, experienced force that can be reconstituted rapidly in the event of a major war.
What the U.S. war machine prefers is a slow but steady ramp-up to a potential world war. Julia Gillard, prime minister of stalwart U.S. ally Australia, has pledged loyalty — along with working-class cannon fodder — to war-maker Obama: “[W]e are delighted with the pivot or the rebalance. The U.S. has been a continuing presence in our region....We have fought alongside America in every war” (Washington Post, 3/10/13). Aiming at the South China Sea region, Obama has already posted 2,500 U.S. Marines to Darwin, Australia’s northernmost city. Washington also threatens to use its post-WWII “right” to defend Japan and the Philippines by armed force.
Imperialist Crisis A Revolutionary Opportunity for Our Party
Out of their weakness, U.S. capitalists have yet to reveal their schemes for militarizing the U.S. for global war. They disagree fiercely among themselves and know that working-class loyalty to them is thin. The rulers also know they need a military draft, which could provoke mass popular opposition based on U.S. workers’ and students’ experience with the slaughters in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan.
The imperialist crisis over China can be a revolutionary opportunity for our Party and the working class. Millions of workers worldwide may not be ready to lay down their lives in the service of U.S. capitalism. Their reluctance can enable PLP to organize to expose and oppose the rulers’ war plans in the shops and unions, schools and universities, churches and communities — and especially in the military.
A good start is to win our friends and co-workers to march this year on May Day. The international workers’ day represents the antidotes to the poison of capitalism: anti-racism, anti-sexism, strikes against mass racist unemployment. May Day reflects workers’ commitment to turn imperialist wars among the bosses into class war against the entire system.
March on May Day! Join Progressive Labor Party!