At 11:30 PM on Friday, September 9, I received a call from a fellow transit worker informing me that, after more than two years without a contract, United Transportation Union (UTU) drivers at LA Metro were to vote on a new contract Sunday at 1 P.M. None of the drivers had any idea if it was a “good” or “bad” contract. The UTU leadership told them absolutely nothing except, “Show up Sunday and vote!”

By Sunday morning we’d been able to rally a small crew of friends and comrades to meet at the hotel where the vote was to take place. We brought leaflets (calling for a NO vote on the mystery contract) and the latest copy of CHALLENGE. We met drivers in the multi-level parking lot and by the time they entered the meeting room every driver had a flier, a CHALLENGE, or both.

I wasn’t sure if I’d be turned away when I tried to enter the voting “Ballroom” (I’m not a driver) but my fears were foolish. As soon as I entered, I realized that the union leadership had a lot more to worry about than me. They were faced with nearly a thousand angry, shouting, hooting drivers demanding facts about the new contract, which the drivers all assumed was going to be a sell-out. It went on and on. Security couldn’t do much. Even though the drivers were physically threatened, they refused to sit down, to shut up, or even to vote for the new contract.

At a coffee shop afterward, two bus operators said the union General Committee never got control of their meeting. A few hours after we got home, a driver called to say it was thumbs down on the contract: 365 to 206.

This experience reminded me that it is always a good idea to be ready to act — even on very short notice. The worker who called was glad to see that we had shown up to oppose the contract vote. The connection of the bus drivers’ no vote, the recent Verizon workers’ walkout, and the possible Southern California supermarket strike made it easy to approach drivers, sell CHALLENGE and urge a NO vote on the contract. On a minor note, all of us agreed it was a good way to spend 9/11.

Now comes the hard part — following up on the contacts we collected and working to be a communist presence in the ongoing transit struggle in L.A.

Hundreds of thousands of workers in Pakistan have been engaging in mass strikes and protests, taking to the streets, shutting down factories and offices, blocking roads and burning vehicles. Their anger is directed against a government riddled with corruption and against Pakistan’s ruling class, who, like capitalists worldwide, are trying to make the working class pay the price of its economic crisis, slashing wages, laying off workers and attacking living standards. The working class is fighting back, undeterred by the brutal retaliation of the police, arrests and even killing of leaders:

• Earlier this month, over 100,000 textile workers in Faisalabad, Pakistan’s third-largest city, shut down 20,000 power looms and took over the city. Men, women and youths armed with stones fought police equipped with rifles and guns; these workers comprise 38% of the country’s industrial workers and produce half its exports.

• Ten thousand workers at the Karachi Electric Supply Co. occupied its headquarters a few weeks ago, forcing the bosses to reinstate 4,500 fired workers.

• Striking Pakistan International Airlines workers brought air traffic to a standstill, sitting in at airports in Karachi, Islamabad, Lahore and Peshawar, disabling ground service vehicles, blocking flights and stopping passengers from checking in. They were protesting layoffs and proposed selloffs of routes to Turkish Airlines.

• Railway workers organized a demonstration in Lahore against the proposed downsizing of 20,000 jobs, defying thugs employed by Pakistan’s governing People’s Party to intimidate them.

• Public sector workers in the Post Office, the Telecommunications Company, the Water and Power Development Authority, steel mills and the Federal Revenue Office are fighting privatization and firings.

• Ship breakers in Baluchistan and young hospital doctors from Baluchistan to Punjab are mobilizing for better pay and conditions.

Following the Lead of 50,000 Militant Textile Workers

These struggles follow the actions of 50,000 textile power loom operators who struck in 2008, shutting down factories for four days. Four leaders were arrested, framed under anti-terrorist laws and jailed. The judiciary, serving the rulers’ dictates, declares workers’ strikes illegal, rejects bail for arrested workers and ignores violations of labor laws, while failing to enforce minimum-wage laws and legal remedies for those losing jobs.

The workers — many who make $61 a month (less than the minimum wage) — have no pension rights, work in inhuman conditions and suffer grinding poverty. Thousands of other workers who marched in solidarity with them were fired on, with nine injured seriously. However, the strength of the protest forced the owners — among the richest people in Pakistan — to agree to the strikers’ demand to be paid previously negotiated wage increases.

This year Pakistan’s growth rate is only 2%, with an enormous trade deficit and a growing budget debt. Following International Monetary Fund dictates, the government has cut all subsidies, increased prices of food, (up 200% to 300% in the last two years), electricity, gas and most household items. In 2010 inflation rose higher than any year in Pakistan’s history, affecting all working-class families and pushing the lowest-paid into intolerable living conditions.

Struggle Between Classes Heating Up

Class lines are sharply drawn in Pakistan. Since factories, businesses and land are often owned by politicians and army officials (who also run public utilities for their own profit), the confrontation between workers and bosses pits the working class directly against the full power of the state. But as workers’ resistance increases, divisions are deepening in the ruling class.

The main opposition party (whose leaders are also big landowners and factory bosses) is maneuvering to lead the mass dissatisfaction by distancing itself from the despised Pakistan People’s Party-led coalition government of President Asif Ali Zardari and the military. This struggle for power is behind the recent political and ethnic violence in Karachi, Pakistan’s largest city, main seaport and financial center; 300 people were killed in July alone, in riots instigated by armed thugs hired by the warring political parties to spread hatred and fear.

Clearly, workers and peasants are not fooled by either party. Victories like that of the 10,000 Karachi Electric Supply Company workers has strengthened the working class and emboldened more workers to take militant actions.

Reforms Won’t Cut It; Workers Need Communism to Destroy Racist Super-Exploitation

But workers need to look beyond reforms. Hard-won gains are easily reversed when bosses control the means of production and the state apparatus. Already Pakistani textile bosses are planning to move their factories to Bangladesh where workers — despite militant actions last year that doubled the minimum wage — are still paid half the wage of Pakistani workers. Lower labor costs mean lucrative contracts with international giants like JC Penney, Wal-Mart, H&M, Kohl’s, Marks & Spencer and Carrefour, which already manufacture in Bangladesh.

These outfits employ blatant racism in exploiting these non-white South Asian workers, much as they do in the U.S., Britain, France and Germany. There they make super-profits off the backs of black, Latino and immigrant workers, based on lower wages, worse medical care, mass imprisonment and deportation threats. Meanwhile, Obama serves his U.S. bosses, bombing Pakistan and killing hundreds of civilians while sending billions of workers’ tax dollars to arm the Pakistani military that enforces the poverty of workers there.

Workers need to unite internationally, across all borders, to support these embattled workers in Pakistan and expose the multi-national exploiters from the imperialist countries. Building PLP in Pakistan to destroy the capitalist profit system and erecting a worker-run communist society, and to eliminate bosses and profits along with the racism and wars they create, is the revolutionary road to follow.

MEXICO CITY, September 12 — Comrades from NY and LA who joined the Summer Project in Mexico showed Party members and friends here the international character of PLP. They contributed with their knowledge and experience in the class struggle, and we saw how similar workers’ struggles are worldwide. This helped show our friends the failure of the capitalist system, even in the U.S., which is supposed to be the most technologically advanced and has one of the highest concentrations of capital.

PLP fights to develop a non-electoral world party that defends the workers, organizes struggles to learn how to overthrow capitalism, and spreads the understanding of the need to build a communist society.

Internationalism creates great fraternity, trust, and love for the working class. This explains our comrades’ taking a leave from jobs and families to participate with us. In just a few hours there was great camaraderie amongst the summer project participants; we talked, shared, laughed, and planned the next day’s activities. It was especially motivating to know that we workers are capable of acting for our own class under capitalism. Under communism it will be that much greater, since we will smash the bosses’ ideas of racism, sexism and nationalism that divide us. 

Internationalism Opposes Nationalism

Nationalism is used to divide workers. It tricks us with the line that we belong to one nation and that it belongs to us, rather than to the bosses. Therefore we must defend it from the “foreign” enemy, the invader who tries to “steal our wealth” or the immigrant “who takes our jobs.” But in reality, the majority of workers do not own a home, or a piece of land, or have a job they can survive on. Using this two-edged ideology, of patriotism and fear the bosses and their army send the youth to kill other workers in their wars to defend their monopolies and wealth.  Nationalism brings with it a huge dose of racism used at the bosses and politicians’ convenience. 

PLP is international because capitalism envelops the world. This system exploits all workers, and only worldwide working-class unity and class struggle will we be able to defeat it. Only then will we be able to build communism, a society without money, racism, or classes.

This Project was very important because it showed the level of international development within the Party. It also helped us to see our weaknesses as a collective, locally.  We discovered the potential and commitment of our members. We have to keep organizing Summer Projects in Mexico. The exchange and experience enriched us. It will train us to continue developing our politics and give us the opportunity of living a little of the life that workers will have in the future. We experienced that which we are fighting for, the unity of the workers of the world. One class, one party!

PARIS, September 16 — A national teachers strike — backed by the biggest high school students union and the main federation of parents — is looming in both the public and private schools. The teachers’ unions are calling for a 24-hour walkout on September 27. They’re demanding “an end to job cuts, a different budgetary logic,” and “a democratic transformation of the educational system to ensure the success of all pupils.”

But one-day strikes are no threat to the bosses or the government. They’re a tactic the union misleaders use to keep control and divert workers’ militancy into a dead-end.

Over 52,000 jobs were cut in education in the past four years. Another 16,000 have been axed this school year, and still another 14,000 are slated to go in 2012. Meanwhile, the student population has risen by 60,000 this year.

All this leads to larger classes, difficulty finding substitutes for absent teachers, and the elimination of optional subjects and individual aid for pupils.

In budgetary terms, real teachers’ salaries have been frozen for 16 years. According to the OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development), “even if overtime and bonuses are included, the average salary of teachers [in France] remains below the OECD average.”

An opinion poll published yesterday showed that 64% think the schools “operate badly,” up from 40% in 2007; 60% say the school system does not ensure equal opportunity.

Indeed, 31% of the university students are the children of executives and highly-paid academics. On the other hand, 12% come from white collar families, and 10% are children of factory workers.

Capitalism, Class Bias and Racism Go Hand-in-Hand

It can’t be any different under capitalism. Education in capitalist society is aimed at reproducing the domination of the ruling class. The children of the rich go to the best schools. A gifted minority gets scholarships. All other children are taught just enough to hold down a job, along with patriotism to make them loyal to the bosses and racism to keep them divided. In fact, a secret government report obtained in August by Le Monde newspaper says that racist and anti-Semitic insults and acts, aimed at both teachers and pupils, are becoming everyday occurrences in the schools.

Higher wages and no job cuts are reform demands that might be won, but the present economic crisis and social climate makes that highly unlikely. An isolated 24-hour strike certainly won’t win these demands. And there’s no way that the ruling class will permit “a democratic school system that ensures the success of all pupils.”

The French teachers’ unions are hardly raising revolutionary demands, aimed at winning teachers to realize the need for a revolutionary communist transformation of society. They’re promoting the illusion that their demands can actually be met under capitalism, and that they’re seriously fighting to obtain them.

The union hacks are looking to boost their popularity among teachers in the upcoming Oct. 13-20 elections to the labor-management boards that help run the school system. The outcome of those elections will determine each union’s representation, and consequently public financing of the union officials’ jobs. (Each union is apportioned a quota of paid hours during which its designated representatives are relieved of teaching duties. Not surprisingly, the union hacks leave the classroom permanently, and are paid full-time to “do union work.”)

The one-day teacher’s walkout is also a build-up to the October 12 national all-trades 24-hour strike. Widely-spaced one-day walkouts are the hacks’ recipe for appearing to act while ensuring that momentum has no chance to build and workers remain manageable. In reality, both strikes are aimed at mobilizing workers to vote for the Socialist Party in the first round of the presidential elections on April 22, 2012. This, despite the fact that during the 2007 campaign, Socialist candidate Ségolène Royale was tape-recorded in a behind-closed-doors’ meeting planning to double teachers’ class hours!

Communist teachers need to bring revolutionary politics to the organization and staging of the September 27 strike. By denouncing the union hacks’ corrupt scheming, and exposing how capitalist education serves to maintain the profit system, the strike could become a school for communism.J

French Jobless Mounting

Official July unemployment in mainland France was 9.1% (2.6 million workers). If you include workers who’ve given up looking for a job and those working part-time because they can’t find full-time jobs, the jobless rate rises to 16.1% (4.6 million workers in a labor force of 28.6 million people.

Official unemployment rates in the French overseas departments are much higher. The latest figures available — for 2009 — are 22% in French Guiana and from 22% to 27.2% for the islands of Guadeloupe, Martinique and Réunion. The 2011 unemployment rate on Mayotte Island is 25.4%. According to a 2010 government survey, 60% of the French population said unemployment was one of their top three worries.

In 2009, the latest year for which figures are available, 8.2 million people (13.5% of the population) lived in poverty, set at a monthly income of 954 euros or less (US$1,335).