TRENTON, NJ, February 25 — “Workers have dignity; the rich have our wealth!” This poster expressed the outrage of 4,000 New Jersey workers rallying in solidarity with Wisconsin state workers. Wisconsin governor Scott Walker, along with other governors — including NJ’s Chris Christie — is spearheading a bogus nationwide campaign, to destroy the largest remaining group of organized workers in the country: the public employee unions.

This campaign is funded by the billionaire Koch brothers through their Americans for Prosperity front group. After voting massive tax cuts for the wealthy for two decades — starving state governments of revenues and creating a false “budget crisis” — these same businessmen and their lackey politicians are now blaming public workers for their multi-billion-dollar state budget “deficits.” 

Workers at the rally weren’t buying this line, however, with some holding up posters that said, “Union-busters are the new terrorists!” PLP members from NJ state colleges organized on their local campuses to get fellow American Federation of Teachers (AFT) members and Communication Workers of America (CWA) staff to attend. One teacher, who canceled classes and urged students to attend, got five emails from students after the rally asking how it went. Another recent graduate, now a social worker who will soon be in the CWA, attends a Party study group and looks forward to helping build a worker-student alliance in New Jersey.

Forming a sea of red rain ponchos and hats in front of the State House, the 4,000 New Jersey workers — both private and public sector employees — didn’t match the turnout of the 70,000 Wisconsin workers who occupied their capital building a few weeks ago. Nevertheless, the protest was one of the largest in New Jersey and signals an upsurge in working-class solidarity.

Private sector workers, after years of layoffs, wage-cuts and disappearing benefits, see that they have a lot more in common with state workers than with the billionaire businessmen funding this nationwide campaign or the governors hypocritically fronting for them. It’s impossible to believe the rhetoric describing public employees as “privileged” with “bloated salaries and pensions” when more and more workers know that the top 1% of the population controls 43% of total national wealth and the bottom 80% has only 7% (2008, extremeinequality.org).

Unfortunately, at a time when workers need class-conscious leadership, most of the state public union leaders speaking at the rally actually endorsed the position of the politicians on givebacks. After giving lip service to the view that the banks and their speculative practices — not public workers — caused the economic crisis, virtually every union leader stated that their unions would be willing to “negotiate” wage-cuts and reductions in benefits, to “share the pain.”

Their rallying cry, “Negotiate not dictate,” however, is a losing strategy that will put the ruling class in a win-win situation. They win if they can get rid of collective bargaining for public unions AND they win even if they can’t, so long as unions bargain away the salary and benefit gains their workers struggled for decades to win. 

As the class struggle heats up, this defeatist line at the Trenton rally shows the important role that communist ideas must play if workers are to build a movement that will not be sold out by the current labor leaders. As communists, PLP members in these unions need not only to participate in class struggle but also to consolidate their personal ties with co-workers and discuss why the rules of capitalism make it a necessity to push to reduce wages and benefits in order to maximize corporate profits.

More than ever, as U.S. capitalism faces fiercer global competition with China and the European Union and must maintain a global military force to protect its interests, it needs to squeeze every penny it can from workers. 

PARIS, March 10 — Strikes have erupted across France as workers continue their long tradition of downing tools and battling to resist the bosses’ cops.

Marseilles Port Shut

The SNCM ferry company workers, on strike for 40 days, and having blocked the north and south channels of Marseilles’ port, were attacked by up to 700 cops — six companies of riot police, plus members of the national police force and maritime gendarmes. They swung riot sticks and used tear gas, arresting 14 strikers.

But the sailors fought back, throwing bottles and turning hoses on the cops from one of the ferries the strikers have occupied. “They’re the ones who want a clash,” declared one sailor. “We’re going to defend ourselves.”

Now all the maritime unions have called for sailors to launch a national strike on March 17 against deregulation, a policy the shipowners have been using to push through layoff after layoff “in the name of free and unfettered competition.”

Solidarity

The police assault brought an immediate and massive reaction as all port workers in every trade and occupation struck in support of the SNCM sailors. The port workers said they would not return to work until “all police forces have left the port area.”

On March 9, dock workers refused to allow two ferries originally bound for the then-blocked port of Marseilles to dock in the port of Toulon. “We refuse to be a back-up and we don’t want to be considered as scabs by our fellow workers in Marseilles,” said union leader Kadda Zerga. The dockers only allowed passengers to disembark from the ferries.

The sailors are striking against company plans to reduce the number of ferry voyages between mainland France and Corsica, fearing this will lead to layoffs. Further strikes include:

  • Thirty-five hundred JC Decaux workers struck on March 8 to demand a minimum 100-euro-a-month pay raise (US$136), refusing the company offer of 1.4%. JC Decaux puts advertisements on a variety of billboards, bus stops, and in public transport. In 2010, its gross profit hit 173 million euros (US$235 million).

     • Strikes have hit the hugely profitable communications satellite producer Thales Alenja Space. Workers are demanding a 5% wage hike and equal pay for women workers, plus bonuses. Four hundred strikers blocked truck access to the Cannes factory and 800 blocked trucks from the Toulouse plant, preventing nitrogen deliveries.

     • Rolling strikes hit Manitowoc-Potain, a crane manufacturer in central France where wages have been frozen for years. The CGT union agreed to a 60-euro-a-month increase (US$82) but angry workers are threatening to walk out again for a higher pay hike.

     • Steelworkers in Dunkirk and Florange have engaged in rolling strikes against the Arcelor Mittal group, demanding a 45-euro-a-month wage hike US$61), double the company’s raise. Strikers blocked the Basse-Indre plant and organized shift-end stoppages at three other mills.

     • A 3½-day strike by Peugeot auto workers won better working conditions against speed-up, creating 23 additional fitters and forklift drivers on each shift and slowing the assembly line from 46 to 44 cars an hour.

     • Over 800 factory workers, engineers and technicians have been on strike since January 13 against Cézus-Aréva, world leader in the zirconium market, a metal used to isolate nuclear fuel in nuclear reactors. They’re demanding a bonus equal to 1% of the gross annual wage plus a pay increase triple the company’s offer of 1.1%.

     • A five-day strike beginning January 26 by workers at MBF Technologies forced the company — owned by one of the main auto subcontractors making aluminum castings — to abandon layoff plans and legal proceedings to expel the workers from the plant; agree to keep the factory operating; not to end the 35-hour week; pay workers for the five days they were on strike; open wage negotiations; and not file legal action against any strikers.

     • At the Spanish-owned Europac factory which makes paper and cardboard in Saint-Etienne du Rouvray, 160 workers struck for a 4% pay hike, a 75-euro bonus and against a two-tier wage system paying lower wages to new hires.

     • Over 1,000 Thales Communications workers in the northern Paris suburb of Colombes, voted to strike on March 9 at a general assembly held on a freeway off-ramp, demanding re-opening of wage negotiations. From 5:30 A.M. demonstrators blocked access to the plant. Actions spread to Thales factories in outlying areas. The company designs and makes information and communications systems for the military market.

     • Nine hundred auto parts workers at the Valeo plant in Issoire in southern France staged a work stoppage on March 8 to back up demands for higher wages in annual contract negotiations. It turned into a one-day strike, with pickets at the plant entrance. The Issoire plant makes electrical components for automobiles and auto engines.

A union leaflet protested that, “Workers are supposed to tighten their belts and be happy with crumbs, when 1.20 euros per share are to be paid…to shareholders…of a little over 78 million shares.” The company’s 2010 gross profit was half a billon dollars.

Without communist leadership to turn workers’ fighting spirit towards revolution, the fascists plan to turn it into the dead-ends of racism and nationalism. The fascist National Front announced today it’s establishing an “association for the defense of workers.” Belying that, the fascists condemned the striking unions as “anti-democratic and repressive.”

These strike actions demonstrate that workers’ militancy remains intact here, despite defeat in last year’s fight to stop the government from upping the retirement age. The only way to get off the treadmill of fighting for wage hikes that capitalism inevitably takes away is to turn that militancy into a commitment to fight for communism. 

On March 11^th, 2011, a massive 8.9-magnitude quake hit Northeast Japan on Friday, causing thousands of deaths, hundreds of fires, and a 10-meter (33-ft) tsunami along parts of the country's coastline, predominantly in the Northeastern (Touhoku) region.  The destruction left in the wake of the earthquake is extensive, including the vanishing of entire villages, ports, and even schools that were used for evacuation sites by local residents that had been situated on the coasts.  Miyagi and Iwate prefectures were hit the hardest by the tsunami and have the highest death tolls, which in total could reach over 10,000 in total.  Aftershocks as a result of the magnitude of the quake are frequent, including a 6.0 quake that hit Shizuoka and extending the entire Kantou (Eastern) region the morning of 3/15.  Additionally, the quake disabled the cooling mechanisms of one of the main nuclear plants in the Northeast region in Fukushima prefecture (Fukushima Dai-ichi), the oldest nuclear power plant in Japan, sparking a meltdown that has forced the evacuation of thousands surrounding the area and causing widespread fear that is being spread by the mainstream media on an almost 24-hour basis.

While there has been some criticism of the warning systems that gave residents little time to evacuate, most mainstream media sources in the US and elsewhere emphasized Japan’s preparedness for such disasters and have praised the rapidity to which rescues, evacuations, and recovery efforts have taken place.  As one of the largest economies in the world, Japan has taken significant steps to safeguard its vulnerability against such disasters through the fortification in infrastructure, the training, beginning in kindergarten, on how to react to earthquakes and other disasters, which workers in all areas also practice on a weekly basis through drills.

The protection and preparedness against such disasters, however, is more evident in the capitalist centers like Tokyo or Sendai (the largest city in the Northeastern region, which suffered significant damage), but become lax as it moves to the outer regions where the damage and loss of life was the most substantial.  This is due to the fact that most of the residents of these areas, like the small village of Saito in Miyagi prefecture which was totally obliterated, are predominantly working-class families, such as factory workers, farmers, and fishermen/women, and the elderly who built homes in areas which are the most vulnerable to such catastrophic events.  This is what connects the loss of life in the recent disaster in Japan to the earthquake in Haiti, or to the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami, which killed hundreds of thousands of local residents on the coastal regions of Indonesia, Malaysia, Sri Lanka, among other areas, who are forced to live in conditions that are both unprotected by disasters.

Without overlooking the responsibility and culpability of the national governments in such catastrophes, their responsibility is inherently part of the larger continuum of capitalism’s failure to plan for social need globally, which in this case works on a number of varying levels.

Firstly, while loss of life in Japan’s recent catastrophe is horrific, it is minimal when compared to what happened in Haiti, where the death toll reached over 200,000, or in the Boxing Day tsunami, where over 300,000 died.  In other words, under capitalism, some populations are “worth” more than others, according to the hierarchy of profit: as the third largest economy in the world, Japan has a vested interest in protecting itself and its workers from such events, albeit minimally, while in “unprofitable” places like Haiti, Sri Lanka, or even the 9^th Ward of New Orleans, there is no room for such planning.  This also reveals the inherent racist dimension of capitalist planning: as a “developed” capitalist country, there is much less racism directed at Japan, which is emphasized through CNN and other mainstream outlets in their coverage of the current situation.

Additionally, most of the discussion on NHK (Nippon Housou Koukai), the largest Japanese news broadcasting system, and international news is the threat of a nuclear disaster, which is unfolding by the minute.  NHK has been broadcasting the levels of radiations that may leak, with some emphasis on the blame being directed both at the current administration under Prime Minister Naoto Kan, and at Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) which owns the Fukushima plant, including the fact that the plant has been cited continuously for violations and is outdated, in terms of equipment and meltdown controlling mechanisms.  The meltdown is symbolic of how corporate interests are the priority under capitalism (TEPCO being one of he most profitable corporations, according to the Nikkei index), how planning and the running of such facilities is done poorly, and the extent to which such events could be minimized or done away with under communism, where workers would have a social and critical awareness of how to operate nuclear plants properly, for the benefit of the social need, rather than according to the logic of profitability.

Finally, the disaster is already being played out through the lens of inter-imperialist rivalry.  Obama reacted to the crisis by pledging “support” for Japan, including a significant aid package that most likely will entail the re-evaluation of Japanese-US political and economic relations.  The US interest in the region is to use Japan as a buffer against the rise of China, which means increasing the pre-existing tensions between Japan and China over control of the undeveloped gas fields in the South China Sea, as well as the power to exploit the mineral-rich islands that have sparked recent disputes, resulting in the emergence of pro-nationalist protests in both Japan and China.  Additionally, with Japan’s ongoing economic woes deepening as a result of the current crisis, there has been discussion of the “disaster capitalism” model, which would allow multinational corporations to privatize the disaster areas and rebuild according to the logic of profit, as we see occurring in New Orleans, Argentina, and elsewhere.

In summary, capitalism ALWAYS works to the detriment of workers everywhere.  Workers in Japan, who have been brainwashed by anti-communism, need to recognize that capitalism will not save them from such disasters, nor will the false hopes of the reformist parties like the Democratic Party of Japan, or fake leftists like the Japanese Communist Party, who are the most vocally critical of the recent catastrophe.  ALL workers need to recognize that a system based on profit will ultimately fail to provide the necessary means to rebuild the world, and in fact has been the systemic cause of the devastation and after-effects of environmental disasters.  The time is now to unite, to build the internationalism and solidarity to create a global community of workers who can run the world without capitalist bosses!



MADISON, WISCONSIN, February 25 — Tens of thousands of workers flooded and encircled the State Capitol building here in a continuing protest against Governor Walker’s wage- and benefit-cutting proposals hitting State workers which would deny them collective bargaining rights and effectively bust their unions. The bill has already passed the State Assembly.

The exhilarating demonstrations included teachers, students, plumbers, postal and iron workers, firefighters, state workers and their supporters — black, white, Latino, Asian and Native American, women and men, young and old, able-bodied and in wheelchairs. The multi-racial crowds were joined by workers from Chicago, Iowa, Los Angeles, New Jersey, Ohio, Minnesota and Texas. Entire families participated along with sign-wearing dogs with “Tax the Rich!” posters. Over half the signs were hand-made, reflecting the rank-and-file nature of the protestors.

The militant workers slept overnight in the State House, packing the 4-story structure solid, hanging banners over the upper floors while thousands more rallied outside. The crowd of 10,000 protestors on February 14 grew to 70,000 within four days.

The demonstrators’ militancy has inspired workers worldwide. They cheered the picture of a worker from Egypt holding a sign in Cairo’s Tahrir Square proclaiming, “Egypt Supports Wisconsin Workers!”

This attack on government workers is a part of the assault on workers internationally as the world’s capitalists try to “solve” their general crisis on the backs of the working class, with racist unemployment mounting into the tens of millions; wage-cutting; pension reductions; slashing health care; and home foreclosures throwing even more workers into homelessness.

This onslaught falls especially heavy on black, Latino and Asian workers who, because of the system’s racism, suffer double rates of unemployment, home foreclosures and healthcare cuts, but inevitably affects the rest of the working class. Racism splits and weakens our entire class in our efforts to fight the bosses.

U.S. rulers use the trillions of dollars stolen from the working class in this crisis to finance their imperialist wars in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq, and interventions in Somalia, Yemen and the rest of the Middle East. They are in a death fight with their competitors in Europe, Russia, China and Japan to preserve their control of oil and its distribution, without which their profit-driven societies and armies cannot function.

PLP members and friends from Chicago and Minnesota joined the demonstration and held a bullhorn rally adjacent to the line of workers marching around the Capitol building. They distributed 220 CHALLENGES and 1,700 leaflets, emphasizing that it was a communist paper and that workers need a communist revolution. They were greeted with a markedly positive response. One teacher reacted to our call for a widespread strike saying she thought “the whole country should be shut down!”

A high school teacher asked for extra PLP flyers to take back to her co-workers and willingly gave her contact information as did a Chicago librarian on the bus to Madison after taking our literature and hearing us speak at the rally. PL’ers led mini-rallies and discussed the Party’s ideas with protesting workers. Many conversations centered on the role of the Democratic legislators who have put themselves in the leadership of the struggle.

While the workers rightly resist the bosses’ assault, they unfortunately fall into the trap laid by their union misleaders who say we must rely on the Democrats to “fight the Republican onslaught.” These labor fakers have already agreed to cut pensions and benefits when actually workers should be fighting to maintain and raise them as food and gas prices skyrocket.

The Democrats have brought us Obama who has appointed all the bankers who helped create the economic crisis to run the economy. That’s like allowing the fox to guard the chicken coop. While the Republicans want to smash the unions altogether, the Democrats think the working class can more easily be controlled by using the union “leaders” to divert workers’ militancy into voting for them.

Well, the Democrats won the 2006 and 2008 elections, and look where that brought us. This is the old shell game, with the G.O.P. playing “bad cop” and the Democrats playing “good cop.” They both represent different sections of the same ruling class which owns and runs the country.

The Governor claims he has to cut state workers’ wages and benefits and destroy their unions in order to “solve” the state budget “deficit” of $137 million. In serving the capitalist class (as do all politicians), Walker buries the fact that the entire “deficit” was caused by Wall Street’s bankers who created the real estate bubble that crashed the economy in the first place, and which reduced government revenues, now labeled a “deficit.”

The capitalists’ drive for maximum profits grows out of their need to compete against each other to stay afloat. It is inherent in capitalism and will press the bosses to push the workers against the wall with wage and budget cuts and mass racist layoffs. PLP says, “Make the bosses take the losses!”

The rulers, led by Obama, say the economic crisis can only be “solved” by everyone “sharing the sacrifice.” This “sharing” has Wall Street’s biggest investment house, Goldman Sachs, issuing its brokers $16 billion in bonuses while 33 million U.S. workers — and hundreds of millions worldwide — walk the streets jobless. Their record profits are a result of stealing most of the value produced by the working class without whose labor society could not function.

Meanwhile, the bosses’ media tells us government workers are the cause of their banker-created “deficit.” They try to divide them from the millions of private-sector workers who are told that the government workers are “getting fat” off the backs of the rest of the working class.

But instead of forcing government workers “down to the level of non-government workers” — a difference which is a statistical fraud — workers must unite to fight for all workers to resist the attack on our living standards and take back what the bosses are stealing from our entire class.

This ruling class divide-and-conquer tactic must be exposed. It was the solidarity of the working class in the Great Depression during which a mass movement of the employed and unemployed, led by communists, organized the industrial unions, won the 8-hour day, unemployment insurance and Social Security. And in fact, it was that mass class struggle in which the workers fought in the streets against the bosses’ state apparatus — the police, the National Guard, the Army and the courts — that created what the bosses label “the American standard of living.”

Unfortunately those same communists who led that struggle fell prey to the idea of supporting the “liberal” Democrats who posed as the “lesser evil” against the “reactionary” Republicans.

PLP says we must unite our class in militant struggle against the entire ruling class, represented by their servants among the Democrats and Republicans.  We must fight not for the crumbs they dole out to us — which they then take back every chance they get — but fight to destroy their entire profit system, the cause of all workers’ misery.

PL’ers must immerse ourselves in all these class struggles, including organizing and leading them — which we are doing in many areas — and turn them into “schools for communism”: using them as opportunities to win workers to the understanding that only a communist-led workers’ revolution will solve the problems created by capitalism. Building the PLP in these class wars is the road to creating a society run by and for the working class.J  

Koch Billionaires Behind Anti-Worker Rampage

The anti-government worker campaign in Wisconsin is being financed by the billionaire Koch brothers whose money helped elect the Governor leading the charge and whose legislation will give the Koch’s a possible stranglehold on Wisconsin’s state-owned utility system.

Under the headline, “Billionaire Brothers’ Money Plays Role in Wisconsin Budget Dispute,” the NY Times reported (2/22) that a “non-profit” group “created and financed…by the secretive…Charles and David Koch….was one of the biggest contributors to the election campaign of Gov. Scott Walker.” Furthermore, “the Koch brothers are using their money to create a façade of grass-roots support for their favorite causes.”

While Walker has lumped the cuts on state workers’ benefits with destroying their collective bargaining rights, the unions and the Democrats have said they will agree to the cuts as long as the bargaining rights are retained. They will then claim that as a “victory” if Walker agrees to such a “compromise” in order to get Senate Bill 11 passed. But well-hidden in that Bill is Section 44 that says the State “may sell any state-owned heating, cooling and power plant…with or without solicitation of bids for any amount” that the State “determines to be in the best interests of the state.”

That would enable Walker to sell the state-owned utility system to the Koch brothers “for pennies on the dollar.”  Website: http://mother jones.com/mojo/2011/Wisconsin-scott-walker-koch-brothers

The Koch’s already own a 4,000-mile pipeline system all across Wisconsin as well as Flint Hills Resources (a leading refining and chemical company whose products are distributed through Koch’s pipelines) and the C. Reiss Coal Company, a leading supplier of coal used to generate power.

Combine that with control of the state’s utility system and the Koch’s will have achieved a virtual monopoly on Wisconsin’s gas, oil and electric power.

Should all this transpire, they will also have spread anti-working-class lies, slashed workers’ benefits and reaped a fortune of profits on the backs of all government and non-government workers in the state.

Capitalism is wonderful — for the bosses.J

To Wisconsin Workers

The day of the liberation of the working class draws nearer with giant steps, and that is the reason these days now feel so terribly sad. Students of the working class, just like unions and teachers, see their rights too trampled by the murderous bourgeois and their state. 

At the Faculty of Ethnology [a branch of UEH, the State University of Haiti], a ten-day hunger strike by five students has clearly shown how these vampires care not a whit for human life but rather only for capital and power. 

We in Haiti, mindful of the longing for liberation of our class in the perilous situation of being exploited more than ever, offer you our support and stand by your side in the struggle.  We have everything to win in winning our freedom, and gaining back all that they have wrenched from us by force.  Victory is ours today; more united than ever we must defy the arms and bombs of the exploiters.

Let us forge ahead  with international solidarity!  Students, teachers, unionists, workers of the whole world.  The despair sown on all sides must be transformed into a good thing — a source of motivation in the struggle for the end of the cruel system of war against humanity for the profit of capital.

Together, students, teachers, unionists of the entire world, we will wipe away all barriers.

               GREPS (Group for the Study of Social Problems, GREPS01@yahoo.fr)

              Faculty of Ethnology, State University of Haiti

Port-au-Prince, February 26, 2011