OAKLAND, CA, December 13 — The results of the “neutral” arbitration between AC Transit (mass transit in SF Bay Area)  and ATU 192 have come back: major sacrifices for bus drivers, mechanics, and maintenance workers.  Topping the long list is an unprecedented 6% pay CUT in the first year of the contract.  Also, the company will no longer pay workers for the first day off when they call in sick. Sick workers will have to come in to work, if they can’t afford to miss a day’s pay. For parents who are holding  a whole family together on one paycheck — and there are many among us — this is blackmail. 

These are the results of the supposedly “neutral” arbitrator.  But how can the process be called “neutral” when transit workers have to bail out the transit agency?  We didn’t cause the crisis, the banks did! Yet the banks and corporations don’t have to pay extra, even though the transportation WE provide adds value to THEIR real estate and allows THEIR businesses to function. 

Without a Fight

At a special meeting in July, the International union representative said, “I believe AC management is scared to go to arbitration.” Scared?!  Management wasn’t “scared” of arbitration.  They only opposed arbitration because they knew the union leadership was not prepared to strike.  They punked the union — and our President had the nerve to “thank” the arbitrator!  As recently as November’s union meeting, the local President still called the Arbitration a “victory.”

Many drivers say, “What they’re trying to do is  break the union.” 

OK, question: Who needs to “break” the union, when management is already able to cut our pay without a fight?  The union is broken already — from the International on down. 

Out of the Woodwork

Now that the damage is done, workers are upset.  Most of the blame is placed on our local union leadership, and many workers want to replace them.  In this situation, people start to pop out of the woodwork, and talk about running for union office. 

These people have organized nothing over the past several years.  No protests, no newsletters, no nothing.  Many don’t even go to union meetings.  Some are ex-union officials who have been in hibernation since they got booted out last time, and want to hold office again.  Others are people who like to pretend like they have all the answers, and if only they were president, they would be “smart” enough to “get things done.”

Need a Movement

As much as people might want to believe that electing the right person could solve our problems, what we need is a mass movement.  The history taught in school in this capitalist society tells us that the leader is everything, the masses are nothing.  But communists don’t buy it — we know that masses of people make history, especially through protests, strikes and revolutions.

Instead of focusing on who the next President will be, we need to get started building a movement that involves rank-and-file union members.  We have a lot of work to do: produce a newsletter, protest at the Board Meetings for the re-hire of our laid-off co-workers, and prepare for future job actions.  This is going to be a hard, long process.  But it’s the only way for transit workers to get a taste of the real power that we have: power in numbers, power to shut down transportation, power to shut down the capitalist economy.  That’s a lot of power! 

Workers power’ is a “dirty little secret” that the bankers and CEO’s don’t want us to find out about because once we do, we might use it to make a revolution!  That’s why Progressive Labor Party is organizing a Political Economy class in the Bay Area.  Any transit workers who would like to understand more about how capitalism works are invited.  Once we are conscious of our true strength as a working class, nothing can stop us! J



HARTFORD, CT., December 10 — The struggle at four nursing homes owned by Spectrum Health Care continues (see CHALLENGE, 12/1), with the bosses locking out the workers and the city government breaking the picket line.

The strike, which began in April over wages, holidays and harassment of union workers, became a lockout in August when the union, SEIU-affiliated District 1199, agreed to return to work with no conditions attached. However, since then the Park Street facility here has re-called only about 10 workers of the total work-force of 100, an average of three per month, and not according to seniority.

Furthermore, the jobs are far short of the original ones. All but one are per diem; previously most workers had 32- or 40-hour schedules. Both company actions are Unfair Labor Practices. A National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) hearing on Spectrum’s many previous Unfair Practices, originally scheduled for November 2, was postponed until January 25. (NLRB decisions are notorious for screwing workers.)

Meanwhile, the City of Hartford has broken the workers’ picket line, ordering them off the street, thereby taking the company’s side (as all government’s generally do). It is now a “stand around.”

The City claims salaries for three cops at the picket line is “too expensive” so they’ve lowered it to two, charged with barring workers from forming a picket line on the street. They must stay on the sidewalk or be subject to arrest. 

Last week the CHALLENGE correspondent brought the movie “Salt of the Earth” — about a New Mexico zinc-miners’ strike — to the workers. They watched the film with obvious enthusiasm.

Afterwards, standing around the fire barrel on the sidewalk, people were talking about the call-backs. One woman said the company “should call everyone back to work together, just like we went out together.”

Another added, “They’re trying to split us up.”

“Just like in the movie,” said the first.

When told that the current CHALLENGE had no article about their struggle, another worker took the paper saying, “That’s okay.  I like to read other stories, not just about here.” 



PHILADELPHIA, December 13 — Since the 1980’s the bosses have been attacking workers’ pensions in South America, Africa, and Asia. They have had plenty of practice that they can now use against workers in Europe and the U.S. Philadelphia hospital workers are now facing this same attack.

Bosses’ View of Aging Workers: Garbage

What should happen to working people when they are too old or too sick to work anymore? The bosses believe that this is not their problem. Throughout the history of capitalism they have shown that they will use workers to make profits and then discard us like garbage when we are no longer productive.

Capitalism organizes society to make profits for a tiny minority of rich people at the expense of the vast majority of working people. But workers create all wealth. Therefore communists believe we have the right to be taken care of in old age after spending our lives contributing to society. Communism would organize society to fulfill the needs of the working class.

Why then do we have pensions and Social Security in this capitalist society? Only because the labor movement fought for many years to limit the cruelty of the bosses. Social Security was won during the Great Depression of the 1930’s because of the violent united struggles of employed and unemployed workers, often under the leadership of the old communist movement.

Unfortunately these battles only reformed the capitalist system instead of doing away with it. Now capitalism is failing again around the world. In order to survive in this competitive world each capitalist must drain as much profit as possible from the workers. They no longer afford to let us have pensions and social security in our old age.

Stocks Down = Pensions Down

Due to layoffs and wage cuts, less money has been going into the pension here. Also, the pension fund lost money on the failing stock market and must be reformed to meet government regulations. The bosses want to stop putting any money into the pension. The Pension Protection Act, a law passed by the fascist Bush, will allow them to do this.

The capitalist labor leaders in 1199c are proposing an eight-point plan which involves concessions to the bosses to keep workers’ pensions. This is a losing strategy. These “leaders” made countless concessions to the bosses over the years and the living conditions for the workers have grown steadily worse. If we make concessions to the hospital bosses they will whittle away at the pension until it is gone.

We must fight for our pension and prepare for a strike in 2012! Millions of workers have struck in France against the governments’ attack on their pensions. We must have this same fighting spirit. Philly hospital workers are organizing a rank and-file movement to lead this battle.

But even if we win in 2012 we will still be under attack. Workers already won pensions and Social Security many years ago. But because we live in a capitalist society, a dictatorship of the bosses, all of our victories are only temporary. The bosses can always use their control of the government to take back what we win.

If we are ever going to win the true victory, the liberation of the working class, we must fight to get rid of capitalism forever. We must fight for communism, a society that will use the wealth we create to fulfill human needs. We can build a world where the aging workers are respected and cared for after their long years of work; where the young can use their labor to build a bright future rather than to line the pockets of the rich.

Join the Progressive Labor Party in this fight for a better world! 

To contact Philly PLP, Call: 267-319-3515



China’s puppet North Korea’s yet unchecked attacks on U.S.-occupied South Korea make direct military conflict among rival global imperialists ever more likely. Flaunting a growing nuclear arsenal, the North’s fake “communist” dictatorial monarchy reportedly torpedoed a South Korean warship in March, killing 46 sailors (see box). Late last month, North Korean artillery shells killed two marines and two civilians on one of the South’s militarized islands.
Obama responded to the March sinking rather meekly, calling for no more than an “international investigation.” This time around, however, Obama has sent a U.S. Navy carrier group into the Yellow Sea, which North Korea threatens to make a “sea of fire,” if U.S. vessels violate its waters.
The imperialists’ sharpening Korean impasse highlights the interplay between the actual and the potential, a key category in communist analysis. At present, hostilities remain at a relatively low level. But, given the forces the rival bosses can deploy and the peninsula’s strategic importance to them, an all-out conflagration threatened by both sides could explode at any time.

Hostile Words, Sporadic Killing Today, Korean Holocaust Tomorrow?

So far, the Washington-Seoul axis has limited itself to rhetoric and mere shows of force. And the phony “People’s” Republic of Korea, backed by the phony “People’s” Republic of China, while reportedly guilty of 50 murders, doesn’t even come close to U.S. killing rates. U.S. rulers have the blood of millions of Iraqis, Afghans, Pakistanis and Yemenis on their hands.
In the increasingly likely case of conflict in the Koreas, however, the body count could skyrocket beyond the U.S.-led Mid-East carnage. The North — per population the most militarized country on earth — has over a million active-duty soldiers. If the U.S. were so mobilized, it proportionately would have 12 million.
The outnumbered South-U.S. alliance, with fewer than 700,000 troops, including 25,000 GIs, could resort to the Pentagon’s nuclear trump card. North Korea has a handful of warheads and China a hundred or so, but the U.S. has about 10,000.  Along with A-bombs, Obama & Co. also wield the most lethal “conventional” weaponry ever devised, a good deal of it currently afloat on the USS George Washington in the Yellow Sea.
Leading U.S. Rockefeller Bloc Deems N. Korea’s ‘Demise’ Worth Workers’ Lives
The dominant Rockefeller-led imperialist faction of U.S. capitalists understands that taking out North Korea entails possible global war with China. Last month, the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), U.S. rulers’ top foreign policy think-tank, issued a report entitled “Military Escalation in Korea.” Boasting “generous” bankrolling from the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, the study said:
“Renewed conflict on the Korean peninsula and potential U.S. and ROK [Republic of (South) Korea] military intervention into North Korea would clearly pose more serious risks to relations with China, including even the possibility of direct clash.”
But discounting the cost in workers’ lives, the CFR demands North Korea’s ultimate annihilation. Amid hollow public diplomacy and the rattling of still unbloodied U.S. sabers, “the United States can privately reiterate to the leadership in Pyongyang and Beijing that any initiation of major hostilities will inevitably bring about the demise of North Korea” — obviously as unconcerned with the mass murder of Asian workers here as in the 1945 A-Bomb racist massacre of 250,000 working-class families in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
The CFR, well aware of the bloodshed Obama’s Korean war games may trigger, urges U.S. and allied top brass to prepare for Vietnam-style fighting, in addition to nuclear Armageddon: “U.S.-ROK Combined Forces Command must be especially sensitive to potential U.S. and South Korean military operations that may inadvertently goad or intimidate North Korea. Joint planning to manage a range of contingencies besides full-scale war should be upgraded.”

Will U.S. Lure North Korea, China to Invade South?

CFR planners suggest a Korean “sucker-punch” strategy like the one Bush, Sr. used in Gulf War I: rather than invade the enemy’s territory, lure him into yours. In 1990, U.S. ambassador April Glaspie assured Saddam Hussein that the U.S. would not hinder Iraq’s forays into Kuwait, and then launched all-out air and ground war against Saddam’s outmanned invading forces.
“Short of unambiguous indications of the North’s preparation for full-scale offensive operations, the United States and ROK could deliberately stand down their forward-deployed forces and desist from activities that might trigger further escalation. However, rear-area defensive preparations could be initiated to hedge against the North’s failure to reciprocate.” Why on earth, except to ensnare emboldened northern invaders, would the South let down its border guard while beefing up its interior defenses?
Tensions are heightening because China can no more tolerate the prospect of a pro-U.S. reunited Korea than the U.S. can endure a pro-China one. Beijing’s bosses will not brook U.S. troops with land-based access to Korea’s border with China’s mainland, the world’s manufacturing center. However, U.S. bosses will do all they can to prevent China from robbing the U.S. Navy of control of East Asia’s sea lanes, the increasingly important focus of global trade in goods and energy.
Given all this warmongering on both sides, they undoubtedly would try to avoid destroying all those GM, Nike, Ford and other U.S. factories in an all-out war involving North and South Korea, China and the U.S. But our communist Party cannot predict what will happen there. We can only warn that sharpening competition among beleaguered capitalist nations makes open warfare possible and plausible.
One thing is certain, though. Unlike the Korean War of 1950-53, this is not an ideological struggle between the promise of workers’ power versus western capitalism. Grave political errors, including nationalism, retention of the capitalist wage system and elite party-member privilege, restored capitalism in once pro-worker China, North Korea and Russia. In 2010, both belligerents wholeheartedly support and practice the worker-destroying profit system.
Progressive Labor Party’s long-term goal is revolution that eliminates the imperialists’ profit-driven and racist war-making and establishes true working-class rule. We are attempting to plant the seeds of that future communist society in our Party’s struggles in the shops, unions, schools, churches and communities and among GIs, as recorded in  the pages of CHALLENGE, as well as in the growth of a new international communist movement spread by our Party on five continents.

Box

War in Korea A Tragedy for All Workers

The U.S. bosses’ media has largely depicted the South Korean island of Yeonpyeong as the home of helpless victims attacked by a terrorist North Korean regime. In reality half the island’s population is uniformed soldiers manning an artillery fire-base targeting North Korea.
The latest artillery exchange, the first in over 30 years, is only the latest incident in a series of escalations on the Korean peninsula that has been largely precipitated by U.S. and South Korean aggression and posturing. In November 2009, the South Korean military sunk a North Korean naval vessel. Now the U.S. and South Korea used the sinking of a South Korean warship to again ratchet up tensions on the peninsula.
The U.S. and South Korea have refused to allow independent investigators to examine the wreckage. A group of Russian scientists who were allowed to examine a few small pieces of the wreckage raised serious doubts about the official torpedo story, suggesting that the ship might have been sunk accidentally by a South Korean mine. The report set off a diplomatic firestorm between Russia and South Korea.
Currently the U.S. and South Korea are engaged in massive war-gaming in nearby waters, “games” run regularly designed to purposely antagonize the North. The latter warned that any violation of its waters during the war game would be perceived as an attack on the North. After several shells fell on its side, the North shelled Yeonpyeong.

Imperialism the Real Reason Behind Escalation

The Korean War 1950 — 53 caused 4,000,000 casualties and reduced North and South Korea to rubble. The Korean peninsula has been and is a vitally important piece in the U.S. imperial strategy that allows for quick-strike capability against China and Russia. A cooling of tensions between North and South Korea is a disaster scenario for the U.S. which needs the imminent threat of war to justify the tens of thousands of U.S. soldiers stationed in a massive complex of bases and airfields all over South Korea.
China has long sought to exert direct influence over the Korean peninsula and eventually evict the U.S. forces there. It has built a puppet “government-in-exile” to be installed should the North collapse as well as building a legal claim that historically Korea is a part of China.

North Korea is Not Iraq

Trapped between two competing imperialist powers, the Korean peninsula is being pushed dangerously towards war. Escalation would be a tragedy for workers everywhere. Rather than a low-intensity conflict killing a million people over a decade of fighting, as in Iraq, such a war would be a genocidal disaster. A 1992 U.S. War Department assessment, re-affirmed in 2003, estimates that one million people would die in the first 24 hours alone in a full-scale war.
Since 1958, it has been official U.S. policy that nuclear weapons would be used in any war between North and South Korea. After the U.S. transferred its nuclear arsenal in 1999 off the Korean peninsula to nuclear submarines off the Korean coast, the South Korean Defense Minister has again asked that these weapons be deployed throughout South Korea.
The increasing tensions in Korea reflect the increasing inter-imperialist rivalries driving the world towards war.