In the factory at lunch I asked my friend “what do you think is the reason for all these recalls?” He answered: “It’s probably because the factories where the recalled parts are made run as fast and dangerous as the one we work in.”

Over the past few months Toyota has recalled over ten different models of vehicles for faulty floor mats, sticking acceleration pedals, and weak brakes totaling around nine million recalls and counting. There have been around 20 deaths and dozens of injuries from these faulty parts. Toyota started getting reports of the faulty gas pedals in March of 2007 but didn’t start recalling vehicles until late 2009.  Toyota kept quiet about the problems to protect its profits.  But now Ford, GM, and other capitalist competitors are hoping to benefit in the competition for sales.

Toyota’s recalls aren’t their first and won’t be their last. According to the NHTSA (National Highway Traffic Safety Administration) the recent Toyota recall takes 4th place out of the top 10 biggest auto recalls in history with 5.4 million recalls for their floor mats.  GM places 3rd place with 5.8 million and 2nd place with 6.7 million recalls. Ford takes 1st place with 7.9 million recalls (MSNBC.com).

This history exposes the racist and nationalistic lie that everything “built in the U.S. is stronger and more dependable than imports.” U.S. bosses use this to get workers to support U.S imperialism. While one boss may pay more than another or have slightly better working conditions, workers can never solve the racist and sexist exploitation of capitalism by chasing higher wages or supporting the “lesser-evil” boss.

 Ford, GM, Chrysler, Toyota, etc. have their parts made and assembled all over the world.  In the auto factory where I work you can read the labels on the boxes of parts and see that they come from all over: Kentucky, Mexico, Japan and elsewhere. Bosses go to where they can exploit workers for the cheapest parts and labor to make higher profits than their competitors.

But who is to blame for faulty parts and recalls? “Lazy” workers who don’t do quality checks correctly? The non-unionized foreign auto companies? No. The capitalist system and all the foreign and U.S bosses who defend it are to blame.

At the auto factory where I work, the bosses are continually speeding us up at work. On the factory floor quick assembly and rushed quality checks lead to a shorter life span of vehicles, faulty parts, recalls, injuries, and even deaths for both consumers and assembly workers.  Safety for the workers who make the vehicles or the safety for customers isn’t the bosses’ concern unless it gets in the way of their profits.

As workers in a foreign-owned, non-unionized, sub-contracting auto plant, my friends and I see the contradictions of safety and profit every day. The workers in our factory get hurt because of the long hours, speed and monotony of our work. Unsafe conditions hardly ever get fixed until someone gets seriously hurt or parts get damaged. Many times I’ve seen someone get hurt and no management or boss comes to help. But if a machine breaks and stops the production line, within seconds you’ll see tons of managers and bosses run out to see what’s going on.

We workers constantly confront the bosses on safety issues.  We have also discussed organizing to slow or stop the line to prevent layoffs and plant closings.  But capitalism will never allow the conditions for workers to make products, machines or the vehicles we use to be as safe and efficient as they could be because capitalism and its bosses will always put profits before people. I try to use these situations to show fellow workers that it’s the exploitation, racism and sexism of the capitalist system and the bosses that are making our lives this hell. Our factory is just like many other factories:  It’s loud, sweaty and fast paced.  But ours is also a school for communism. J

BROOKLYN, NY, February 4 —

Today a group of black female lab workers at a hospital here went on the offensive and demanded that the hospital bosses hire more workers. A meeting was arranged between the supervisor and the 1199 SEIU union delegate, who suggested that everyone should attend the meeting, since they all work in the department together. Perhaps unknowingly, the union delegate illustrated that, whatever the fight, when workers are united victory is possible. In this case, the reform fight was for more workers and not the revolutionary fight for communism. This fight also exposes the racist and sexist nature of the system. Black women are the most exploited section of the working class in the U.S., where being overworked with too little staff and paid very low wages is common. 

Under capitalism hospitals prioritize profits over the health of the working class and so departments are short-staffed.  Blood samples are left sitting for hours before they are analyzed, which leads to inaccurate test results. Other medical staff rely on these results to treat patients, resulting in potentially life-threatening errors. The lab workers look upon this matter seriously, taking into consideration that it is the health of working-class families that is at stake. Again, the racist nature of the system is laid bare: a large percentage of the patients receiving poor care at this hospital are black and Latino.

The doctors, on many occasions, blame the lab workers for the blood tests not being done in a timely fashion. This attitude is encouraged by the bosses, yet another way to divide the working class and weaken us. Most of the doctors do not see the contradiction between the hospital bosses and workers who are pushed to do more with less staff, creating unsafe conditions for patient care. We should strive to show our coworkers and friends how doctors and other hospital workers have a common interest in destroying capitalism and its rotten health care system and replacing it with communism and true workers’ health.

Surprisingly, at the end of the meeting, the bosses stated that the lab workers would get additional staffing. However, this small reform victory should not create the illusion about the racist, capitalist-run health care system. Too often in the hospital, the workers have seen the bosses hire more workers and then suddenly shut down the department. (We saw a similar example in the Stella d’Oro struggle where the workers “won” the strike only to have the factory immediately shut down and sold.) As recently as last year the laundry department was subcontracted to an outside vendor, just after the bosses had hired more workers.

Like all capitalists, the ones who run this hospital are only in business for profit.  Under capitalism, the needs of workers and patients in a racist health care system cannot be met. The workers’ vision is for a better health care system that exists to improve the quality of life, not to make profits. This can only be achieved by many workers joining the fight for a communist society and building the PLP. 

Questions have arisen over the migrant workers’ revolt in the small Italian town of Rosarno, Calabria. The NY Times (1/12) suggested that the reason for the violence  was  locals and immigrants competing for the fruit harvesting jobs, although immigrants had worked in the fields for years. Fifty people were injured, cars burned and windows smashed. The major Italian news agency claimed “racism and poor conditions fueled violence,” ignoring not only Rosarno’s anti-racism demonstration after the conflict, but also the national anti-racism demonstration of 250,000 held in Rome last October.2 Once again, the bosses’ media didn’t dig below the surface.

The Comitato Lavoratori Immigrati e Italiani Uniti (Committee of United Italian and Immigrant Workers), an immigrants’ rights organization in Rome, analyzed what happened. This report from Italy is based on that analysis.

The violence that exploded after local youths shot at three African laborers grew out of an intense class struggle that began years ago, when wholesalers increased profits by reducing the prices paid for agricultural products and local residents refused to accept  a one-euro wage-reduction for each box of fruit. To make up the cheap labor shortfall, the Calabrian Mafia, or ’Ndrangheta, began organizing “illegal” immigration. Africans were promised decent pay and living conditions, but were forced to accept much lower wages and inhuman living conditions after arriving in Italy as undocumented workers.

The Italian press reported one of the workers as saying, “I, too, was protesting... but then the situation got worse and they began shooting.... I can’t go back [to Rosarno].”

It’s not hard to read between the lines. The immigrant workers were not protesting random shootings, but rather lousy conditions and pay. To intimidate them into keeping their mouths shut and their heads low, the ’Ndrangheta began shooting at immigrants with air rifles. The gangsters’ strategy backfired, and Rosarno became the site of open class warfare.

Italy’s current government has adopted a tough stance toward “illegal” immigration. It shipped about 1,200 undocumented workers to detention centers. Others fled to nearby regions. The xenophobic Interior Minister, however, has announced that more than half will be given working papers.

The fruit rots on the trees, but that’s not the only thing rotten in Calabria. In a town of fewer than 16,000 residents, it’s not possible that almost 2,000 Africans could have been employed in the fields and not been noticed by the police. Calabria was a concrete example of the class struggle, illustrating how capitalism not only needs a reserve army of the unemployed on a global scale, but also requires its government servants and organized crime to regulate that workforce.

What happened in Calabria shows that so-called unorganized and unskilled immigrant workers possess a militant class-consciousness, and that it’s the bosses profiting from their labor — and not presumably native-born workers — who foment racist violence.

While currently modest in size and influence, PLP in Italy is helping to develop an international anti-racist movement that proposes a revolutionary solution to the oppression faced by exploited and superexploited workers alike. J

Sources:

 Donadio, Rachel. “Looking Past the Facade of Italian City After Riots.” New York Times <http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/13/world/europe/13italy.html?scp=1&sq=Donadio&st=cse>.

  “Migrants ‘treated badly in Italy’ MSF and UN say racism and poor conditions fuelled violence.” 12 January, 16:44. <http://www.ansa.it/web/notizie/collection/rubriche/english/ 2010/01/12/visualizza_new.html_1672936977.html>

 Corriere del Mezzogiorno 13 gennaio 2010 “Gli africani di Rosarno a Castel Volturno.” <http://corrieredelmezzogiorno.corriere.it/notizie/cronaca/2010/13-gennaio-2010/gli-africani-rosarno-castel-volturnoe-coloniali-la-spesa-diventano-negrozi-1602281073901_print.html>

  La Repubblica. “Maroni annuncia: asilo politico per gli immigrati feriti a Rosarno.” http://www.repubblica.it/cronaca/2010/01/17/news/maroni_su_rosarno-1984669/

The unemployment figures coming out of Washington are as a phony as a three-dollar bill. By reporting that the unemployment rate went “down” in January to 9.7% from the previous month’s 10%, the Obama administration is trying to spread the notion that the great recession is receding. Bullshit! No matter which way capitalism twists the figures, unemployment and underemployment is the highest since the Great Depression. Consider the following:

• Firstly, when taking into account “discouraged” workers who’ve given up looking for non-existent jobs (not counted in the phony 9.7% statistic), plus part-timers who can’t find full-time jobs (also not counted), the actual rate is 21.2%. (Shadowstats.com) In fact, one reason for the “lower” 9.7% rate is that more workers stopped looking for jobs, conveniently reducing the number the government counts as unemployed.

• Secondly, how do they square the “fact” that unemployment is decreasing if the government reports another 20,000 jobs lost. And this is only the initial figure. Often when the current month’s figures are announced, they are “revised” once the following month’s numbers are reported, usually revised downward. They’ve already lowered their December employment level downward by 1,363,000. One wonders what the revised January figures will be a month from now. It’s hard to keep up with the half-truths and outright lies.

• Thirdly, long-term unemployed — those out of work more than a year — are no longer even counted in the “discouraged” category (courtesy of the Clinton administration’s “re-definition”). The number of long-term unemployed is the highest in 70 years.

• Fourth, unemployment among 12 million undocumented workers is hardly included in these totals.

• Finally, the Bureau of Labor Statistics assumes that employment in new businesses more than offsets layoffs by firms going out of business. (And the number of “new businesses” is also an assumption.) But if the folding businesses don’t report their payroll elimination, the BLS just counts those workers as “still employed.” Shadowstats.com estimates because of this and other “quirks” the BLS undercounts monthly job losses by about 150,000.

The Racist Nature of Unemployment

Of course, the headlines don’t shout out the racist unemployment rates among black and Latino workers, or youth. Because of racist discrimination, black and Latino unemployment is well over 30%. And youth unemployment hovers around the 50% mark — one out of every two young workers can’t find jobs.

In cities like Detroit — which has been in the throes of a depression for years and where an overwhelming majority of the population is black —— the overall unemployment rate of the entire working class is 50%. In states like California, it’s nearly 30%.

The “official” jobless rate, hovering around 10%, represents over 15 million workers. So the unemployment and underemployment rate plus “discouraged” uncounted workers totaling over 21% means there are well over 30 million workers who can’t get full-time jobs. And there are nearly 200,000 soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan who are not counted as part of the labor force. Without these two imperialist wars, a goodly percentage of these “jobholders” would be jobless. Not to mention a good portion of the 2.4 million inmates in prison.

Unemployment itself is a killer. According to a 1971 Congressional study, it leads directly to the deaths of hundreds of thousands from stress-related heart disease and other recession-related afflictions.

Capitalism has never had full employment. It’s inevitable “boom-and-bust” cycles breed unemployment in periodic recession/depressions, not to mention breeding wars which kill millions of workers worldwide (another way to “lower” unemployment?).

A mass movement to fight racist unemployment must be the order of the day. Communists in such a movement would be linking this horror to how the system needs and uses unemployment to weaken the whole working class. Such a movement could become a real “school for communism.”

Building the PLP out of this “school” can help lead to a revolution that would destroy the bosses, their system, and evils like unemployment, racism and war, replacing it with workers’ power — communism.