COLLEGE PARK, MD., September 3 — Workers and students at the University of Maryland College Park (UMCP) continue to push their demands to end the abuses against campus facilities workers.  The Black Faculty and Staff Association, along with the union and students, held a press conference on August 18th to promote solidarity and expose the Administration’s treatment of workers. 

Workers spoke out about supervisors denying them leave to visit dying parents or take care of sick children, prohibiting Latina housekeepers from speaking Spanish on the job, isolating workers who speak out, and refusing to allow computer training to enhance promotions.  A worker reported years of sexual abuse and harassment, including physical contact and “flashing” by a student in front of a housekeeper.  No supervisor received disciplinary actions.  While the Chancellor makes $700,000 a year, the housekeepers earn $27,000.  Managers receive pay increases while they furlough workers in all departments.

This struggle is part of a wider movement of workers around the globe.  At the same time, 45,000 Verizon workers were striking, students were demonstrating in Chile and Haiti for educational reforms,  Washington, D.C. unemployed residents were demanding jobs, and thousands of people in Egypt and Syria were fighting to end dictatorships.   They all share a common goal of creating a better life for workers and students.  Yet they also share a common mistake.

 None of these struggles have the goal to take state power and put the working class in charge.  Only a communist system that is run for workers’ needs, without profit and wages, can enable workers to contribute their full intellectual and physical worth.  We all need to study how to create a new system as we fight to survive this one.

The UMCP speakers demonstrated the potential power of a united working-class movement.  A leader from the Black Faculty and Student Association (BFSA) aptly stated that the fight for justice “brought together people on this campus who are kept isolated by different cultures, so-called races, and backgrounds.”  Another leader urged the group to be bold and promised that “we will not relent — never relent — till the University ends its mistreatment of workers.”

A black custodian attacked the Administration for making them invisible, “stripping away our manhood and womanhood.”  “We are human, not animals,” said a housekeeper, describing working without air conditioning or water, while another Latina housekeeper reported her boss telling her to “go back to your country to speak Spanish.”  “Nowhere have I been treated like this,” she said. “One day my supervisor threw her keys at me and told me to pick them up… They give us more work to do if we speak out.”

 A white worker stood up in solidarity to recount his story of being written up for taking too much sick leave and for being disciplined for collecting money for a family of an employee who died, adding, “As bad as it is for me, that’s nothing compared to what happens to the housekeepers.”  Another white collar worker called on his co-workers to join with more exploited employees.

Students again turned out to demonstrate their solidarity with words and actions.  Already, they have begun to patrol the buildings at 4 AM to support housekeepers.  On September 5, they will leaflet the opening football game to notify more students and alums about the situation.  Press conferences and flyers can publicize the struggle, but what campus workers and students really need  is mass action to shut the university down. 

A militant struggle around anti-racist and anti-sexist demands could show workers and students the potential of working-class power and make this fight a fertile ground for communist ideas.

EAST LOS ANGELES, September 2 — Recently a group of workers and students marched through a supermarket here to support workers fighting company demands to pay for healthcare costs by cutting wages. Nearly 90% of workers voting rejected the latest contract offered by three supermarkets: Ralphs (Kroger), Albertsons (SuperValu) and Vons (Safeway). For the second time in the last six months, workers authorized the union, the United Food Service Workers (UFCW), to strike.

Over the last six weeks, PLP members, working with friends who participate in Community Education for Social Action (CESA) have “adopted” a supermarket here. They’ve built relationships with workers and members of the surrounding community, including students from the nearby Cal State Los Angeles University and East LA community college. We’re aiming to build revolutionary class-consciousness among workers and community residents, as well as among students participating in these actions.

Last Friday, a delegation of 20 students, workers, and community residents entered the store with picket signs and chants, calling for an end to spending on imperialist war instead of on healthcare and jobs, and encouraging worker-student solidarity in the struggle against the supermarkets.

We wanted to disrupt the store’s regular operation, to call customers’ attention to the supermarket workers’ struggle and to show how we’re organizing support for their fight. Delegates brought signed petitions from the Cal State LA campus and CESA to present to the store manager.

The delegation had marched halfway through the store when the manager asked us to stop chanting and leave the store or he’d call the cops. A group leader accused the supermarkets of exploiting their workers and asked the manager what he was doing to stop it. He said we should do what the union leaders did a few weeks ago: contact our local council member and organize a “peaceful” press conference for the media.

During this confrontation, store workers thanked us for our support, giving signs of approval. The delegation finished marching across the store and continued to distribute flyers outside.

Twice authorizing a strike, the workers have sent a clear message that they’re ready to act. However, the UFCW’s leadership has offered no real plan on confronting the supermarkets, only agreeing to once again “sit down with a federal mediator to continue negotiations.”

Amid the current crisis of world capitalism, U.S. bosses are attempting to “resolve” it by attacking the working class with continued mass racist unemployment and wage cuts. The UFCW leadership’s business-as-usual attitude has proven disastrous for workers (see Verizon strike, CHALLENGE, 9/7), yet another example of union leaders’ complicity with the U.S. ruling class.

The rulers’ racism is evident in the fact that large numbers of supermarket workers are exploited immigrants. Furthermore, the attack on the workers’ healthcare is part of a broad ruling-class assault on healthcare workers (see Peninsula Hospital, page 3; Chicago’s Cook County hospital system, this page).

Prior to our march through the store, we had visited it several times, making contacts with workers who now recognize and welcome us. They tell us the union leadership fails to keep them informed. In fact, a few times they have asked if we knew the status of union-company negotiations.

We’ve also had a positive response from neighborhood customers. A retired meatpacking worker said he was glad to see us because he remembers when he had dealt with his company’s attacks. He learned then the importance of building working-class solidarity in these struggles.

In addition to these actions, we’ve tried to combine theory and practice by organizing a study group on communist political economy (see article this page) and a forum on the global crisis of capitalism. We invited some of the workers we met who showed interest in participating to attend this forum.

We plan to return to this store, even if a strike does not occur, as well as organize walks in the surrounding community to talk with residents about this struggle. PLP will continue to organize regular forums and study groups. Our goal is to win supermarket workers to participate, developing deeper conversations on the nature of capitalism and the need for revolutionary communism.

LOS ANGELES, August 27  — We are a group of students, educators, workers, and union members who meet weekly to study Marxism and put it into practice by building working-class solidarity with Southern California supermarket workers.

For several months, we have been committed to reading works such as Marx’s Capital and Lenin’s Imperialism – The Highest Stage of Capitalism.  Through these readings, we understand how the economic collapse of 2008 and subsequent recession and high rate of unemployment are not accidents, but examples of the repeating cycle of boom and bust that characterize capitalism. This system relies on unemployed workers as a reserve army of labor for the ruling class. We also discussed how these crises are exaggerated by the need for growing profits for bankers and big corporations, as well as the need for imperialist powers to initiate wars of aggression.

We committed ourselves to supporting workers of Ralphs, Albertsons, and Vons supermarkets in Southern California. They may be going on strike against a proposed contract that aims to remove affordable health care and pension plans.

We hosted a Forum/Action Planning group. We discussed how each crisis means more give-backs and cutbacks for the working class in order to sustain the bosses’ profits. The presentation incorporated many ideas from Marx and Lenin to help put the current situation in the context of the workings of capitalism.

In particular, we focused on the austerity measures recently proposed by the U.S. federal government. These cuts are part of a larger attack on workers that aim to further destroy the strength of unions. They are a tool of the ruling class to make the working class pay for the financial criminality of banks and businesses.

After that, we discussed how we would use this understanding of capitalism to help the community fight back against the bosses’ attacks. We will be more involved with the supermarket workers. There was a good discussion on whether or not our goal was to win a strike, or to win the workers and community closer to communist ideas. All benefits won through reforms by previous generations of workers are eventually taken back from future generations. PLP fights for communism, which runs on workers’ needs, and is the lasting solution to capitalism, which is based on bosses’ profits. 

We will continue to have these discussions openly with our comrades and friends to develop more cohesive ideas when we go to the picket lines. We plan on doing house visits and weekly community meetings to discuss how the attack on the grocery workers is part of a bigger attack against the working class as a whole.

As a result of these recent events, we developed our political understanding and created more solidarity among different types of workers here. Many grocery workers and others reacted positively to our efforts to support them. They had been feeling disempowered due to constant attacks from the bosses and the misleadership of the union. But as a result of PLP’s leadership, many workers have shown more militancy and enthusiasm to collectively struggle against their bosses. We will struggle with all working people to envision what a communist world will be like.

OAK FOREST, ILLINOIS, August 12 — Thirty-five workers, students, patients and PLP members protested Cook County’s plans to close Oak Forest Hospital.  Oak Forest is the public hospital that serves the south suburbs of Chicago, an area home to many working-class, unemployed, and black residents.  It is a lifeline for people with no insurance who will not receive adequate services from the private hospitals in the area. 

Our protest started out on the campus of Oak Forest in front of the long-term patient ward where many in-house patients have already been moved and subsequently died. We then moved to the emergency room where Cook County police stopped us and demanded that we move off campus.  In high spirits, we relocated to the busy intersection at the hospital entrance, where we passed out hundreds of fliers and copies of CHALLENGE and were met with many honks of support.

The government of Cook County, led by Toni Preckwinkle, want to close the hospital and have uninsured patients travel to Stroger Hospital at least 45 minutes away.  This plan will ensure the death of many sick patients who need to travel that far to be stabilized. Our protest called out Preckwinkle for what she is — a murderer.

In a capitalist society where wars and bank profits are a priority over the lives of workers, we should not be surprised by the plan to close Oak Forest Hospital.  The racist and sexist disregard for the health of these predominantly poor black, Latino and women workers exposes  the ruling-class plan for a fascist system. It’s a plan that means the death of workers who are unnecessary for their profits. 

A public health system under capitalism is solely based on the needs of profit.  Communism, on the other hand, values the well-being and contributions of all workers.  Only communism will provide the health system necessary to make that a reality.

On August 16th, the Illinois Health Review Board will vote whether to grant Cook County permission to officially close the hospital based on the rulers’ needs. The battle will continue, no matter the outcome. (See update in next issue.)