NEW YORK CITY, May 24 — Transit workers, students and other riders are under attack from MTA (Metropolitan Transit Authority) bosses:

• They’re cutting train and bus service;

• They laid off 250 station agents in early May despite a court injunction to delay layoffs until the MTA holds public hearings;

• They’ve announced over 3,000 more transit worker layoffs; and 600 non-union administrative employees have already received buyout offers;

• They’re threatening to eliminate student Metro Cards (free fare cards)

• They’re threatening to eliminate workers’ raises;

• Their CEO Jay Walder and the bosses’ media have labeled transit workers’ hard-won benefits of overtime pay and sick days as “abuse.”

Blatant Racism

These layoffs, service cuts and smears are particularly racist because they’re concentrated on city transit workers, riders and students who are overwhelmingly black, Latino and immigrant. And they’re added to racist unemployment, officially already 19% among the city’s black men, nearly twice the “official” overall city 9.8% unemployment rate. In contrast, Mayor Bloomberg guaranteed no layoffs this fiscal year for cops, mainly white, who defend the capitalist rulers’ laws and exploitation.

Fighting Back

Angry workers want more action than the TWU (Transport Workers Union) Local 100’s court suit that delayed some layoffs. Besides daily afternoon protests in front of MTA boss Walder’s residence at 105 Duane Street in Manhattan, more than 1,000 militant transit workers broke out of police pens at a May 4 union rally to march and demonstrate at MTA headquarters 15 blocks away. Workers ready to break rules and unite with working-class students and riders are on the right track. But more militancy alone isn’t enough.

At the root of the problem is the capitalist system that drives bosses to kill and exploit workers for profits. Rivalry between imperialists in the world’s most powerful capitalist nations is forcing bosses globally to exploit “their” own workers more viciously than their competitors. In NYC this competition drives banks and politicians to squeeze nearly one-fourth of the MTA’s budget for profits through “debt service” paid to wealthy bondholders, amounting to $2 billion interest per year.

The MTA’s new Chief Financial Officer is none other than the ex-Bear Stearns banker, Robert Foran. He helped create the MTA’s current budget “gap” when he engineered a deal to more than double the MTA’s debt in 2000 (“Private Promoter for Transit Debt,” NY Times, 5/1/2000).

Ultimate Solution: Revolution

The bosses will run the show until the working class buries their racist profit system with communist revolution. The Progressive Labor Party aims to up the ante in the class struggle, forging unity among workers, students and soldiers to eventually overthrow the capitalists and build a communist society free of racist class exploitation.

One obstacle to this goal is the conditioning of many workers by politicians, union honchos and bosses to accept these “leaders” as the “lesser evil.” That is, the layoffs, service cuts or fare hikes always turn out to be less than the bosses first announce, giving the politicians and union hacks the opening to say they “fought as hard as we could” and claim “victory” for holding off the worst cuts.

We’re encouraged to deal individually with whatever crap rolls downhill. But it’s all a scam designed to keep us from taking mass collective actions like picketing, slowdowns, physical confrontations and strikes to shut the city down. None of these actions guarantee workers will win their reform demands. But, along with a communist outlook, they can help create the mass fighting communist movement here and worldwide needed to win workers’ power. Then workers won’t have to ask bosses for a damn thing because we’ll be running the show 

British Petroleum’s (BP) bosses murdered 11 workers and caused untold ecological damage when a BP oil rig blew up in the Gulf of Mexico last month. As usual in industrial disasters, profit-driven cost-cutting proved the immediate cause. Texas A&M drilling expert Gene Beck “said BP’s encasement design called for only partial coverage of casings deep in the well. Cement did not reach the bottom of the next-largest casing in high-pressure areas, a decision Beck called ‘shocking.’” (Los Angeles Times, 5/23)

But the blowout highlights only one of the dangers to our class from the oil barons’ reckless pursuit of maximum profits. The very existence of BP’s Gulf rig stems from U.S. imperialism’s need to control world energy supplies by force in the face of increasing competition. Millions of working-class Iraqis and Afghans have already been killed in the capitalists’ struggle over oil and gas. Expanding offshore drilling, however, signals U.S. rulers’ plans for far deadlier conflicts.

Offshore Drilling Helps Pentagon’s Anti-Iran War Plans

Just three weeks before the BP blast, Obama had announced “the expansion of offshore oil and gas exploration....in the mid- and south-Atlantic and the Gulf of Mexico.” Obama pointedly chose a military installation, Andrews Air Force Base, for his speech, declaring, “We are going to need vital energy sources to maintain our economic growth and our security....so that we are no longer tethered to the whims of what happens somewhere in the Middle East.”

Obama meant preparing for nuclear-arming Iran’s countering a U.S./Israeli attack by closing off the Straits of Hormuz, the planet’s most important oil chokepoint. Teheran could shut off shipments of millions of barrels of oil should there be a U.S. or Israeli strike at its nuclear program. U.S. bosses must also prepare for the longer-range possibility of Iran’s ally China — its number one oil customer — sending its growing blue-water navy to the Straits to protect its supplies.

Obama’s offshore initiative meshes with arch-imperialist John Kerry’s and Joe Lieberman’s U.S. Senate bill to boost offshore oil, domestic coal and nuclear energy as potential wartime alternatives to Mid-East oil and to build up the U.S. strategic oil reserve. Evidently, war-bent U.S. rulers see 11 oil workers’ deaths in the Gulf; the recent deaths of 29 miners in West Virginia and two more in Kentucky; and a potential replay of the Pennsylvania 3-Mile Island nuclear meltdown — inherent catastrophes under capitalism — all as “acceptable” casualties.

Liberals Rehabilitate Warmaker Halliburton

Obama may indeed make occasional renegade BP (see box) “pay” for the Gulf spill, as he’s promised, by compelling it to follow U.S. imperialism’s war agenda more closely. But BP subcontractor Halliburton, just as guilty of homicide for its flawed cement work, seems to be getting off scot-free on a “just-following-orders” defense. “Halliburton...worked according to BP’s design.” (LA Times article) Besides its oil business, Halliburton builds and services U.S. military bases worldwide. Liberals once loved to attack ex-Halliburton CEO Dick Cheney. Bush’s VP, but with liberal Obama in the White House, criticism of the firm has died down.

The bosses care nothing for workers’ lives or the environment. Exxon Mobil, the top corporate beneficiary of U.S.-led genocide in Iraq, recently had the courts cut 90% of its “punitive damages” for its 1989 Exxon Valdez catastrophe, from $5 billion down to $500 million. Meanwhile, the Rockefeller-controlled company netted the highest profits in capitalism’s history.

As with the Exxon Valdez, there is sure to be a broad and sincere outcry against those responsible for the Gulf spill. But don’t count on Obama to force them to make amends. Only the working class can sufficiently punish the war-making, earth-ravaging billionaires for their crimes. Only   communist revolution would make workers’ safety and environment primary in the production for workers’ needs.

Building a mass PLP internationally among especially industrial workers, soldiers and youth in the shops, unions, barracks, schools, churches and the communities, is the only sure road to that future, the ultimate goal of our Party. 

BP UNRELIABLE U.S. ALLY

We should expect Obama & Co. to aim both empty rhetorical tirades and real sanctions against BP. The London-based firm has proved an on-again-off-again ally of the U.S. Establishment. Last Fall, in return for staunch U.K. military support, Iraq’s U.S.-controlled puppet government awarded BP rights to the vast Rumalia oil field. But BP, seeking cheap labor, brought in China’s national oil company as a junior partner.

BP is principal operator of the Baku-Tiblisi-Ceyhan pipeline, Bill Clinton’s pet project, that ships Caspian crude to Europe and the U.S. free of Russian influence. But BP manages Kremlin-controlled oil and gas schemes in Siberia. It also runs Alaska’s oil pipeline, but the Feds shut it down occasionally for “environmental violations,” as in 2006 to punish BP for ceding control of its Russian operations to the Putin regime.

BP’s checkered history and relationship with the U.S. makes it a geopolitical wildcard for Washington. In Iran in 1953, BP’s predecessor, Anglo-Iranian Oil, lost big-time when the CIA installed the pro-Exxon Shah on the throne. It took another big hit in 1956, when Egypt nationalized and closed the Suez Canal, reacting to western interests ending the funding to its Aswan Dam project. This shut BP’s main export route, inducing a British-French-Israeli invasion, but President Eisenhower refused to send U.S. troops to support the invasion or help British and French oil barons.

In turn, BP later concluded relatively friendly mergers with the Rockefellers’ Standard Oil of Ohio and of Indiana. Over the past three decades effective ownership of the firm has passed from private British investors, to the British government, to Kuwait’s emirs, to Goldman Sachs and back to private European-U.S.-U.K. investors.



BOGOTA, COLOMBIA, May 2 — Colombians celebrated the International Workers’ Day with huge demonstrations in the country’s most important cities. They were larger than in previous years. Seventy thousand people marched here and more than two million marched nation-wide.

As usual, PLP carried our communist message to workers and political fighters, trying to develop closer ties, selling CHALLENGE and distributing more than 2,000 Party leaflets. We started the march chanting our slogans: “Who are we? Working class! What do we want? Solutions! What will we do? Revolution!” “Down with sexism, long live communism!” “One working class, one communist world, one Progressive Labor Party!” and many others against racism, wage slavery and the upcoming electoral farce. PLP led these chants.

We marched enthusiastically, carrying defiant signs, waving red flags and chanting our slogans, “If you want to change capitalism, don’t vote; organize for communism!” “Against the fascist state: communist revolution!”

As usual, the sellout trade unions proclaimed their opposition to the government of the goon Uribe Velez, and their support for the candidate Gustavo Petro, who represents their aspiration for bureaucratic posts and economic privileges for their leaders. Amid some young peoples’ dances there were satirical skits ridiculing presidential candidates; signs denouncing murders and political disappearances, high taxes and the cost of public services; and opposition to U.S. imperialism’s military bases.

Alcohol and carnival are never missing from some of these large demonstrations, particularly when organized by sellout trade unions bent on demonstrating their political backwardness. Unfortunately, they are often broken up by police repression, and by groups of anarchist youth who attend these marches for the sole purpose of confronting the cops. The ensuing chaos is characterized by rock-throwing, heavy banging and explosions, tear gas, water cannons and police rubber bullets that scatter protesters. 

Undeterred, we continued marching, attempting to reach Plaza Bolivar with our chants but increasing chaos, and police harassment with motorcycles, cars and mounted cops prevented us from getting there. There were block-by-block confrontations around the Plaza that lasted several hours, with more than 30 injured participants and 250 arrests.

We see that it’s imperative to rethink the organization of this demonstration because electoral opportunists turn it into a carnival to defend capitalism. We support young people’s militant actions, but without communist politics everything turns into spontaneity and negative experiences for the working class.

Decaying capitalism produces these reactions, particularly amongst the young, whose life of misery pushes them to take wrong paths that hinder their political development. We are attempting to struggle ideologically with many of these young people and workers and hope that in the not-to-distant future we can turn these demonstrations into practical schools for communist revolution.    

We’re committed to work even harder to take advantage of these moments to politicize and teach dialectical materialism to students, workers, youth, the unemployed and to the whole working class, to strengthen our party, PLP, internationally. We understand that this is the only way to put an end to this capitalist hell. Greetings to all our comrades of the world! 

NEW YORK CITY, May 17 — Recently members and friends of our PLP club distributed 100 CHALLENGES over a three-hour period at a city hospital here at the Emergency Department entrance’s ambulance bay, and in the patient waiting area. We sold several copies to hospital workers changing shifts and taking breaks. Some of our best discussions occurred with the Emergency Medical Technicians (EMTs) and Paramedics bringing patients into the hospital.

The Emergency Medical Services (EMS) staff here has been engaged in bitter struggles against both the hospital administration and the Fire Department of New York (FDNY) which runs the EMS. A few EMS workers had copies of leaflets they had written collectively following the suspensions of several of their coworkers on flimsy or fabricated grounds.

We learned a bit about the history of the EMS system, its working conditions, and, like the rest of the working class, the all-out racist attacks on the standards of living of both EMS workers and the patients they care for.

In New York, the fire suppression and EMS 9-1-1 systems are run by FDNY; FDNY’s EMS branch accounts for about 70% of the 9-1-1 ambulances in the city, with “voluntary” private hospitals comprising the remainder. They respond to an average of 3,300 calls per day throughout the five boroughs. St. Vincent’s hospital in Manhattan’s West Village, a Level One Trauma Center, recently shut down, costing the jobs of five 24-hour 9-1-1 ambulance units, employing 60 full- and part-time EMTs and Paramedics, along with the jobs of the rest of the hospital staff.

According to the EMS crews, since 9/11 the FDNY brass has turned FDNY into a “paramilitary” organization with a strict chain of command, and has set their sights on pushing the higher-paid hospital-based crews out of the system. The reason? EMS is an important source of profits.

Every ambulance ride, whether treatments are administered or not, is billed to either private insurance or Medicaid. They can easily net over $1,000 per patient if oxygen and basic diagnostics like vital signs are taken. For a hospital, Labor and Delivery and EMS are two of the most lucrative sources of revenue. EMTs and Paramedics see none of this.

Starting pay for municipal EMTs working for FDNY is around $33,000 a year; hospital-based EMTs make slightly more, with Paramedics in both systems making even slightly more than that. Most EMS workers, especially those with families, moonlight at other hospitals part-time, easily working 60-80 hours per week.

One of the EMTs told us that, to afford his mortgage, car payments, and provide for his children, he works overnight tours only to jump into his car, drive to another borough and work a morning-to-afternoon shift, sleeping “for a few hours” in the evening before getting into his car and working overnight again, Monday through Friday.

This worker’s routine was not unusual, as we discovered. Another EMS worker gave us one of their leaflets which attacked the racist FDNY brass and hospital administration and called on EMS workers to unite with all hospital workers and patients to demand better working conditions and healthcare.

Unfortunately, many EMS workers have been burnt out by this racist capitalist system’s years of attacks. Many who worked during the 1980s and 1990s saw their communities become literal war zones as the ruling class flooded the streets and homes of black workers with crack cocaine. The EMS workers we spoke with and who took CHALLENGE were mostly black, Caribbean, and Latino.

Some of the younger workers have avoided burnout, and are involved in local community organizations providing GED and health classes as well as classes for young mothers ages 12 to 22, along with basic literacy. Others have planned solidarity dinners with staff from St. Vincent’s hospital; we plan to assist these workers every step of the way with more CHALLENGE sales, helping distribute their literature, and linking their struggles with those of their international working-class brothers and sisters.

While we were warned that some of their
coworkers were openly racist and “basically Nazis,” and may obstruct our efforts to organize there, we reassured them that they are not struggling alone. Our PLP club will continue to make new contacts. We will use CHALLENGE to sharpen the struggle against the racist FDNY brass and swindling hospital bosses alike.

We have been discussing how the U.S. bosses’ war needs will dictate more racist hospital cutbacks and closures, among escalating attacks on the working class in every other country. We have pledged to step up our organizing efforts.

If there are any other comrades and friends who are EMS workers — or know any — in any country, we encourage them to write for CHALLENGE and share their struggles and experiences.