Class Struggle

Forget Elections—Labor Needs To Get Back to Its Roots

November 22, 2018 By Tom Lewandowski, Inthesetimes.com Strategize! Class Struggle, Electoral Politics, History, Labor

With the midterms behind us, we have Nov. 4, 2020, to look forward to—labor’s next morning after. On Nov. 5, 2008, we were euphoric and full of delusional hope over the imminent passage of the Employee Free Choice Act and the restoration of labor. On Nov. 9, 2016, we were paralyzed by despair and denial. At this point, betting our future on the next brutal mating ritual of Republicans and Democrats is not a bet most workers are willing to take. Since the 1950s, union membership decline has been a straight line downward, regardless of which political party is in power. Only 10.7 percent of workers are unionized; an enormous 89.3 percent are not. That’s too low to make much difference for most people in most places—more molecular level Brownian motion than labor movement.

In The Pacific Northwest, The First Paraeducator-Led Strike Of The Teacher Uprising

November 20, 2018 Dan DiMaggio, Labornotes.org Resist! Class Struggle, Education, Strikes, Teachers

Paraeducators in Port Angeles, Washington, are on strike. In this year’s wave of teacher strikes, it’s the first one led by paraeducators. Teachers have refused to cross their picket lines, shutting down the district’s schools Thursday and Friday. The 115 paradeucators in this small coastal city, just across the water from Canada, assist with everything from reading lessons to recess. Paraeducators play an essential role in today’s schools, offering extra attention and care to students who need it—especially those with disabilities. Besides solidarity, another reason teachers were reluctant to cross the paras’ picket lines was “a lot of safety concerns,” said Eric Pickens, president of the Port Angeles Education Association. “They’re trained to help out our most fragile students, students with special needs.”

The Palestinian People Are As Unified As Hamas And Fatah Are Obsolete

November 20, 2018 Miko Peled, Mintpressnews.com Resist! Class Struggle, Grassroots, Israel, Nationalism, Palestine

JERUSALEM, PALESTINE – Among the myths that cover the reality in Palestine is the one that says Palestinians have no leadership, no unified message, and that the Hamas-Fatah divide represents the entire political reality in Palestine. There is also a myth that claims that the Palestinians of 1948, who carry Israeli citizenship, are somehow not connected to the larger Palestinian issue. Over a ten-day journey in Palestine, it becomes crystal clear that these claims are unfounded. There is, in fact, a solid, grassroots leadership in Palestine. From Al-Jalil in the north to the Naqab in the south, and from the River Jordan to the Mediterranean Sea, Palestinians on the ground are well aware that the Hamas-Fatah politics have little to do with them.

Chilean Workers Observe National Strike Demanding Labor Rights

November 17, 2018 Staff, Peoplesdispatch.org Resist! Chile, Class Struggle, Strikes, Workers, Workers Rights and Jobs

On November 8, hundreds of thousands of Chilean workers organised a massive rally in Santiago as part of their national strike. The call for strike was given by Worker’s United Centre of Chile (CUT) demanding an increase in wages, equal pay, decent pensions, decent housing, quality public health, protection from workplace abuse, etc. They also protested against massive layoffs, pro-rich tax reforms, pension reforms, and the overall labour policy of Chilean president Sebastian Piñera. Several trade unions and student federations attended the march. Similar rallies were held in 40 other locations across the country.

Realities And Challenges Of Recuperated Workplaces In Argentina

November 15, 2018 By Ricardo Vaz, Mronline.org Create! Argentina, Class Struggle, New Economy, Social Movements, Workers

Facultad Abierta (Open School) is something that in Latin America is usually known as a University Extension, understood as the university function that is dedicated to the community. Usually these have to do with cultural aspects, courses, workshops, and this issue has also been commodified recently. We started the programme in 2002. In the School of Philosophy and Literature of the University of Buenos Aires we set up a tiny extension unit to work with social movements, popular movements, that were flourishing at the time, among them the recuperated workplaces. We quickly turned to the subject of worker self-management, or workers’ control, on one hand doing research, and on the other taking part in the processes, trying to support the organizations that emerged.

The World’s Paying Too High A Price For Inequality … And It Needs To Be Addressed Quickly

November 13, 2018 David Dodwell, Scmp.com Educate! Class Struggle, Inequality

As Donald Trump stirs his base ahead of midterm elections with fearmongering over a raggle-taggle band of would-be immigrants wandering through the Mexican countryside towards the US border, claims of victimhood in international trade, and the rise of a modern yellow peril, one has to wonder what has happened to the issue that is truly eating the US from within – extreme and entrenched inequality. As Stiglitz noted in the Scientific American: “By most accounts, the US has the highest level of economic inequality among developed countries. It has the world’s highest per capita health expenditures yet the lowest life expectancy among comparable countries. It is also one of a few developed countries jostling for the dubious distinction of having the lowest measures of equality of opportunity.”

Feeling Down About The World? Rise Up!

November 9, 2018 Brent Patterson, Rabble.ca Educate! Class Struggle, Ideology, Psychology

Many people are quite legitimately feeling down about the state of the world right now. We are dealing with the United Nations climate report that confirms we only have a dozen years left to keep global warming below 1.5 degrees Celsius, then there's the rise of fascism, the misery that led to the migrant caravan, the cynical right-wing vilification of that caravan, and numerous other wrongs that we either directly experience or see on a daily basis via our social media feeds (or both). There can also be a devastating feeling that we are powerless to change any of these deep injustices.

Eight Lessons From History To Help Make Sense Of Today’s Madness

November 7, 2018 AbScher, Dollarsandsense.org Educate! Class Struggle, History

I learned to peer beyond my political bubble in the early 1980s, first when Ronald Reagan was elected president and destroyed the New Deal coalition in which I was raised and then when Phyllis Schlafly’s Stop ERA women indeed stopped the Equal Rights Amendment for women from becoming the law of the land by defeating those of us fighting to win its passage in the Illinois legislature. We needed one more state for the Constitutional Amendment to be enacted, and Illinois was one of three where we had a chance. On the steps of the Springfield, Illinois, capital were white women with lacquered hair wearing skirt suits and beige stockings carrying red Stop ERA signs.

War On Dissent: Shrinking Space For Protest In The UK

November 7, 2018 Kevin Blowe, Roarmag.org Educate! Class Struggle, Police State, Protests, Repression, United Kingdom (UK)

The Network for Police Monitoring (Netpol) campaigns against police surveillance and the regular smearing of activists and groups as “domestic extremists.” Writing in 2016, Netpol observed that the government and the police in Britain are in a “permanent state of war.” This war is fought on a number of fronts — apart from the never-ending war on terror, there are also wars on drugs, on urban black youth, on migrants and on alleged extremism, particularly but not exclusively targeting Muslim communities. “Every battle,” we argued, “requires an enemy and these wars are no exception.” Not least among those perceived enemies are the political dissenters...

“Nicaragua Is A Victim Of Double Political Standards”

November 6, 2018 Staff, Investigaction.net Educate! Class Struggle, Latin America, Nicaragua, Teachers, Unions

Julie Lamin is a committed secondary school teacher in the UK and an author. During the summer holidays of 2017, as part of a teacher delegation organised by her trade union NEU (NUT Section), she travelled to Nicaragua at the invitation of the ‘Nicaraguan teachers’ union, ANDEN and the Ministry of Education. Their purpose was to support Nicaraguan teachers in developing the curriculum of English as a second language. Experiencing first-hand the ‘huge progress’ Nicaragua was making in the lives of young people and their families in terms of education, health and well-being in one of the safest countries in Latin America, Julie was shocked and hurt to hear of the violence that began to disrupt the country only nine months later.

Increased Restrictions On Protest Won’t Keep Communities Safer

November 6, 2018 Shane Burley, Wagingnonviolence.org Educate! Class Struggle, Police State, Protests, Repression, State Violence

On Oct. 15, the Portland Police Bureau held a press conference to announce a new ordinance that would expand police power to limit protest activity. The proposal comes after two years of catastrophic attacks poised as political theater, including mass melees downtown that left people in the hospital, white nationalist contingents taking the streets and an acolyte murdering two people on public transportation when interrupted in the middle of an Islamophobic attack. Every time Patriot Prayer, the Trumpian far-right group who allies with white nationalists, takes to the streets, the entire city revolts. On Aug. 30, Patriot Prayer returned to Portland after a rally a month earlier where attendees brutally assaulted counter-protesters.

Workers Find Their Power On The Picket Line

November 5, 2018 By Kathryn Lybarger, Socialistworker.org Resist! California, Class Struggle, Picketing, Workers

Some 24,000 members of AFSCME Local 3299, which represents support staff and patient care staff in the University of California (UC) medical and school systems, took to the picket lines on October 23-25 for the second three-day strike of this year. The 15,000 members of University Professional and Technical Employees (UPTE) Local 9119 workers at UC also went on strike and were out on the picket lines with AFSCME. The picket lines last week were lively, with strikers stopping several scab deliveries at various campuses. On the second day of the walkout, members of UNITE HERE on strike at Marriott hotels in the Bay Area joined UC strikers from other campuses in converging on UC San Francisco for a rally of more than 1,000 people.

As Workers’ Opposition Grows To Teamsters Contract, UPS Freight Prepares For Strike

November 5, 2018 Will Morrow, Wsws.org Resist! Class Struggle, Strikes, Unions, UPS, Workers

With opposition mounting among 11,000 UPS Freight workers to the Teamsters union's efforts to ram through its sellout contract, UPS management released a statement Thursday announcing that it was making preparations to respond to a strike. Workers voted by more than 62 percent to reject the UPS Freight contract on October 5. On October 25, however, the Teamsters announced that it would force workers to vote again on virtually an unchanged agreement. Workers are due to vote November 7-11, with the results to be announced Sunday evening, November 11. Both versions of the contract create a new second tier of lower-paid workers by creating a new top pay scale for current “in-progression” workers, that is, those who have not yet reached the top pay rate.

Hotel Workers Strike In 10 Cities

November 3, 2018 By Martha Grevatt, Workers.org Resist! Class Struggle, Service Industry, Strikes, Workers

In eight U.S. cities and two in Canada, hotel workers are waging a militant strike against the Marriott hotel chain. Though Marriott is the largest and most profitable hotel chain in the world, its workers have united nationally around the slogan “one job should be enough.” This refers to the fact that many hotel workers must work two or more jobs to make ends meet. Cities affected by the strike are Boston, Detroit, Honolulu, Kauai; Oakland, San Diego, San Francisco, San Jose in California; and Toronto and Vancouver in Canada. Close to two dozen hotels are feeling the effects of the strike. Striking hotel workers in San Francisco took to the streets Oct. 20 as part of the national strike.

America Is On The Brink Of A Nervous Breakdown

November 2, 2018 John W. Whitehead, Rutherford.org Educate! Class Struggle, Repression, State Violence

Yet another ratcheting up of the calls for the government to clamp down on the citizenry by imposing more costly security measures without any real benefit, more militarized police, more surveillance, more widespread mental health screening of the general population, more threat assessments and behavioral sensing warnings, more gun control measures, more surveillance cameras with facial recognition capabilities, more “See Something, Say Something” programs aimed at turning Americans into snitches and spies, more metal detectors and whole-body imaging devices at so-called soft targets, more roaming squads of militarized police empowered to do more stop-and-frisk searches...

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