Class Struggle

Microsoft Workers Pressure Bosses To Cancel ICE Contract

June 21, 2018 Bryan Menegus and Kate Conger, Gizmodo.com Resist! Class Struggle, ICE, Immigration, Microsoft

Microsoft employees are putting pressure on their management to cancel a contract with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, part of a backlash against the agency’s policy of separating children from their families at the U.S. border. In an open letter to Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella sent today, employees demanded that the company cancel its $19.4 million contract with ICE and instate a policy against working with clients who violate international human rights law. The text of the employee letter was first reported by the New York Times and confirmed by Gizmodo. “We believe that Microsoft must take an ethical stand, and put children and families above profits,” the letter, signed by Microsoft employees, states. “We request that Microsoft cancel its contracts with ICE, and with other clients who directly enable ICE.

The US & Nicaragua: A Case Study In Historical Amnesia & Blindness

June 16, 2018 Dan Kovalik, Counterpunch.org Educate! CIA, Class Struggle, History, Nicaragua

I was stunned the other day to see an opinion piece by Stephen Kinzer in The Boston Globe in which he was portraying the violent anti-government protests in Nicaragua as some kind of revolutionary insurrection. What is surprising about Kinzer’s position is that he is the individual who wrote the wonderful book, All The Shah’s Men– one of the essential readings about the CIA-backed coup against Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh in Iran in 1953. What is happening in Nicaragua right now looks a lot like what happened in Iran during this coup, and yet, Kinzer somehow does not see this. In this way, Kinzer typifies the utter confusion of so many in this country — including those who should know better, such as many self-described leftists — about what is happening in Nicaragua and in Latin America generally.

Venezuela After The Elections: More Concessions To The Capitalists, While Economic Crisis Worsens

June 13, 2018 By Jorge Martin, Marxist.com Educate! Capitalism, Class Struggle, Electoral Politics, Venezuela

The Venezuelan elections on 20 May were merely an episode in a long saga of imperialist aggression, economic crisis and the deterioration of living conditions for the working class and poor. The reelected Maduro government has continued its policy of making concessions and appeals to the capitalists. If it wasn’t for the escape valves provided by subsidised food parcels, migration and the dollar-based economy, the situation would have led to a social explosion already. The mood of the chavista rank-and-file is increasingly angry and critical of the leadership. As had already been announced, the imperialist nations refused to recognise the results of the 20 May presidential election. Washington, Brussels and the so-called Lima Group issued stern statements to that effect.

Grand Theft Paycheck

June 13, 2018 By Phil Mattera, Inequality.org Educate! Class Struggle, Labor, Wages, Workers Rights and Jobs

For the past two decades, Walmart has repeatedly been accused of compelling workers to perform certain tasks off the clock and has paid numerous fines for those practices. It is often suggested that the retailer is an anomaly, acting more like a fly-by-night sweatshop than a corporate giant. I recently completed a research project showing that, on the contrary, off-the-clock work, denial of overtime pay through misclassification and other forms of wage theft are pervasive in American big business. After digging through court records for much of the past year, I found more than 1,200 successful wage and hour lawsuits against hundreds of the country’s largest employers. These collective action suits have yielded some $8.8 billion in settlements and verdicts in the period since 2000.

Betraying Labor

June 5, 2018 Greg Godels, Mltoday.com Educate!, Strategize! Class Struggle, Electoral Politics, Labor, Revisionism

At a time when ex-FBI chief James Comey’s self-serving, self-righteous book becomes a bestseller, in a season when ex-Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, the enthusiastic apologist for genocide against Iraqi children, joins Comey on the bestseller list with a preposterous lecture on fascism, it may well be time to retreat to the library. I found some solace and much enlightenment from a dusty, cobweb infested paperback in a corner of a basement book self. I had read Organize! some years ago, maybe forty or more years ago. Published posthumously by the author’s daughter and a colleague, the book is a memoir of one of the US working class’s most valuable leaders– Wyndham Mortimer– at one of labor’s most important junctures.

Civil Rights Unionism

June 5, 2018 Robert Korstad, Jacobinmag.com Educate! Class Struggle, Communism, History, Racism

By any measure, black tobacco workers in 1940s Winston-Salem, North Carolina were down at the bottom of the social hierarchy. They endured severe voting restrictions and segregated accommodations in public, all-powerful bosses and racist job assignments at work, and deplorable living conditions at home. America could trumpet its democratic commitments all it wanted — these workers’ lives were shot through with despotism. In Civil Rights Unionism — originally released in 2003 and excerpted below — historian Robert Korstad tells the story of how these workers were able to change their conditions. After an explosion of shop-floor activism, the predominately black workforce successfully unionized the most powerful corporation in the city, R. J. Reynolds.

After 12 Weeks, University Still On Strike

May 31, 2018 By G. Dunkel, Workers.org Resist! Canada, Class Struggle, Education, Higher Education, Strikes

Over 3,000 contract instructors at York University in Toronto, Canada, have been walking picket lines since early March. Their strike affects nearly 50,000 students. Up to half of all courses offered are taught by contract instructors, the Canadian term for adjuncts. The university administration made a decision to continue as many courses as possible despite the walkout. But being short just one credit can keep a student from graduating. The Canadian Union of Public Employees 3903, which represents the striking contract instructors and teaching assistants, has charged the York administration with being unwilling to bargain. York’s administration insists on binding arbitration — submitting disputes to a third party that makes a final decision — which the union has rejected. Overwhelming majorities of the union have also voted down contract proposals, which York insisted had to be voted on.

Nicaragua,Venezuela: One Enemy, One Fight For Democracy

May 30, 2018 Staff, Telesurtv.net Educate! Class Struggle, Electoral Politics, Latin America, Nicaragua, Protests, Venezuela

Bolivia, Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela are all targets of the U.S. government because they challenge control of Latin America and the Caribbean by Western corporate elites and their local allies. By means of soft coups these interests have – at least for now – taken power in Brazil and Argentina, hijacked the government in Ecuador and derailed the peace process in Colombia. Currently, U.S. efforts at regime change focus most urgently on Venezuela and Nicaragua, while reverting to the failed policy of punitive sanctions against Cuba and biding their time for the moment in Bolivia. Despite the relentless psychological warfare campaign to discredit them, the governments of Bolivia, Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela defend their peoples' fundamental democratic rights to peaceful economic development focused on human needs rather than corporate profit.

Hundreds Arrested Nationwide As Poor People’s Campaign Demands ‘End To The War Economy’

May 30, 2018 By Jake Johnson, Commondreams.org Resist! Arrest, Class Struggle, Poor People's Campaign, Repression, Social Movements

"We have a long history of wars against other people, mostly people of color, around the world. It's time we stopped calling it the Defense Department and started calling it what it is: the Department of War." Inspired by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s warning that "a nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual doom," the Poor People's Campaign launched its third week of action in cities nationwide on Tuesday with the aim of confronting the American war economy, which pours resources that could be used to provide healthcare and food to the poor at home into the killing of innocents aboad.

Caregivers Union Says Orange County Colluded With Freedom Foundation

May 30, 2018 By Robin Urevich, Capitalandmain.com Educate! Class Struggle, Courts, Unions

This spring the Supreme Court is likely to deal the U.S. labor movement a crushing blow if, as expected, it rules in Janus v. AFSCME that public employees who choose not to join unions no longer have to pay service fees for union representation. For the political right, the case is a dream come true because weakened unions would mean a weaker Democratic Party, which relies on organized labor for campaign money and boots on the ground to get out the vote. If plaintiff Mark Janus prevails, deep-pocketed conservative groups—funded by the likes of the Koch brothers— have announced they’ll wage war for the hearts and minds of public employees in an attempt to separate them from their unions. The fight is already on in Orange County, where the right-to-work group Freedom Foundation, based in Washington state, scored a win last January in a battle over orientations for new in-home health care aides.

Mind The Stop-Gap

May 29, 2018 Eleanor Goldfield, Artkillingapathy.com Strategize! Capitalism, Class Struggle, Left Politics

The Left loves to argue. Infighting and petty tiffs abound – purity tests and religious-style righteousness hang like smog over so-called safe spaces, suffocating collaborations. One wonders sometimes whether or not the goal for many leftist individuals and organizations is not to fight for progress but rather to fight about it. And this is not to say that there isn’t vital work that is being done. There are so many powerful initiatives to both fight and build; ones that side step the privileged place of theoretical mind space and get shit done. The problem is that because many people lack a feeling of urgency. Add to this the simple truth that doing the work is a lot harder than talking about it and you find that people often just talk – and read.

Just Say “No” To The Draft

May 29, 2018 Cindy Sheehan, Women’s March on the Pentagon Resist! Class Struggle, History, Military, Military Draft

The US Congress has commissioned a “bi-partisan” panel of 11 people to study the future of a military draft in the United States. Since the beginning of forced conscription in the US (Civil War), a military draft for that war and subsequent wars has been highly unfair and class biased. For example, in the Civil War, conscripts could actually purchase the way for someone else to take his place. For every war during the 20th century, draft avoidance, resistance, or “dodging” has been practiced. During the US war crime in Vietnam, 2.15 million US troops were deployed there and at least three-quarter of them were from working-class or poor families. However, we all know the stories of former “deferred” war hawks like Dick (Five-Deferment) Cheney, Bill Clinton, Ted Nugent, Rush Limbaugh, Trump, and Mitt Romney and sub-par humans like George W. Bush being allowed to join an elite (safe) unit to avoid the carnage.

Amazon Bows To The Unions: New Shifts And Higher Wages

May 25, 2018 By Antonio Sciotto, Global.ilmanifesto.it Organize! Amazon, Class Struggle, Labor, Unions

For the first time in Europe, the e-commerce multinational Amazon signed a contract with the unions regarding the organization of work shifts. This “historic” event—as FILCAMS CGIL, CISL and FISASCAT UILTUCS have called it—took place at the large shipment hub of Castel San Giovanni (Piacenza region), where, on Black Friday last year, employees were involved in a large-scale and unprecedented protest. The workers for the US giant, hired legally under the national contract for the logistics field, have complained they were being heavily tested by the tough shifts and the amount of tasks and the pace required by the e-commerce chain.

Striking Teachers Beat Back Neoliberalism’s War On Public Schools

May 25, 2018 By Henry A. Giroux, Truthout.org Educate! Class Struggle, Education, Public schools, Strikes, Teachers

Thousands of teachers and students are walking out of schools, marching in the streets, and raising their hands and signs in protest against the war on education. Most recently, South Carolina has joined the wave of teachers' protests and strikes taking place across the nation. In the age of illiberal democracy and the growing fascism of the Trump administration, the unimaginable has once again become imaginable as teachers inspired and energized by a dynamic willingness to fight for their rights and the rights of their students are exercising bold expressions of political power.

Questioning War Is A Civic Duty. Why Do So Few Do It?

May 24, 2018 By Kevin Basl, Otherwords.org Educate! Class Struggle, Inter-Imperialist Rivalry, Veterans, Wars and Militarism

“How do you motivate men and women to fight and die for a cause many of them don’t believe in, and whose purpose they can’t articulate?” That’s what Phil Klay, author and U.S. Marine Corps veteran, asks in an essay published this month in The Atlantic. Unfortunately, he points out in a recent New York Times op-ed, “Serious discussion of foreign policy and the military’s role within it is often prohibited” by what he calls “patriotic correctness.” In a well-functioning democracy, Klay argues, citizens must debate and question how their elected officials employ their military, an organization which ought to represent the values of the people. But it seems many Americans remain unconcerned about the wars the United States is currently fighting (at last count, we’re bombing at least 7 countries) though they foot the bill both in tax dollars and lives.

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