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Working Class

UK Strike Wave Escalates As Over 200,000 Walk Out This Week

November 26, 2022 Robert Stevens, WSWS. , , ,
Britain’s strike wave is growing despite all attempts by the trade union bureaucracy to bring it under control. Thursday and Friday both saw strike action by over 200,000 workers. A two-day strike Thursday and Friday by 115,000 postal workers in the Communication Workers Union (CWU) at Royal Mail coincided with a 48-hour walkout by 70,000 university staff at all 150 higher education institutions in Britain and a strike by up to 50,000 teachers in Scotland. All three groups of workers have additional days of strikes planned, including next week by university staff and postal workers on November 30 and December 1. On Friday, the Educational Institute of Scotland announced another 16 consecutive days of strikes for January and February.

‘Labor Shortage’ Is Being Used As A Pretext To Harm Workers

November 23, 2022 Sarah Lazare, In These Times. , , ,
A so-called ​“labor shortage” in the United States has quickly become a catch-all justification for policies that prevent workers from gaining too much power on the job, or collectively organizing by forming unions.  Not enough applicants for low-paid jobs packing meat, or working the cash register at Dairy Queen? Better crank up the Federal Reserve’s interest rates (a policy explicitly aimed at spurring a recession and putting people out of work), so that we have a larger reserve of the desperate unemployed. Pandemic-era social programs ever-so-slightly redistributing wealth downward? Better shut them down, lest we eliminate the supposed precarity needed to incentivize work.

What The 2022 Midterm Election Charade Offers Us

October 31, 2022 Stansfield Smith, Orinoco Tribune. , , ,
That neither the Democrats nor the Republicans are offering anything to alleviate the problems working people face is illustrated by their campaign fear-mongering – the former over “fascism” and the latter over “socialists” and “radicals.” No matter which party dominates the midterm elections, do not expect either will herald in fascism or socialism. Actual socialists in Congress would demand we stop instigating war with Russia, (now topping $66 billion), and instead eliminate homelessness (costing $20 billion) and hunger ($25 billion) as  emergency first steps. Those swayed by Republican propaganda need not fear impending socialism: 100% of the Democrats including Bernie, AOC and the Squad voted like neo-cons for tens of billions in handouts to military contractors to further war in Ukraine.

Bolivia: Elitist Coup Attempt In Santa Cruz

October 28, 2022 Ángel Guerra Cabrera, Resumen English. , , ,
The ultra right-wing governor of the department of Santa Cruz, Luis Fernando Camacho, and his separatist clique have been maintaining an elitist and bosses’ strike against the government of Bolivia since October 21, which has already cost one life and economic losses of tens of millions of dollars. Camacho and the leaders of the Civic Committee for Santa Cruz demand that the population and housing census, postponed for technical reasons for a year later, be brought forward to 2023 with the consensus of all the governors and only the opinion against of the governor of Santa Cruz. The MAS called a Great People’s Council on October 23, which was attended by hundreds of thousands of Santa Cruz inhabitants, who rejected the measure of force. It is worth remembering that Camacho is one of the most reactionary, racist, pro-imperialist and patriarchal politicians of the Altiplano country and one of the most prominent subjects in the organization of the coup against Evo Morales in 2019, initiated with a strike very similar to the current one, which dragged important sectors of the middle classes of Bolivia. But today the conditions are not the same as then, the Movement towards Socialism (MAS) gained in experience and consciousness and  it comes from a great electoral victory in which it defeated the right-wing coup with more than 55 percent of the votes while maintain its combat morale is high.

Sanctions Won’t Stop Latin American Leaders From Talking With US Workers

September 17, 2022 People's Dispatch. , , ,
On September 24, leaders from Cuba and Venezuela will speak at an event titled “The People’s Summit: Democracy Beyond the US Empire”. The event is convened by the International Peoples’ Assembly, an international network of people’s movements and organizations. The event will be held in the historic Riverside Church in Morningside Heights, as the UN General Assembly convenes further downtown in Manhattan. Speakers include Bruno Rodriguez, the Foreign Minister of Cuba, Carlos Faria, the Foreign Minister of Venezuela, Kristin Richardson Jordan, District 9 Council Member for New York City, Vijay Prashad, Director of the Tricontinental Institute of Social Research, and Claudia De La Cruz, Co-Executive Director of The People’s Forum.

Over One Million Bolivians Mobilize To Support President Arce’s Government

August 31, 2022 People's Dispatch. , , , ,
On Thursday, August 25, under the banner of ‘March in Defense of Democracy and Economic Reconstruction’, over one million Bolivians mobilized in support of the government of President Luis Arce and Vice President David Choquehuanca and its socialist economic policies. Workers from diverse sectors, peasants, students, and members of various Indigenous organizations and social movements from all nine departments of the country arrived in capital La Paz to ratify their support for the national government of the ruling Movement Towards Socialism (MAS) party. The call for the march was given by the Pact of Unity (PU), a national alliance of grassroots organizations, and the Central Obrera Boliviana (COB), the country’s trade union center, in the face of attempts by far-right opposition sectors and capitalists to destabilize the national government and the country’s economy.

The Far Right Aims To Eliminate Trans People

August 30, 2022 Morgan Artyukhina, Liberation News. , , ,
The far right has unleashed a torrent of attacks on transgender rights with the goal of pushing trans people further into the precarious margins of U.S. capitalist society. Despite those efforts in the halls of power, working and oppressed people have embraced the fight for trans liberation and rallied in defense of LGBTQ people under attack. The latest is a bill introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives by Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) that would severely limit the ability of millions of transgender people to access transition-related medical care. Provocatively called the “Protect Children’s Innocence Act,” the bill would make it a felony to provide trans children with gender-affirming medical care, such as prescribing hormone blockers, hormone replacement therapy or surgery, punishable with between 10 and 25 years in prison and a fine of up to $250,000.

Urgent Appeal For Unity And Mass Action Against Union Busting

August 11, 2022 Amazon Workers, Popular Resistance. , , ,
The national wave of union organizing and militancy spearheaded by Starbucks workers and Amazon workers is the biggest upsurge in worker organizing since the 1930s and 1940s. The organizing wave has spread to Trader Joe’s, Chipotle, Apple, REI and a growing list of chain stores and industries. However, this uprising of workers, which holds the potential of not only saving the labor movement, but transforming it, is under life-threatening attack. We must unite in defense of the brave young workers that are the vanguard of this transformative workers struggle. From their corporate boardrooms down to their worksite managers, Starbucks and Amazon are engaged in an outright war to crush the organizing wave. Starbucks is firing union organizers, closing stores, cutting workers hours, and denying pro-union workers wage increases and benefits.

The Push-Pull Of The Abortion Rights Struggle Continues In The US

July 15, 2022 Natalia Marques, People's Dispatch. , , , ,
In the few weeks that have passed since the United States Supreme Court ruled to overturn Roe v. Wade on June 24, stripping abortion rights from millions of women, the people of the United States have continued to fight back. Despite assurances, the response from the Biden administration to protect the fundamental right has been deemed resoundingly inadequate. “The mass of the people will have to flood into the streets, and will have to remain in the streets,” Monica Illyrich, a young organizer with the Party for Socialism and Liberation, told Peoples Dispatch. “We will have to do everything they can to let these politicians know that they will not be able to quietly and peacefully go on with their lives, trying to jeopardize the lives of so many millions of people.” Illyrich, alongside others, participated in an 18-hour protest in front of the Georgia Judicial Center in Atlanta, from July 4 to 5, in order to protest a pending Georgia abortion ban that would prohibit most abortions after a fetal heartbeat is detected.

British Rail Workers Lead Fight Against Cost Of Living Crisis

June 26, 2022 People's Dispatch. , , ,
As working class sections and low income households in the UK are suffering from the ongoing cost of living crisis, rail workers are organizing a massive mobilization against proposed austerity measures and job cuts. Over 50,000 rail workers of 13 train operating companies and the London Tube began a strike action on Tuesday, June 21, under the leadership of the National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers (RMT) demanding higher wages at par with the soaring inflation and protesting against the job cuts that will result from the austerity policies proposed by the authorities. The strike continued on Thursday, June 23, and the workers will again go on strike on Saturday, June 25.

Summit Of The Americas Flops While Workers Summit Exposes Cracks In Imperial Façade

June 17, 2022 Roger D. Harris, Popular Resistance. , , ,
Valentín, the man next to us in line as we made our way across the international border, asked what we had been doing in Tijuana. We had been at the Workers Summit of the Americas, organized as an alternative to Biden’s Summit of the Americas in Los Angeles. Our summit was as a place where countries besieged by and barred from the US could participate and was held in cooperation with a kindred counter-summit in Los Angeles. Valentín, who had been born in Mexico and spent most of his working life in the United States, had seen the border from both perspectives. He commented about Biden’s summit that although the US is rich in resources, industry, and agriculture, “it wants it all,” which pretty much sums up what imperialism is about.

Final Declaration Of The Workers’ Summit Of The Americas

June 16, 2022 Fight Back News. , , ,
We, representatives of Trade Union, Peasant, Political and Social organizations, gathered in Tijuana – Mexico, June 10-12, 2022, on the occasion of the realization of the Summit of the Americas of the Working Men and Women Workers, in immediate response to the exclusion of Venezuela, Cuba, and Nicaragua imposed by the Government of the United States. There is a systemic and structural crisis of capitalism in its imperialist phase. It is in itself a civilizational crisis. The capitalist economic model and its political arm neoliberalism, as well as its modern cultural foundation, have put the planet’s life in crisis. If not eliminated, imperialism’s necropolitics leads us to the planetary collective suicide, which is more lacerating in the sectors less favored by the current world system.

Greek Railroad Workers Block Delivery Of US Tanks To Ukraine

April 8, 2022 Simon Zinnstein, Left Voice. , , ,
Workers at TrainOSE, a Greek railroad company, have been refusing to transport U.S. tanks destined for Ukraine from Alexandroupoli, a port in the northern part of the country. After workers there refused, bosses tried to force railroad workers from elsewhere to take on the work. “For about two weeks now,” the Communist Party of Greece (KKE) said in a statement, “there has been pressure on the employees of the engine room in Thessaloniki to go to Alexandroupoli.” The bosses’ desperate effort to find workers who would move the transport forward was unsuccessful. The argument from employers that they should have no specific interest in what they are transporting came to nothing, even with a threat regarding the workers’ contract, which states, “An employee can be deployed according to the needs of the company.” Further threats of dismissal also proved fruitless.

The Troika Kollective Statement On Ukraine: ‘We Stand With The People’

March 10, 2022 The Troika Kollective, Popular Resistance. , , ,
The Troika Kollective stands in solidarity with the people of Donetsk and Luhansk. We stand firmly against all wars of plunder, against NATO’s repeated military interventions, and against U.S. intervention. We recognize that the working-class of these two republics want peace and self-determination. We are in solidarity with the anti-war faction in Ukraine. The U.S. ruling class is only interested in maintaining post-2014 Ukraine as an economic and geopolitical pawn in it’s outdated attempt to hang on to a unipolar world (U.S. hegemony). Russia is one of many nations of the world today who, through their refusal to bend to U.S. imperialism, represent the deterioration of U.S. hegemony.

The Power Of Recognizing Higher Ed Faculty As Working-Class

February 23, 2022 Helena Worthen, Working-Class Perspectives. , , ,
Just over 20 years ago, Michael Zweig published The Working Class Majority: America’s Best Kept Secret. At that year’s How Class Works conference at SUNY Stony Brook, academics from history, political science, labor and industrial relations, and other fields debated Zweig’s use of the term “working class.” Some thought it was a throwback to the 1930s or a tip-off that someone was a Marxist. But even at a conference attended by many academics from working-class backgrounds, no one pointed out that academics are working class. Twenty years ago, academia still seemed like a middle-class or even an upper-class job, even though that had started to change in the mid 1970s.Young academics expected that if they did “all the right things,” they would get tenure and live happily ever after.
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