Working Class

Canadian Workers, The Social-Ecological Crisis and Alternatives

September 5, 2023 Socialist Project. Strategize! Canada, Labor Movement, Socialism, Worker Rights and Jobs, Working Class

As workers, we are today confronted with the challenge of defending what we have and making gains in the face of an ever-expanding and relentless employer offensive. The employers’ drive to increase productivity and profits – central to capitalism everywhere – demands that we accept job loss and insecurity, concessions, new forms of speedup, and expanded management control in the workplace. More of us are forced to work in precarious forms of employment, making ourselves ‘flexible’ without access to unemployment and other social benefits or hope of a decent pension.

How The Right Hijack Class Analysis

August 12, 2023 Ekaterina Cabylis, Orinoco Tribune. Strategize! Authoritarianism, Extreme Right, Fascist, Immigrants, Injustice, misinformation, Neoliberalism, Populism, Working Class, Xenophobia

The alt-right sometimes uses sneaky methods to promote their ideas without directly showing their extremist views. For example, people like Jordan Peterson may talk about controversial topics in a way that sounds academic and respectable. They might use coded language to appeal to certain groups without openly expressing extreme beliefs. They focus on divisive issues like gender pronouns and political correctness to get attention and draw people in. Some of them might act like they are being attacked or silenced, so they seem like defenders of free speech. They may also talk to or associate with groups linked to the alt-right, even if they don’t openly support extremist ideas.

‘A New Form Of Colonization’: Argentinian Workers Confront The IMF

July 29, 2023 Leonardo Erhardt, The Real News Network. Resistance Report Argentina, colonization, IMF, Working Class

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank have a long history of plunging Global South nations into unsustainable cycles of debt. For Argentina, this process has been ongoing for decades, and is now reaching a breaking point. Since 2015, the Argentine peso has lost 80% of its value against the US dollar, leading to a cost of living crisis affecting a wide swath of society. The economic shock of the pandemic and the latest $44 billion IMF loan package delivered in 2022 have only made matters worse. In the second half of 2020, more than 40% of Argentinians were in poverty.

Sandinistas Speak: Nicaraguans Defend Their Revolution

July 14, 2023 Teri Mattson, WtF is Going on in Latin America and the Caribbean. Podcast – WTF is Going on in Latin America & the Caribbean Nicaragua, Sandinista Revolution, Socialism, Working Class

Friday, June 30, WTF returned to Managua, Nicaragua to do follow-up study of Caribbean Coast government funded infrastructure projects and to celebrate the 44th Anniversary of the Sandinista Revolution on July 19. While on assignment, each week we will share with you segments of the documentary Nicaragua Against Empire. The film journals our March 2021 Sanctions Kill / Friends of the ATC, Nicaragua delegation. In this episode, you hear directly from working-class Nicaraguans who support their socialist government. You also hear their thoughts about U.S. sanctions and regime change. These are perspectives rarely shared in mainstream media.

The Unions And Workers Supporting Cop City Protestors

June 9, 2023 Sarah Lazare, The Real News. Resist! Cop City, Intersectionality, Labor Unions, Working Class

Vincent Quiles, a 28-year-old father and union organizer in Philadelphia, is part of a fledgling labor effort to support the months-long protests against construction of the notorious Atlanta Public Safety Training Center, popularly known as “Cop City.” For Quiles, this also means speaking out against his former employer: Home Depot. When he was fired from a Home Depot store in northeastern Philadelphia in February, Quiles was already struggling to support his toddler son on his salary, which he says never felt like enough, given the meager benefits. He says he was forced to lean on his “very strong support system.”

In The Factories There Is Wealth, But There Is No Life

May 5, 2023 Vijay Prashad, Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. Educate! ILO, India, Worker Rights, Working Class

In late 2022, the International Labour Organisation (ILO) released a fascinating report entitled Working Time and Work-Life Balance Around the World, in large part encouraged by a slew of initiatives across India to extend the workday. The report accumulated global data on the time spent at work in 2019, before the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. The ILO found that ‘approximately one third of the global workforce (35.4 percent) worked more than 48 hours per week’ and ‘one fifth of global employment (20.3 percent) consists of short (or part-time) hours of work of less than 35 hours per week’, such as gig work.

A Worldwide Anti-Imperialist Left Is Needed

May 5, 2023 Alan Freeman and Radhika Desai, Orinoco Tribune. Strategize! Anti-Imperialist, Capitalism, Multipolar World, Working Class

Capital organises globally yet workers do not. As the US-led NATO powers escalate the Ukraine conflict into a new world war, this imbalance is becoming intolerable. This paper presents the case for a worldwide anti-imperialist Left, representing ordinary people committed to a just and peaceful multipolar world order. This will serve both the national interest of every country, and the general interest of humanity. We base our case on an historical assessment of the last such organization, the Communist International or Comintern for short, founded in 1919 and dissolved in 1943.

Lessons From Lenin For International Workers Day

May 1, 2023 Workers World Party, Workers World. Educate! History, International Workers Day, May Day, Working Class

International Workers Day, also known as May Day, reminds us of an anecdote about the 1917 Russian Revolution regarding the working class. At the time, the Bolshevik Party, trained and led by V.I. Lenin was in the process of seizing power. An anti-Bolshevik intellectual was arguing with a Bolshevik worker and bringing up all the complexities of running a government and of deserting Russia’s allies in the great slaughter of World War I. “I see it this way,” said the Bolshevik worker. “The bosses are on one side. We’re on the other side. If we don’t take power, they will.” The worker was right. Bosses, that is capitalists, are on one side. Workers are on the other side.

Beyond Fatalism: Renewing Working-Class Politics

March 26, 2023 Sam Gindin, The Bullet. Strategize! Canada, Labor Movement, Politics, popular power, Working Class

“We need to ask ourselves,” Leo Panitch and Donald Swartz stated in the third edition of From Consent to Coercion, “whether free pertains to those who do business or whether it pertains also to the majority of Canadians who do not do business.” Their book, now a classic, focused on a critical expression of the tension between liberal democratic principles and capitalist realities: the substantive right of workers to strike. Canadian workers were officially granted the basic democratic right to form unions, but the substance of that right – the withdrawal by workers of their labour power – was regularly suspended when workers successfully used it.

It Was The Workers Who Brought Us Democracy

January 27, 2023 Vijay Prashad, Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. Educate! Democracy, History, Labor Movement, Working Class

Democracy has a dream-like character. It sweeps into the world, carried forward by an immense desire by humans to overcome the barriers of indignity and social suffering. When confronted by hunger or the death of their children, earlier communities might have reflexively blamed nature or divinity, and indeed those explanations remain with us today. But the ability of human beings to generate massive surpluses through social production, alongside the cruelty of the capitalist class to deny the vast majority of humankind access to that surplus, generates new kinds of ideas and new frustrations. This frustration, spurred by the awareness of plenty amidst a reality of deprivation, is the source of many movements for democracy. Habits of colonial thought mislead many to assume that democracy originated in Europe, either in ancient Greece (which gives us the word ‘democracy’ from demos, ‘the people’, and kratos, ‘rule’) or through the emergence of a rights tradition, from the English Petition of Right in 1628 to the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen in 1789.

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

November 26, 2022 Robert Stevens, WSWS. Resist! Strikes, United Kingdom (UK), Worker Rights and Jobs, Working Class

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. Educate! Jobs, Labor, Worker Rights, Working Class

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. Educate! Elections, US elections, US Imperialism, Working Class

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. Educate! Bolivia, coup, Socialism, Working Class

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. Organize! Cuba, US Sanctions, Venezuela, Working Class

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.

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