the Voice of
The Communist League of Revolutionary Workers–Internationalist
“The emancipation of the working class will only be achieved by the working class itself.”
— Karl Marx
the Voice of
The Communist League of Revolutionary Workers–Internationalist
“The emancipation of the working class will only be achieved by the working class itself.”
— Karl Marx
Apr 11, 2016
Over the last nine months, twelve states cut funding to Planned Parenthood, the main provider of health services for lower income women.
Of course, women with money aren’t impacted by the cuts–just like they’ve never been impacted by laws that restrict abortion. Their money opens the door to whatever medical services they need.
But for a large number of working class women, the cuts to Planned Parenthood were cruelly felt as a direct attack.
Clinics were forced to shut, denying women access to basic medical services. The harm inflicted was enormous and immediate.
To see the human cost, look at Texas, where the attacks on Planned Parenthood go back five years. Already, in the first two years after the cuts, only half as many women were served by Planned Parenthood–170,000 instead of 350,000.
In other words, 180,000 women were denied medical services, starting with abortion. They lost access to a wide range of other services, including contraceptives, mammograms and other cancer screening, treatment for various diseases that afflict women, as well as basic preventive care for high blood pressure, diabetes, and other chronic diseases.
In the first year after funding was cut in Texas, half the women who sought an abortion had become pregnant because they were not able to get the birth control they had been using.
And what about all the other women? How many could have been screened for breast cancer or cervical cancer before it was too late, but were not? How many others would have been warned about their diabetes or blood pressure problem? How many others would not have died? No one knows, because those women were among the 180,000 who had no place to go.
Texas, need it be said, is the home base of Ted Cruz, who cheered along all these cuts. Ohio, which passed even more severe cuts, was headed by John Kasich, who bragged about signing the legislation. And Florida, with the open support of Marco Rubio, passed equally sweeping cuts. In fact, nine of the 12 states that cut funding to Planned Parenthood were headed by Republican governors.
The Republican Party and its other candidates may denounce Trump for his statement about “punishing women.” But that’s exactly what the Republican Party has done. Pushing to limit access to abortion and birth control, it punished women. Cynically working to build up an electoral base among right-wing religious fundamentalists by attacking women’s right to control their own bodies, Republicans condemned unnumbered working women to harsher lives.
But what about the Democrats? Surely, they defended women’s rights? Surely no, they haven’t done. Three of those states that cut funding–New Hampshire, Louisiana and Montana–were headed by Democrats.
In fact, the very first restriction on women’s access to abortion came in 1976, when the Democrats controlled the Senate by an almost two to one margin–60 to 37–and the House by more than two to one–291 to 144. That was the federal Hyde Amendment, which denied the use of Medicaid funds to pay for abortion. Not only was Hyde the first to restrict women’s right to choose, it has continued to be re-authorized by every Congress, every president ever since, Republican or Democrat. For working class women, the Hyde Amendment is surely the most destructive. By cutting public money for abortion, it denies real access for a very large number of women.
Working women face particular problems. But they share this with the rest of the working class: neither of the two parties defend them. Neither of the two parties represent their interests.
Either open enemy or false friend, that’s what working women confront in the two big parties that dominate political life today.
Apr 11, 2016
Hundreds of thousands of people in 21 states, perhaps as many as a million of the poorest people in the U.S., are losing their food stamps this April.
The cuts will spare women with children and people with disabilities–but only for now.
The Supplemental Food Assistance Program, SNAP, was set up by Congress under Clinton. Its goal was to kick people off the program after a certain time limit, usually three months. Most states had been using a suspension of this time limit for the past eight years, because the recession has meant few jobs were available.
Since official unemployment rates have fallen, the politicians see an excuse to cut people off the program, accumulating money for the states to give to corporations.
But official unemployment rates reflect nothing of the real world. ACTUAL unemployment hasn’t decreased.
Moreover, the adults in SNAP are often in situations that make it more difficult to even find a job. They are less likely than the rest of the population to have a high school diploma or a driver’s license; they are more likely to have a physical or mental limitation and more likely to be homeless. Even if they find a job, it’s likely to be a minimum wage job, which would leave them still in poverty and in need of SNAP.
The exception to getting kicked off SNAP was to enter a job training program. But only FIVE states have consistently offered such job training. It’s obvious that the goal was not to help people find a job–in a society which didn’t offer enough. No, it was simply set up as a pretext for dumping people.
The vast majority of people likely to lose their food stamps live in one of the richest countries the world has ever seen. It is a society that has the means to make sure not one single person goes to bed hungry.
This SNAP cut is a backdoor move by politicians in almost every state to cut people off food stamps. And it shows a bankrupt society ready to let people drop dead on the streets.
Apr 11, 2016
Governor Snyder can be spotted in neighborhoods throughout Metro Detroit. Not in person, but on the front of “wanted” posters.
As it should be. There are many who feel he should be recalled, if not locked up for his role in the lead poisoning of the Flint population.
Apr 11, 2016
A computer called DeepMind, developed by Google, beat Lee Sedol, the Korean champion of the game of Go, by four games to one. That gave rise to many comments on the theme, will people be overtaken by machines?
But if a person can compete with a modern computer capable of calculating many more moves in advance, that only means that human intelligence can’t be reduced to simple calculations and is in fact much more complex.
Human intelligence is, in reality, responsible for the computer’s victory. It required the cumulative intelligence of scientists and engineers coming from very different fields, capable of making a sophisticated machine, but this was human intelligence and nothing else.
Machines are the product of women and men who conceive and build them. There is no reason to be worried because of the victory of a machine in this game that was also invented by human beings.
Science fiction likes to imagine machines escaping the control of humanity. Today, it’s not machines that have escaped human control, but our social organization. But this social organization is also nothing other than the product of humanity’s own activity. And the task that we need to carry out is to consciously master our economic and social organization, organize it rationally, and plan it. This is called communism.
And another thing is certain–we can’t count on machines to accomplish it for us.
Apr 11, 2016
At a second state prison in the Upper Peninsula, another protest erupted. It also targeted the for-profit prison food contractor, Trinity. At the Chippewa Prison, in the west wing, only inmates who had to eat for medical reasons showed up. Everyone else stayed in their cells in a peaceful protest. The warden may have met the food company. But if the prisoners got a few decent meals, it was their own unity that got it for them.
Apr 11, 2016
An important truth just came out about poisoned children and adults in Flint, Michigan. Previously it was reported that chemicals to properly treat Flint River water would have cost only $150 a day. It seemed odd that such a bad decision was made over so little money.
It turns out there was more to the story. The Flint Water Department had been told by two engineering firms that the city needed to spend eight million dollars to buy new equipment to be able to handle adding those chemicals to the water.
Top officials at the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality told Flint this eight million dollar equipment was NOT needed. A recent Free Press article “Why Didn’t Flint Treat Its Water?” explained about this.
For years, Republicans AND Democrats have gutted public spending–always cutting the bottom line. Why? Their policy to keep giving huge tax cuts to corporations leaves them stealing from public service budgets in insane ways.
Apr 11, 2016
Washington, D.C. officials propose to move homeless families from the 280-family shelter in the former D.C. General Hospital building into smaller shelters. Mayor Bowser like Mayor Gray before her says homeless families will be better served.
Great–if that were true. But it’s not.
The city is simply using the pretext of the homeless to give an enormous gift to the development company of politically connected Bruce Finland.
The city agreed to pay $3,500 a room for 50 rooms at Finland’s 2619 Wisconsin Avenue shelter. That’s in the first year. The rate would go up 3% a year after that. But the average rent for one-bedroom apartments in the nearby neighborhood is $1,750 a month, and for two-bedroom apartments, $2,860. The city committed to pay far more than that for nothing but dormitory style rooms–no private bathrooms, no kitchens. The family members will have to use shared bathrooms in the hallways. The seven shelters to be leased in the city’s other wards all have similarly high rent paid to similarly connected developers.
It’s not a plan for the homeless, it’s another gift to landlords.
Apr 11, 2016
A Safeway supermarket is opening near Prince George’s Plaza in Hyattsville, Maryland outside Washington, D.C. But the juiciest produce has already been sold. The developer which built the store and is leasing it to Safeway got 3.5 million dollars in government subsidies for the project, including two million dollars from the Prince George’s County Economic Development Initiative, more than 1.1 million dollars in a PILOT (Payment in Lieu of Taxes) and a $400,000 credit from the city of Hyattsville.
The “developer”, ECHO Realty, owns 190 commercial properties in at least seven states, including 161 Giant Eagle supermarkets in Pennsylvania, plus some Harris-Teeter and Publix supermarkets.
Apparently county and city officials all over the country couldn’t pass up opportunities to take money needed for local services like schools, in order to throw it at one wealthy developer!
Apr 11, 2016
Last year, Detroit shut off water service to 23,300 homes. That is one in every nine homes in Detroit! This means thousands of people are living without water in this city, which is supposedly “coming back.”
Yes, many homeowners owe on their water bills, but not nearly as much as businesses and government-owned properties. Homeowners owed 26 million dollars–compared to 41 million dollars for other properties, mostly businesses. Yet only 1 in 37 of the city’s non-residential water accounts got shut off.
If they wanted money to run the water system, they would target the businesses and institutions that could afford to pay. Instead, they target poor people who can’t.
Along with tax sales and school closings, this is just one more city policy that drives poor people out.
Of course the city rarely shuts off water to businesses–that’s who it serves! And it’s serving them once again with these water shut-offs, clearing the neighborhoods of poor people, and handing the land over to real estate developers.
Apr 11, 2016
Illinois Republican Governor Bruce Rauner and the Democrats who run the Illinois House and Senate have refused to pass a state budget for months. Rauner claims Illinois “can’t afford” its social programs or public sector unions. The Democrats pretend to be the defenders of workers and state services. In reality, it’s all a political soap opera.
The Democrats completely ran Illinois for more than a decade, controlling the Illinois House and Senate and the governor’s office. When they were in uncontested power, the Democrats handed out hundreds of millions in tax breaks to every corporation that came calling, including United Airlines, MillerCoors, Google, Caterpillar–in fact, just about every company that operates in the state!
The Democrats claimed the state was broke. Of course it was–they gave the bank away! Then, looking for more money to give away, they raised taxes on ordinary people and carried out a policy of “death by a thousand cuts,” reducing spending on social programs and education. And the previous governor, Democrat Pat Quinn, claimed, like Rauner does now, that Illinois “could not afford” the pensions it promised to state workers. The Democrats passed a law that would have drastically reduced pension benefits for state workers–when the Democrats had been the ones who hadn’t put the money they owed into the pension system for more than a decade.
No wonder working people in Illinois weren’t exactly excited to vote for Democrat Pat Quinn in 2014. He lost to Republican Bruce Rauner.
Now Rauner is using his election to continue the attacks on services and on state workers, and also to go after public sector unions. He has proposed putting in place restrictions similar to those enacted in Wisconsin. These restrictions would hurt the unions’ ability to collect dues and maintain an apparatus. That would harm the Democrats because the union apparatus provides the Democratic Party’s most important base of campaigners. This is the real issue on which the Democrats disagree with Rauner. It’s an election issue!
The Democrats and Republicans have proven that they agree about attacking pensions, education, Medicaid, mental health services and everything else ordinary people depend on. But the budget drama being carried out today lets the Democrats hide their responsibility.
Democratic Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel is playing this game to the hilt. He has been attacking working class children since he was first elected, coming after the teachers and closing schools in working class neighborhoods. Now, he is blaming Rauner for the Chicago Public Schools budget deficit–that he created by giveaways to the banks and corporations! He tells teachers to protest the Republicans, not him. Most are not fooled.
While Rauner and the Democrats are acting out this political soap opera, they are creating a disaster for many people across the state. Of course, Democrats and Republicans make sure the state hasn’t missed a single interest payment to the banks. But after-school programs and rape crisis centers are shutting down. Almost 100,000 seniors are no longer getting Meals on Wheels. Programs that give breast and cervical cancer screenings, and treatment for epilepsy and autism are turning people away for lack of funds. Colleges like Chicago State and Eastern Illinois have issued layoff notices to their workers and are threatening to close altogether.
So even before they pass the budget, this drama in Springfield has taken money away from programs the population needs. It’s just a foretaste of the budget they will finally cook up. It couldn’t be clearer–neither party represents the interests of ordinary people.
Apr 11, 2016
Chicago teachers launched a spirited one-day strike on April 1st. The teachers demanded more funding for schools and sent a message that they aren’t ready to give in to the Board of Education’s demand for massive cuts.
Teachers have had enough of Forest Claypool, Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s appointed CEO of the schools. Claypool refused to pay raises for seniority and education, called Lanes and Steps, he instituted repeated cuts at schools already cut to the bone, and he massively cut special education services. More recently, he threatened to unilaterally cut teachers’ pay by 7%, but he was forced to back off when the union threatened to strike. His reply was to give all Chicago Public Schools staff three furlough days. In response, the union stuck to its call for a strike.
Claypool has repeatedly sent home letters to parents, trying to shame the union for “abandoning their classrooms,” and raising safety concerns for students not in school for the day. When the newspapers asked why he does not raise the exact same concerns about the furlough days he imposed, he was left speechless–because he and Emanuel behind him are total hypocrites when it comes to public education!
The teachers have also been facing a campaign of propaganda by politicians and the media trying to discourage them from fighting. The Chicago Tribune newspaper called on teachers to cross picket lines–though it seems like pretty much no teachers followed this advice. Democratic Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel attacked the teachers for striking, saying, “I don’t think the kids should pay a price for a political message.” Republican Governor Bruce Rauner tried to one-up him, calling the one-day strike “shameful” because “children are the victims of this raw display of political power.”
What nerve! These are the people who have stolen money from Chicago’s children. The Tribune, Emanuel, and Rauner are all speaking for the wealthy people who want to put their hands on the money that’s needed for the schools.
It seems like the teachers were not taken in by this propaganda. On April 1, teachers picketed the big majority of Chicago’s 600 schools in the morning. Then they protested in support of colleges facing big attacks from the state. Finally, they organized a rally with many thousands of people downtown. Teachers and supporters chanted and marched in high spirits despite a cold rain.
Everyone knows it will take more than a one-day strike to back off these vultures. But if teachers hadn’t made their point on April 1st, and strongly, they’d be much worse off today.
Apr 11, 2016
April 15th this year comes on April 18th, but it’s still the same unhappy day: tax day.
But not everyone is unhappy, for example Fortune 500 corporations with financial officers and accountants who scheme–using tax laws voted by Congress to let them scheme.
Tax day is a big bonanza for them. For 2015, 27 of these big corporations–including General Motors, United Airlines, American Airlines, Hewlett-Packard, E*Trade and Loews Hardware–paid NO taxes, even though they made a profit. In fact, they got tax CREDITS of 13 billion dollars. That means they can use the 13 billion to pay no taxes in the future, because these are credits against tax liabilities owed.
And the real kicker: these 27 companies combined took in PROFITS of 30 billion dollars, that is, 82 million dollars per day just in profit–and didn’t pay a dime in taxes.
Happy April 15th to Corporate America!
Apr 11, 2016
In Baltimore City, a home owner can lose his or her home for owing $750 in taxes, or for a few hundred dollars owed on water bills.
It happens every spring. Baltimore City puts up thousands of properties for “tax sales,” allowing speculators to buy the right to a property by paying the taxes owed or the water bill debt.
Yes, even though home owners in recent tax sales have lived in their homes and paid their mortgages and taxes for an average of 20 years, they can still have the home sold away from them. Then they either lose it completely, or at best have to buy it back from the predator who scooped it up in a tax sale.
These predators who lurk at every tax sale get to tack on fees and interest to the debt collection they push on home owners. In Baltimore City, to keep their homes, some of the poorest people had to pay back such disgusting sums to these scum waiting to pounce on them.
The mayor of Baltimore says programs exist to help home owners. If that’s so, then why do thousands of owner-occupied properties still go into the tax sales each spring?
And why are 16,000 or more properties already vacant?
No, the whole tax-sale scheme is nothing but another gift made to people with money, just itching to make another financial killing.
Apr 11, 2016
A group of investigative journalists has begun to lay bare information contained in 11 million documents from the archives of the Panamanian company Mossack Fonseca. The company specializes in tax havens, i.e., “laundering” money. A corner of the veil hiding world finances has been lifted.
There have been other revelations–in 2013, 2014, and 2015, but the Panama leak is the biggest ever. Hundreds of newspapers revealed the information at the same time, naming details of financial and industrial companies, and political parties that used the services of Mossack Fonseca to create tax shelters.
For example, some people close to the heads of the French government were good Panamanian clients, as were some very close to Putin in Russia, Poroshenko in the Ukraine, Assad of Syria, Ben Nayef of Saudi Arabia or the king of Morocco.
Others using the services of Mossack Fonseca were stars, like the footballer Lionel Messi; or the leaders of the big European political parties. They all swear they have nothing to hide!
Big banks were also named in the documents, like UBS and Credit Suisse, HSBC and the Societé General (a French bank), which since 1977, has created 979 offshore companies using Mossack Fonseca.
Without a doubt Mossack Fonseca has a worldwide reputation for creating tax havens. As one law professor said to the investigating journalists, “In Panama, in the matter of money laundering, they do everything, they wash it, rinse it, dry it.”
And this is just one company in one fiscal paradise. And the biggest names in the capitalist world don’t appear. They don’t need to use such money laundering services, which are only a small part of the reality of fiscal evasion. Avoiding taxes is a national sport for the bourgeoisie, no matter what country, no matter whether large or small. But the wealthiest and most powerful have ways to avoid the spotlight, even in cases where they have made off with massive amounts of money.
The states and the big fortunes are playing like the cat with the mouse. Of course the states would like to get part of the taxes that currently escape their laws. But at the same time, they must pamper their billionaires.
But even more, they do not know what to do in the face of the deep crisis of their economic system, that allows speculation to flourish. What they know is that tax havens are an essential part of the machinery of tax avoidance for financial speculation.
Apr 11, 2016
Four years ago, Lansing “accidentally” passed a bill that gave 60 to 80 million dollars a year in “unintended tax breaks” to auto insurance companies in Michigan. Over four years, this bill has cost the state a couple HUNDRED MILLION dollars.
The legislature is now trying to change this “loophole” and stop giving this much money away to rich auto insurance companies.
Surprise, surprise: the insurance companies are fighting to keep this tax loophole so they can continue to enrich themselves.
Average citizens who keep money they aren’t supposed to get are sued or arrested. But if you are a rich insurance company, you can apparently get away with it.
Apr 11, 2016
This article was translated from the April 8th issue of Lutte Ouvriere, the newspaper of the French revolutionary workers group of that name.
On Monday, April 4, two hundred migrants were expelled from the Greek islands of Chios and Lesbos. This was the result of an agreement signed between the European Union and Turkey.
All the refugees arriving after March 20 are to suffer the same fate. There are more than 1,700 at Chios, in a camp meant for 1,200. It’s no longer a welcome center, but has become a detention camp. The conditions are extremely precarious, with confrontations taking place between migrants. Despite the barbed wire, some hundreds of migrants have left the camp and gone to the port, without much hope of being allowed to leave the island.
On Lesbos, the detention camp is equally overcrowded. That camp was improvised by volunteers to receive wounded or sick refugees. Now it is threatened with closure.
This is all the result of the sordid bargaining carried out by the European leaders to try to dry up the flood of migrants. In exchange for a payment to the Turkish government, the Europeans send back the recent arrivals to Turkey. In return for one expelled migrant, the European countries agree to receive a Syrian already established in Turkey. But the numbers Europe accepts are supposed to stay within the limit of 72,000 refugees. These will be shared among all the countries of the European Union, with its 500 million inhabitants!
Humanitarian organizations have protested against the treatment of refugees in the Greek islands, and in continental Greece. Migrants who are blocked at the Macedonian border or Piraeus, the port of Athens, are not in detention camps or threatened with immediate expulsion. But many prefer to stay in tents, including in the north, in the rain, or on the streets in Piraeus, rather than stay in the poorly-equipped and far-too-few refugee centers. Some migrants also think that these centers might be transformed one day into locked detention camps.
The European plan is both shameful and ineffective. With the exception of Germany, the rich countries have not welcomed the number of refugees that would be commensurate with their populations and resources. The French government has promised to send personnel to help process the migrants’ applications for asylum, but it has only actually sent a contingent of armed police forces!
Yet, even now, migrants are clandestinely leaving Turkey for the Greek islands. Many others will attempt longer and more dangerous voyages because every other route is blocked. And more people will die, killed by the policies of the European leaders.
Apr 11, 2016
In early April, the FREEP Film Festival (sponsored by the Detroit Free Press) showed the film Land Grab to Detroit audiences. The documentary detailed the 2013 procurement of approximately 150 acres of urban Detroit land by entrepreneur John Hantz. It showed the then Detroit City Council approving the sale of just over 1,350 parcels on Detroit’s near east side for between $200 and $300 a parcel—mostly single resident properties foreclosed on by the banks and then abandoned—in a five to four vote in 2012. What it didn’t show was that the whole deal was negotiated when Kevyn Orr was running the city as the state-appointed emergency manager.
The agreement was for Hantz to clear the land and plant thousands of trees. Hantz also got parcels of land from Wayne County tax sales, from the Michigan Land Bank and from Detroit Public Schools, often for nothing! All told, he got 1,700 parcels for less than half a million dollars.
While the film does show some of the controversy surrounding this largest ever “urban farm,” it was produced by film maker Sean O’Grady alongside of, and with funding and support from, the Hantz project. In recent interviews, O’Grady made remarks that indicated his lack of understanding of the resistance of a section of the Detroit community to this project. The film clearly shows his support for the project, and is demeaning in its representation of the resistance on the part of a predominately black community.
The film also is a bit crass in its manipulation of interviews with community members who are at first depicted as radically against the project and finish by being overwhelmingly in support of Hantz and his project at the end of the film.
There is, however, an interesting series of interviews with deceased Detroit activist Ron Scott, in which he puts forward deeper issues of land ownership and loss. Scott expresses a political view that encompasses the real urban history behind the more popular “eradicate urban blight” discussions that have become so popular with the “rebirth of Detroit” current.
Scott examines the land question from the point of view that the wealth in parcels of land sold to Hantz is actually the hard-earned, accumulated wealth of thousands of workers, many of whom emigrated to Detroit from the South. This property, along with the house on it, represented the first and only real wealth these workers would possess, after a lifetime of work in the auto factories or related plants, and would pass on to the next generations. Instead, through sleights of hand controlled by those who run and control society, this wealth was lost through joblessness and the artificially created mortgage crisis which resulted in hundreds of thousands of bankruptcies.
These working-class men and women were robbed of their property and this wealth has now accumulated in the hands of one man, to whom the city gave a license to steal.
While the film finishes with an unreserved “hurrah” for Hantz as a savior of Detroit, glimpses of the real socio-economic robbery this represents do peek through the trees for viewers schooled on the history of Detroit, and/or those who lived it and were and are the victims of it.
What appears at the finish to be a community regenerated by tree planting and love of nature and the desire to create a lovely green space to replace urban blight in actuality was exactly what the title reflects: a land grab by a different class of people intent on creating a new Detroit for their own profit and in their own interests.
Apr 11, 2016
Candidates for president, Republican and Democratic, blame international trade deals pushed by U.S. corporations for supposedly destroying U.S. jobs and “taking advantage of cheap foreign labor” overseas. Sanders and Trump have especially used this as a part of a “populist” appeal aimed at getting working-class votes.
Certainly, in the U.S. there are seven million fewer manufacturing jobs than there were in 1990, a devastating loss. This is often blamed on the rapid rise of industrial production in China, with much of that production aimed at export markets, including to the U.S. We are told, for instance, that all the products we buy at the store are “made in China.”
But the reality is that almost three-quarters of the products that Americans consume are produced in this country. And to produce all those goods for the largest domestic market in the world, U.S. manufacturing has to be gigantic. Especially since the U.S. is also the second largest exporter in the world, as well.
How big is U.S. industrial production, compared to the rest of the world? Taken alone, the U.S. manufacturing industry would be the ninth-largest economy in the world. Only eight other nations (including the United States) would rank higher in terms of their GDP (Gross Domestic Product). And according to UNIDO’s (United Nations Industrial Development Organization) latest statistics, the U.S., with a population that is one-fourth the size of China’s, still produces as much or more than what is produced in all of China.
Since 1990, to meet this demand in the domestic and international marketplace, U.S. manufacturing production has almost doubled, according to the U.S. government’s own statistics!
So, what is really happening? Manufacturing production in this country has doubled but employment has fallen rapidly. This is the problem. The Chinese are not stealing U.S. workers’ jobs. No, U.S. companies are stealing them, primarily by pushing U.S. workers to produce more, through speed up, job combinations, and big increases in the amount of time workers have to spend on the job. U.S. productivity in manufacturing has more than doubled since 1990. And it has increased even faster in some sectors, such as among domestic automakers. All the talk about the threat from low-wage jobs in China is aimed at convincing American workers they have no choice but to work harder and faster.
But the more that workers produce, the more companies downsize their workforce.
The basic message from Trump, from Sanders, from the media–and from the unions–is the same. They all tell us that American workers’ jobs are being stolen by impoverished workers overseas. It’s a diversion, a trap for U.S. workers. It pits U.S. workers against workers in other countries. It paves the way for “American bosses” to take “American jobs” right here in the good old USA.
Yes, a fight has to be made for jobs, but a real fight for jobs obviously would target those who are taking them, the U.S. corporations. It would mean a fight for better working conditions and a shorter work week. It would mean a fight to spread the work around, so that one part of the working class is not overworked, while the other part is chronically unemployed. And it would mean a fight to push up wages–taking it from the immense wealth the workers’ labor has produced–so we could all work fewer hours.
Apr 11, 2016
When Ford Motor Company recently announced plans to build a new plant in Mexico, presidential candidate Donald Trump and the UAW’s President Dennis Williams appeared to be in competition for who could gain the most political mileage out of the situation.
With emotional denouncements of Ford Motor Company, they both spoke about how shocked they were, and what a terrible decision this was, and so on, and so on. In reality, they both understand and accept capitalism’s rules for manufacture and sale of products like vehicles, and neither of them are “shocked” by it.
UAW President Williams, for one, just finished a set of negotiations in which Ford plans to move small vehicle production to Mexico was a foundation piece for obtaining minimal increases in first and second tier auto worker wages in the U.S. In addition, union officials negotiated job protections for workers at plants in the U.S. that would lose the production of small cars, and negotiated to replace that work with larger scale vehicles. The UAW knew full well the tradeoff: Ford will take a higher profit on small cars by building them in Mexico where wages are $7.79 per hour, while U.S. auto worker wages are $37.38 per hour and Canadian wages are $39.04.
After all, the UAW does not take the position that all workers internationally are entitled to the same living wages. But in the end, it is the only way that workers anywhere will protect jobs and wage rates.
Donald Trump, obviously, will say almost anything to win election. In the most cynical manner, he promises that, if elected president, he will stop these deals and bring car production back to the U.S. He knows full well that this will not happen; after all, he is a capitalist himself who never hesitated to make the best profits on workers’ backs, including in other countries. But it is convenient for him to play on U.S. workers’ divisions–to appeal to the lowest attitudes of racism and nationalism–at least at this particular stage in the game.
Strange bedfellows, the UAW and Donald Trump? Not really. The unions, who have for years publicly blamed the workers of other countries for “stealing” so-called “American jobs” laid the foundation that Donald Trump is campaigning from today, and, with less fanfare but equally dishonest rhetoric, Bernie Sanders as well.
Snake-oil and lies, that is all they are offering.