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 3, 2023
At the United Auto Workers (UAW) Bargaining Convention held March 27–29 in Detroit, leaders and delegates spoke of taking on a fight with the auto companies. A new president, Shawn Fain, was sworn in only a day before the opening of the convention. Despite all the difficulties it presented after a hotly contested election with Ray Curry, Fain was able to direct the meetings of the union. Top leadership of the Administration Caucus, to their credit, were able to contain the disappointment of their delegates over the defeat of their candidate, in order to present a leadership united against the corporations.
Chuck Browning, of the defeated caucus, gave a message of militancy and unity. “To our enemies who are not in this room, to the rich and powerful that want to attack labor, to the employers who want to make profits at our expense through the exploitation of workers, to those people I send a message today…Let the world hear we’re united when it comes to taking on our enemies.” Fain sent a similar message, “When are we going to rebuild our power as a working class? When are we going to reclaim our dignity as working people? Now we are ready to fight against our only true enemy, multi-million dollar corporations who refuse to give our members their fair share.”
The new president has committed to fight all concessionary demands; to fight to get rid of lower-tier pay scales, and to restore pensions to all the auto workers who don’t have them. Fain has attacked the concessionary stance that has prevailed for decades in the UAW, and said, “No more, that is it.” Going into bargaining, he has committed to that policy.
Does this mean that the UAW will take on a strike fight when the contracts expire in September?
Certainly, Ford, GM and Stellantis (formerly Fiat-Chrysler Corporation), after having imposed concessions year after year, having taken what were known as “good paying” union jobs down to the level where new hires have to work a second job, having replaced permanent jobs with temporary jobs—surely, auto bosses won’t be looking to increase their labor costs. Not only have they, since the 1970s, reduced pay, they have intensified exploitation. They have pushed auto workers to a killing pace, imposed schedules that are unhealthy and unsafe. They have closed down plants and laid off workers whenever they want.
They are in the process of doing even more of that, with an accelerated plan to make even more profits off fewer vehicles; eliminating car lines and smaller, less-profitable vehicles and whole lines, in favor of producing luxury cars and trucks that average upwards of 60,000 dollars.
Certainly, negotiations at a bargaining table are not going to win these jobs, wages and benefits back. But it is certainly possible that the workers, through their actions, can.
If autoworkers decide to try to get back what they have lost, they have the power to do it. It cannot happen without their power, without their organization. Solidarity and organization must be built from the ground up. On every floor, in every plant, once a decision is made to fight, the workers will need to get ready.
Old concessionary policies can be thrown out the window. New fighting policies can take their place. Like, taking on all the auto companies at once, instead of setting a target. Like, looking outside of the one union to the power of the many millions of workers who are facing the same speed up, the same cutbacks, the same layoffs, some even coming up on contracts, and uniting our fighting power together. Why do we keep fighting in separate units, when together, we are much stronger?
To go up against auto bosses means to go up against Wall Street, those who own the auto companies as the main stockholders. It means a wide open fight, one that would require the forces of many more workers than the number organized today in the UAW. The Wall Street bosses today are all workers’ bosses. And a wider fight, if realized, would have the potential to shake the system off of its foundations.
If the autoworkers are ready to organize and take on the companies, a powerful union like the UAW, when it fights, has the weight to begin a real social struggle, one that can unite the working class into a powerful force against capitalism and its inequalities and exploitation.
Apr 3, 2023
Four people are on trial in Chicago, accused of bribing former Illinois politician Mike Madigan in exchange for state laws that poured billions into the electric company, ComEd’s, coffers. The defendants are two ComEd lobbyists, Madigan’s closest aide, and a disgraced former ComEd CEO. They may end up in prison.
But ComEd is getting off easy! The legislation ComEd got passed allowed it to charge 1.8 billion additional dollars to electricity consumers. And then they got a 2.3 billion dollar bailout to keep their nuclear power plants operating.
For the trial, ComEd agreed to pay a 200 million dollar fine in exchange for their cooperation. They ARE NOT required to send any money back to all of us who paid inflated bills. So ... they had to pay 200 million to make 4.1 billion. That’s not a slap on the wrist—that’s encouragement! Yes, a couple people will take a fall, and the company that employed them gets to go on its merry way.
Apr 3, 2023
Over 120 workers at Metal-Matic walked off the job on February 22 to fight the company’s union-busting tactics and their attacks on wages and health care benefits.
Metal-Matic is located in Bedford Park, just southwest of Chicago. It’s owned by PTC-Alliance, which operates in Illinois, Ohio, and Minnesota and manufactures steel tubing used in the auto, railroad, and agricultural industries.
Members of UAW Local 588, the strikers are fighting for their first union contract. After years of organizing, on June 10, 2021, a successful vote in the plant certified the union. But since then, the company has been driving hard to scuttle, derail, and delay contract negotiations.
Picket lines are up 24/7, and manned in four-hour shifts. One of the picket captains summed it up: “They’ve been F...ing us for years and pushing against a union, then we won one fair and square and now they won’t even talk to us serious!” He explained how the company brought in scabs—managers and office people to run the machines. He said there are rules that prevent them from blocking the driveway, and the scabs have been sneaking by. The company sends threatening letters to the homes of striking workers while engaged in a campaign to decertify the union.
Shop chairman John Drury said, “They ... want to cut our wages by $4 per hour if we don’t learn three additional jobs in a year.” Another striker explained: “... in most cases that’s not even possible. It’s a cover to force us to work harder and longer. But that’s not safe for us!”
Juan, another striker, who is diabetic, said the company plan to cut health benefits is devastating for his family. “They want to increase the deductible for a family to $4,000. We had a hard time in the past when it was $1000!”
Several truckers leaving the CSX rail yards honked in support of the strike as they passed. Juan said: “We can use a lot more support like that,” and noted how the strike has received no publicity in the mainstream press.
Many strikers said they appreciate the solidarity and support they have received, mostly from rank-and-file workers and unionists. Picket lines have included auto, transit, railroad, and airport workers, and teachers.
Strikers are urging supporters to show solidarity by joining their picket lines at 7200 S Narragansett Ave in Bedford Park.
Apr 3, 2023
An explosion and fire at Baltimore’s Back River Waste Water Treatment facility in Dundalk, Maryland on March 15 blew holes in three walls of a building where sewage sludge is processed into agricultural fertilizer pellets. Firefighters suspect a hole in a pipe let heating oil hit the pellets and ignite. The building stores 12,000 gallons of thermal oil. The damage stopped the pellet-making process, so huge volumes of sludge began accumulating. The plant produces more than 30,000 pounds of pellets per day, processing much of the city and county’s sewage. Management quickly promised to truck the sludge somewhere else.
It turns out that this building has been leased from the city for almost nothing for a quarter of a century by a private company, Synagro, which sells the pellets. Synagro constructed the building with a loan the city took out. When that arrangement was made, it already wasn’t new for the city to use the Back River facility to subsidize big business. For several generations, the plant had provided lightly processed sewer water practically for free to cool the equipment at the Sparrows Point steel mill. The city pays Synagro more than 15 million dollars per year to run the pellet-making process. For years it’s been the city’s biggest, if least known, contractor. Synagro is owned by Goldman Sachs and has operations in 35 states plus D.C.
Facilities like this need much more investment. But apparently the city’s priority is to give money to Synagro!
Apr 3, 2023
Charlotte Hall Veterans Home assisted living facility and nursing home in Southern Maryland is publicly owned and privately run. Maryland’s new governor says he will end the state’s contract with the current operator, for-profit HMR Veterans Services, after complaints of abuse and neglect. The 454-bed facility keeps more than a quarter of its residents on antipsychotic drugs. The facility reports high rates of resident falls, urinary tract infections, incontinence, and weight loss. Nurse and physical therapist time per patient is lower than the state average.
This is how HMR has treated veterans for 20 years—after the facility’s prior private contractor was ordered to leave the nursing home business. Maryland paid HMR hundreds of millions of dollars over two decades, while state and federal regulators looked the other way. One of the company’s owners sold his nine million dollar mansion last year. His wife said, “We have a home in the Bahamas and want to travel.”
Maryland plans to contract with a new private company to run the facility. The question is: why would the new capitalists run the facility any differently?!
Apr 3, 2023
Burger King announced it will be closing 26 locations in Metro Detroit in a matter of about three weeks. Twelve of the stores closing are in the city of Detroit, and several others are located near the city’s borders.
This is a serious problem for workers in at least two ways. First, it means 424 workers will lose their jobs, according to the company. For these workers, it is how they make their livelihoods and they will have to find work elsewhere.
In addition, it simply adds to the food desert that already exists in the city. Most workers can’t afford the many pop-ups and fusion restaurants catering to the new gentrified crowd. Burger King is an affordable lunch or dinner accessible in the city neighborhoods.
In a society organized for profit, it’s bad enough to be limited to poor quality. But worse, not to have any.
Apr 3, 2023
Current and retired railroad employees at Norfolk Southern recently schooled reporters at the Wall Street Journal about the ridiculous demands faced by safety inspectors. Ever since a wheel bearing on a hazardous chemical car caught on fire and caused a horrific train derailment, a spotlight has been shone on Norfolk Southern’s so-called safety policies.
Wall Street and the railroad industry nonchalantly call their new system of operating “Precision-scheduled railroading,” or PSR. Designed to cut costs, railroads stick to preset schedules and operate with the least number of workers they can. Fewer trains are packed with more cargo. Crews are responsible for longer trains, some as long as 3 miles.
Retirees told reporters that only a few years ago, inspectors used to have 5 to 8 minutes to check railroad car wheels and brakes for damaged components. Now they get written up if trains don’t leave the yard on time. This means inspectors have 30 to 90 seconds to circle all around a rail car and inspect it.
Maybe inspectors wearing jet packs could work that fast, but defying the laws of space and time would still be necessary!
Apr 3, 2023
On March 13, 2023, the Biden Administration approved the oil giant ConocoPhillips’ oil drilling project in Willow, Alaska. After constructing an airstrip and hundreds of miles of roads and pipelines, ConocoPhillips will produce up to 180,000 barrels of crude daily over 30 years, using at least 200 oil wells.
Willow, which belongs to the Federal Government, is located in the U.S.’s largest pristine natural reserve, in the northwest of Alaska on the coast of the Beaufort Sea. In August 2020, the Trump Administration initially approved ConocoPhillips’ Willow oil drilling project. But a U.S. court blocked this oil project, declaring that the environmental impact report was unsound.
The oil industry sees Alaska as one of the most promising regions in the U.S. for new oil, and a source of unprecedented profits. Because of this very powerful profit motive, ConocoPhillips’ Willow oil project will probably only be the first one, followed by many soon.
Last week, the Biden Administration also issued an executive order to open up a vast area of federal waters in the Gulf of Mexico. This area for oil drilling is about the same size as the country of Italy. Oil industry giants, including Chevron, BP, and ExxonMobil, would produce up to 1.1 billion barrels of oil and more than 4 trillion cubic feet of natural gas over 50 years, according to the Biden Administration. With so much gas and oil, these filthy rich people must be salivating!
This is very different from what Biden said when he campaigned for president. During his campaign he promised, “No more drilling on federal lands. Period. Period. Period. Period.” Sometimes Biden was even more precise: “No more drilling on federal lands. No more drilling, including offshore. No ability for the oil industry to continue to drill, period.”
All that was supposed to show how pro-environment Biden was, as opposed to the Republicans, who openly called for opening up more federal lands and waters for oil drilling. But the ConocoPhillips Willow and the Gulf of Mexico projects prove that Biden’s policies are no different from the Republicans when it comes to giving everything the oil companies want in order to extract more profits.
Apr 3, 2023
Seven U.S. government investigators fell ill in March while studying the health impacts of the toxic train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio. The February 3 crash sent eleven rail cars carrying more than a million pounds of hazardous chemicals off the tracks. Chemicals spilled into local streams, resulting in thousands of dead fish.
Symptoms reported by investigators included nausea, headaches, coughing and sore throats. These symptoms matched what town residents and folks in nearby Pennsylvania reported soon after chemicals from the derailment spilled into water and soil, and after multiple days of smoke and soot billowed over the area from chemicals on fire.
The investigators who experienced symptoms were part of the Center for Disease Control (CDC) teams going house-to-house in an area very near the derailment. Those who became ill included physicians. They spoke anonymously as they were not authorized to speak about their experiences.
An expert who previously ran the Occupational Safety and Health Administration said, "It adds confirmation that the symptoms reported by East Palestine residents are real and are associated with environmental exposures from the derailment and the chemical fire."
On a recent visit to East Palestine, the current head of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Michael Regan, spoke of ongoing hazards. He said, "As a father, I would not advise anybody—adult or child—play in the creeks or stream. What we’ve said is the drinking water has been tested."
During a U.S. Senate hearing, Norfolk Southern CEO Alan Shaw was asked about conditions for people in East Palestine. He said, "I believe that the air is safe. I believe that [the] water is safe." He then was asked if he would be willing to live in East Palestine. "Yes, sir," he responded on March 9. Since then, no one should be shocked to learn that this lying CEO has NOT moved to East Palestine!
Apr 3, 2023
Britain announced last week that they would send depleted-uranium armor-piercing rounds to Ukraine, along with Challenger tanks. Russia accused Britain and its allies of “escalating” the war. A spokesman for Britain protested, "The British Army has used depleted uranium in its armor piercing shells for decades."
Yes, that much is true: the U.K., along with the U.S., used depleted uranium munitions in many of their imperialist wars—the Gulf War, Yugoslavia, and Iraq, for starters.
The spokesman continued, adding, "Russia … is deliberately trying to disinform .... Any impact to personal health and the environment from the use of depleted uranium munitions is likely to be low." Hypocrisy on top of lies! They would have us forget the soldiers and civilians in those wars who came down with cancer, or the many children in Iraq that suffered from birth defects.
”Depleted uranium, mostly U238, has been found stored in bone, and if it gets into bone, it can reach the bone marrow,” said Jean-François Lacronique, the director of the National Radiation Protection Agency in France, which oversees safety for workers in France’s nuclear power plants. ”Depending on the dose and the length of exposure, any kind of radiation can cause leukemia.”
Depleted uranium is a poisonous heavy metal. Like lead, depleted uranium dust can cause kidney and lung damage. This is stated clearly in a report released last year by the imperialists’ own United Nations.
In Kosovo, in 1999, the U.S. military sent a ”hazard awareness” memo to its allies, warning of the health risks posed by the depleted uranium munitions littering the ground from the NATO bombing campaign.
Facing their allied governments, they say one thing. But facing sick soldiers, or the rest of the world, they say the opposite. The U.S. government spent money on studies to make the weapons appear harmless—and their spokespeople still mouth lies to that effect.
What do you call covering up the results of their poisonous weapons, like they did with Agent Orange in Vietnam? Or with the Gulf War veterans who came down with diseases they couldn’t explain? That is what you call disinformation!
Apr 3, 2023
Immediately after a three-day strike by school workers ended, officials of the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) and SEIU Local 99, the union that represents the striking workers, announced a tentative agreement. It was obviously the walkout that made district officials agree to a contract. They had been stalling the negotiations, and forcing 40% of the district’s work force to work without a contract, for nearly three years.
But the strike was quite a show of force. Without the 30,000 striking workers—bus drivers, cafeteria workers, custodians and special aid assistants, the very “essential workers”—the district was forced to shut down the schools.
The strikers went out on the picket lines in great numbers in pouring rain and held large, spirited rallies throughout the three days of the walkout. They drew the support of many students and parents. In a school district where 89% of the households are officially classified as “economically disadvantaged,” many parents said they certainly support the strikers—whose average pay, 25,000 dollars a year, is nowhere near a livable wage in L.A. The strikers got the support of the district’s 35,000 teachers also, who walked out in solidarity.
If ratified, the contract would provide raises, including retroactive raises going back to 2021, which would partially make up for what the workers lost to very high inflation during those years. The contract would also provide a minimum hourly wage of $22.50 for Local 99 members, and a one-time, 1,000-dollar bonus for current employees who worked in the 2020–21 school year, when the Covid-19 pandemic began.
The raise would certainly help the workers, who have been forced to take second and even third jobs to be able to pay rent and feed their children. But this contract would still not elevate many of these workers out of poverty. Not only because of the high cost of living in L.A., but also because this agreement is not fulfilling one of the workers’ key demands: more hours. The district has been keeping many of these workers on part-time schedules, while keeping schools severely short-staffed. The result has been schools that are run-down, dirty and unsafe, especially in working-class neighborhoods.
And this is a district that has been sitting, year after year, on cash reserves that are currently 5.12 billion dollars, and that pays the superintendent 440,000 dollars annually! But district officials have simply chosen NOT to use that money for adequate staffing, materials, building repairs and maintenance—NOT for improving children’s education.
Workers will vote on the agreement from April 3 to April 7. But whether this agreement passes or not, it leaves the door wide open for future fights. In fact, one of the things this strike shows is that, even to get a raise that partially makes up for what’s lost, a large mobilization is needed—a mobilization that draws in other workers.
Every fight like this can set an example for, and energize, other workers also, especially in a city like L.A. where, according to the mayor’s office, about one third of the work force is paid no more than the minimum wage.
Apr 3, 2023
A fire in a migrant detention center in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, killed at least 39 people, right across the border from El Paso, Texas. Most of those who died were from Guatemala. They had not been charged with any crime, but were held by the Mexican government, pending deportation.
Videos available online show the horror: as the blaze spread, guards walked away, keeping people locked in to die in the burning building.
Mexico’s response was to charge six people—three government migration officials, two private security guards, and the imprisoned man who they say started the fire to protest the migrants’ pending deportation.
Ciudad Juárez is today packed to overflowing with people fleeing desperate situations in the countries south of Mexico. And, as everywhere, the existence of huge numbers of desperate people often creates callousness and violence among those charged with containing the problems desperation might cause.
The actions of the guards were horrific—keeping people locked up as they burned to death. But that is the crux of the entirety of U.S. policy: trying to keep people locked up south of the border as they are consumed by fires lit by U.S. imperialism across this whole part of the world.
In addition to a series of coups throughout the decades, the U.S.-led dirty wars in the Central American countries of Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras during the 1980s were funded in part by drug cartels and gangs. This helped set up the violence that many migrants are fleeing today. And support for military governments linked to the gangs has never stopped. For instance, the brother of former U.S.-backed president of Honduras, Juan Orlando Hernández, was recently convicted in a U.S. court for working with drug cartels—after the U.S. helped install his brother’s government in a coup in 2009!
These coups and occupations have been aimed above all at maintaining U.S. economic domination of this whole region. The countries of Central America were called “banana republics” because U.S. banana companies controlled their economies and governments. That hasn’t changed, even if today, workers in those countries are just as likely to make clothing and auto parts as to grow fruit.
For the last ten years, the U.S. has used one legal maneuver after another to block the vast majority of migrants from even applying for asylum in the U.S. It has pressured the Mexican government to do its dirty work, blocking migrants from getting to the crossing points. Now thousands upon thousands of people fleeing the violence and extreme poverty created by U.S. imperialism are stuck in cities like Juárez, or Tijuana, just across the border from San Diego.
The director of the migration services office in Tijuana reported that the city’s 30 shelters can hold 5,600 people, but about 15,000 migrants are in the city. The director of an overflowing Catholic shelter in that city reported, "Every day I turn away at least 10 families with children." Many people wind up on the streets, or sleep in construction sites or abandoned buildings.
Groups of migrants beg for money at intersections around these cities. An eight-month-pregnant woman from Venezuela with two children held up a sign in Juárez saying "Help us to eat and not sleep in the street." Others sell food on the streets, or work the few available odd jobs.
Blocked from applying for asylum in the U.S. legally, many try to cross the border into the U.S. illegally. If they make it, they will join the ranks of the undocumented, and the U.S.-based capitalist class will be able to take advantage of their lack of rights, driving down wages for everyone.
Or, they could choose to look for work in the Mexican border cities where they find themselves. Just like in the U.S., companies in these cities will be able to offer them the worst working conditions and wages, and use their desperation as a club against other workers. The economies of these cities are dominated by factories linked to U.S.-centered supply chains, so whether these migrants stay in Mexico or become undocumented immigrants in this country, U.S. companies stand to benefit from this human crisis created by U.S. policies.
Workers in this country have the same interests as these migrants. They are not our enemies—they are part of our class. And we have the same enemies: the U.S. capitalist class and its government, which drive this migration crisis, create the humanitarian disaster in Mexico, and use the desperation of people—wherever they are—to attack the working class everywhere.
Apr 3, 2023
The Biden Administration ordered a new transit ban for asylum seekers trying to enter the U.S. starting on May 11. Under this new rule, migrants who pass through countries on their way to the U.S. first have to claim asylum in those countries.
If they do not fulfill this requirement, they will be ruled automatically ineligible to claim asylum in the U.S.
This policy practically and effectively prevents almost all migrants from seeking asylum in the U.S. When the Trump Administration pursued a similar ban in 2019, they were denounced by the Democrats and immigrant advocacy organizations.
This ban marks little or no change of U.S. policy toward migrants seeking asylum. The Biden administration has been keeping out asylum seekers by implementing Title 42, started under the Trump administration. Under the pretense of protecting public health against the spread of COVID-19, the Biden and Trump administrations have deported more than 2.6 million migrants seeking asylum. Because this vile asylum denial tactic will legally end on May 11, Biden wants to replace Title 42 with another despicable tactic, the “transit ban,” to deny asylum.
The asylum seekers mainly come from Latin American countries, mostly from Venezuela, Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, and Nicaragua. (These countries account for more than 1.2 million refugees, 42% of asylum seekers in the world.) They seek asylum in the U.S. because in their countries they suffer from gang violence, government corruption, extortion, and some of the highest rates of poverty and violent crime in the world. The COVID-19 pandemic and hurricanes further devastated these countries.
In Honduras, which is riddled with gang violence, one gang member told a radio interviewer: “My job is to collect extortion. I’ve done this for four years. They have a fixed time to pay. If they delay too long, we kill the person. There are people who refuse to pay the extortion—they say, ‘Oh, we haven’t sold enough!’—but it’s obligatory. They have to pay, or else.”
This admission matches an asylum seeker’s fear: “I’m a farmer—corn, coffee, beans. But I can’t make enough to feed my family. We have droughts, and then we have floods. And there’s the lawlessness. Maras [gangs] extort the smallest businesses. We’re headed to Houston.”
These appalling social conditions have been created by U.S. imperialist domination of Latin American countries. The U.S. has intervened to maintain its corporate exploitation of these countries through economic sanctions, wars, and by installing puppet dictatorships.
As U.S. companies wring massive profits out of these countries, what is left behind are corrupt governments, gangs, and collapsed social structure. The asylum seekers are escaping these dire social conditions caused by the U.S.
The presidents, like Biden or Trump, come and go, but U.S. imperialism’s devastating policies remain.
Apr 3, 2023
This article is translated from the March 31 issue #2852 of Lutte Ouvrière (Workers’ Struggle), the newspaper of the revolutionary workers group of that name active in France.
There are more and more shipwrecks of migrant boats off the coast of Tunisia in North Africa. Several dozen people died near the port cities of Sfax and Mahdia between March 23 and 25.
The migrants are driven by poverty and deepening economic crisis. Many also flee racist assaults encouraged by people in power. More than 32,000 migrants have landed from Tunisia on the coast of Italy, according to Italian authorities.
Italian Prime Minister Georgia Meloni and French President Emmanuel Macron’s refusal to accept the migrants led these leaders to issue an appeal on March 24 to contain the “pressure of migration” that they say tiny Tunisia represents for Europe. The two leaders are arranging to give financial aid to the increasingly bankrupt nation, on the condition that it blocks more migrants.
Tunisia is close to the Italian island of Lampedusa, so it serves as a path to Europe for thousands of young people from Ivory Coast, Burkina Faso, Niger, Guinea, and Mali. But floating nearly 100 miles in storm-wracked nutshells spells certain death for many of them. One of the survivors said all the babies died. Some migrant boats rescued by fishermen or the Tunisian coast guard were also rammed by the latter in an attempt to capsize them.
Tunisian President Kais Saied made ethnocentric attacks against migrants from sub-Saharan Africa a little over a month ago. He tried to make them scapegoats for the economic crisis. This put the migrants on the spot. Some have lived in Tunisia for years, mostly doing gig work and often unemployed, driven out of their homes, or even targets of racist violence.
The situation of Tunisia’s 12 million inhabitants—not to mention the refugees—has worsened with the crisis. Tunisia’s budget deficit is growing. The World Bank suspended all new loans in early March, citing Saied’s xenophobic remarks. As for the IMF, it still conditions paying out the first installment of promised aid—500 million dollars out of a total of 1.9 billion over four years—to so-called reforms to be imposed on ordinary people. The government is reluctant to initiate what would be a bloodletting: ending subsidies on gas and basic necessities, and freezing the pay of thousands of public employees. In addition, the law reforming public enterprise administration would make measurable cuts in staffing as well as in grants and other subsidies—money which disappears anywhere but in workers’ pockets.
Inflation, unemployment, and unpaid wages and benefits fuel social discontent. But Saied is unable to find solutions, even while becoming increasingly dictatorial.
French capitalists are the main investors in Tunisia with nearly 200 million dollars in 2022. They enrich themselves thanks to the work of nearly 150,000 workers. But most people in Tunisia subsist on their own, without even minimal infrastructure in public health and public transportation. They are caught between the corrupt and greedy Tunisian bourgeoisie, politicians’ headlong rush to power—with multiplying threats and arrests of political opponents—and the inexorable grip of international capitalists.
Workers, unemployed youth, rural poor, and refugees have many class interests in common.
Apr 3, 2023
This article is translated from the March 31 issue #2852 of Lutte Ouvrière (Workers’ Struggle), the newspaper of the revolutionary workers group of that name active in France.
Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu finally backed down on March 27, confronted with the mobilization of people who oppose his plan to reform the judicial system. He announced he would postpone discussion of his plan until May, after the legislative recess for the Passover holiday. And he declared he wants “to give real dialogue a chance.”
The mobilization had gained new momentum after three months of protests and weekly demonstrations. The Minister of Defense was dismissed on March 26 after saying there had to be a pause in the justice reform. Thousands of Israelis took to the streets within the hour to show their outrage at his dismissal, including more than 100,000 in Tel Aviv. They clashed with police. The following day the main union confederation called for a general strike. This led to many international flights being cancelled. Many companies shut down temporarily.
Given the scale of the mobilization, Netanyahu chose to back down. He risks losing the support of his ruling coalition partners, which are ultranationalist and far-right religious organizations. He had granted them key ministries such as Finance and Internal Security, and had committed to reform the judicial system. His plan was to reduce the importance of Israel’s Supreme Court by stopping it from challenging any law passed by the legislature. The Supreme Court has often put up a powerful opposition to the executive, especially by opposing certain settlements and some ultra-religious groups.
Some people were worried about the government’s desire to grow its power. The extreme right has gained force under Netanyahu’s administration. People had every reason to expect attacks on the rights of women, gays, and Palestinians—already considered second-class citizens—and attacks on civil rights in general.
The protests quickly won over a large part of Israeli society, including people not used to protesting. Big bosses of financial institutions and high-tech companies argued that capital would leave the country if the government adopted the reform. Within the army, thousands of reservists expressed their opposition to the reform. So did retired generals, former leaders of the Mossad intelligence service, Shin Bet internal security service, even Netanyahu’s chief of staff.… This clearly explains why the Minister of Defense himself ended up expressing his reservations.
After the justice reform postponement was announced, former prime minister and main opposition leader and right-wing politician, Yaïr Lapid, said he was ready to talk with Netanyahu to find a compromise. “We won’t rest until Israel has a constitution,” he told demonstrators. This institutional goal obviously won’t stop the far right or the threat it represents. In fact, coming from a leader who is hardly better than Netanyahu, it is a way to gain control over the protests.
Beyond the particular matter of the Supreme Court, the scale of the mobilization shows that part of the Israeli population sees the danger the extreme right represents, both for themselves and for the society where they live. But they cannot stop at the proposals of someone like Yaïr Lapid.
The growth of a racist and fascistic extreme right in a state that claims to guarantee the Jewish population against a return of Nazism has a particular explanation. By evicting the Palestinian people from their lands and by refusing to recognize their rights, Israel’s leaders condemned the population to live on a permanent war footing, under a barracks regime.
"We are not in Iran, we do not want a theocracy," many protestors in Israeli cities said. But colonization and the anti-Arab policy—encouraged by all governments for decades—appeased reactionary religious parties which provided troops for the extreme right. This policy made the far right a force which now threatens not only to attack Palestinians, but Jews too.
The people of Israel will never be free until the Palestinians are free.
Apr 3, 2023
French President Emanuel Macron has enacted a “reform” to the French retirement system that would force people to work until they reach the age of 64, instead of the current 62. He pushed this change through using a loophole that allows the French president to pass laws without a vote in parliament, called Article 49.3. What follows is a translation of the editorial in the workplace newsletters distributed by the revolutionary workers group Lutte Ouvrière for the week of March 26, 2023, on the popular mobilization that is unfolding against that change.
By using Article 49.3 and showing his contempt, Macron has given our mobilization a second wind. For the last ten days, there have been more and more spontaneous demonstrations, rallies in support of refinery workers and garbage disposal personnel on strike, leaflet distribution and work stoppages in companies.
Thursday, March 23 confirmed that people are still angry. After two months of protests and nine days of mobilization, marches everywhere were massive and, because youngsters joined in, even reached record numbers. All those who demonstrated were proud to protest against Macron’s decision to force the law through.
The return of the black blocs gave TV channels the sensational images they were hungry for. These channels belong, for the most part, to the big bourgeoisie and serve its interests. It gave them the perfect opportunity to discredit the movement, to compare the demonstrators to thugs and above all to scare people. In other words, furthering Macron’s cause.
But the most important thing to remember from last Thursday is not burning trash cans or clashes with the repressive police forces alongside the trade union marches. The most important thing is that the feelings of injustice and anger in the working class are increasing, that more and more workers are joining the movement and challenging the fiercely anti-worker policies of the government and big business.
The garbage collectors’ strike symbolizes this: low wages, lack of recognition, poor working conditions, little opportunity for advancement. They represent one of the most exploited categories in the working class. And yet they’re showing us how to hold our heads high!
They are a reminder that the workers who make the whole of society function are a force. An extremely rich minority may be on the top of the heap and buy pretty much everything it wants thanks to its billions. But if there’s no one to take out the trash, their world can quickly become a living hell.
Burning trash cans is not a radical thing to do: not emptying them until the workers’ demands have been met is. To gain respect both from Macron and big business, there’s nothing more radical or efficient than going on strike, stopping the capitalists’ profit-making machine and occupying the workplace.
To put a stop to the movement, the authorities are currently relying on repression, batons being wielded, police violence and strikers being detained. It couldn’t do this if a strike spread to all companies. No platoon of CRS [French National Police] could disperse millions of strikers and, even less so, do their jobs.
Going on strike can give us the strength we need to make Macron back down. He’s playing the tough guy for now. He did have to cancel a pompous ceremony in Versailles and a royal dinner with Charles III. But he hasn’t budged an inch on anything else. He’s even taunted the trade union leaders by saying that he’s at their disposal to discuss anything, except retirement at 64!
Macron’s attitude isn’t just acute megalomania. He’s playing his part. He governs on behalf of the bourgeoisie, i.e. against the workers.
Macron explained this in an interview on the one o’clock news: “There aren’t many solutions for balancing the pension system”. That’s perfectly true, there are only two: make big business pay for it out of their overflowing coffers or take the money out of workers’ pensions.
The wrestling match isn’t over and we must see it through. It’s not an easy fight—the bourgeoisie, no matter how rich it already is, is determined not to give way. Despite record profits and dividends, it’s always looking to increase exploitation, pay lower wages and trample on workers’ rights. It has a position to maintain and therefore always needs to accumulate more and faster than its competitors. And it’s doing this in an economic situation that is becoming more tense with the crisis, failing banks and the threat of war.
The bourgeoisie and Macron don’t want to back down? Our determination in this struggle has to be as strong as theirs!
Our refusal to accept the situation has opened up a crack. We can widen it by working together and expressing our demands inside every company. Let’s talk and get organized everywhere. And on Tuesday, let’s be millions to take to the streets.
Whatever the government does can be undone by workers going on strike!
Apr 3, 2023
What follows is the editorial that appeared on the front of all SPARK’s workplace newsletters during the week of March 27, 2023.
Last week, support workers in the Los Angeles unified school system went out on a limited three-day strike, drawing attention to their abominable situation. They have been working for three years without a new contract, that is, without a wage increase during this period of god-awful inflation. There are 30,000 of them: school bus drivers, cafeteria workers, custodians, teacher aides, parent liaisons, gardeners. They are “essential"—so the politicians call them. But the politicians pay them so little money that many fall below the government’s official poverty level.
The 25,000 teachers in the L.A. system honored the picket lines and didn’t go in. And even if the closing of schools created problems for many parents, most of them expressed support. Most have the same reality. They work for their living.
No matter what job we have, we share many of the same problems: wages that don’t keep up, medical coverage which is pared down even for those jobs where it still exists, working conditions made impossible by the employers’ push to extort more work out of fewer people.
This is true not only in the school system of L.A.; it’s true in every part of the country, in every kind of job. In one way or another, we are all disregarded and disrespected by the capitalist class who believe they own this country, and by its politicians who run it for them.
There are other strikes going on today: musicians at Carnegie Hall in New York City; roofers in Portland, Oregon; cement workers in Hannibal, Missouri; city workers in Bakersfield, California; university graduate workers in Philadelphia; coffee shop and fast-food counter workers in many places. These are small strikes, a few hundred, at most a few thousand, sometimes only a few dozen strikers. But there can be many more. Workers all over are fed up.
When we fight, we should not fight alone. Striking at one workplace against one employer isolates us, gives all the advantage to the other side.
Not only should we honor each other’s picket lines. We should join them. Strikes can start at one employer, but they can become social movements, engaging large numbers of workers all at once, regardless of the contract.
When we are on strike, why can’t we go to other workplaces, asking other workers to join us? Why can’t we strike together? Why can’t we go out in the streets together, demonstrate together, make our numbers count?
The politicians, the courts, even most of today’s union leaders will tell us, "You can’t do that. It’s against the law."
Well, of course, it’s “against the law"! The law was written to serve the capitalist class. Even when it recognizes the right of unions to collect dues from its members, it doesn’t recognize the right of union members to spread their fights. Even when it recognizes the right of workers to strike, it does so only under very limited conditions.
Contracts at the beginning were only for six months, and workers struck to solve problems during the contract term. But restrictions were added, and the time between contracts increased to a year, then two years, then three, then four or even five. Caterpillar just signed a contract for six years.
Today, almost all strikes during a contract term are “against the law.”
When the unions were formed in the 1930s, unions themselves were “against the law.” If our grandparents and great-grandparents (even great- great-grandparents) had respected “the law,” they never could have formed their unions.
The “law” today says we cannot bring our strikes together. If we accept it, then we will continue to have wages that don’t keep up, working conditions that put us in an early grave, and disrespect from a capitalist class that spits on us.
The “law” is nothing but a set of handcuffs aimed at shackling our spirit. But when we bring our forces together, what is this “law” worth? Only the piece of paper it is written on.
Pieces of paper are torn up all the time.
Apr 3, 2023
This film won the Grand Jury award at this year’s Sundance Film Festival. Writer-director A.V. Rockwell has debuted an incredibly powerful and moving film of a young woman just out of Riker’s prison who against all odds is determined to make a good life for herself.
Inez (played by Teyana Taylor), who grew up herself in the foster care system, decides to rescue her son from his unhappy life in foster care, and she escapes with him to apartment 10—01 to hide out and live in Harlem.
The film captures life as her son grows up in 1990/2000’s New York City: Rudy Giuliani, housing projects, stop and frisk!, the schools, the vibrant neighborhoods, the beauty and the desolation, the opportunities and the deprivation, and finally the gentrification that pushes them out. Through it all she fights with a beautifully depicted toughness to give her son the life she never had.
This novel depicts the life of a young immigrant woman from India working as a contract worker in Milwaukee in corporate America, right after the 2008 financial crisis. You see the individualism that the company pushes to set coworker against coworker, the isolation, the broken dreams, all through the eyes of one woman and her friends. The characters on the page seem to come alive. Through haunting images, such as a needlessly dark long walk home in the snow, the author again and again weaves the personal in with the large abstractions of life: is this the best we can do?
Apr 3, 2023
Profits at Cal-Maine Foods, the biggest egg producer in the country, leaped by an amazing 718% over the last three months!
So, the real reason for the huge increase in the price of eggs was not the bird flu that forced farms to kill millions of chickens and turkeys, but price gouging by Big Egg. The capitalists’ message to consumers struggling to feed their family is: “The yolk is on you.”
Eggs cost so much, you can’t even find a rotten one to throw at a capitalist anymore!
Apr 3, 2023
On March 30, the Manhattan District Attorney announced that he was indicting Donald Trump for an “alleged” illegal hush money payment to a porn star and its cover-up that took place seven years ago.
What made the DA decide to indict, and why did it take so long? Who knows? But hordes of politicians and news media companies have been positioning themselves to cash in on it. Not surprisingly, leading the way is Donald Trump, himself, who boasted that after he announced his impending indictment, he immediately collected four million dollars in contributions.
Certainly, both the Democrats and Republicans are planning to make Trump and the indictment an election issue in order to mobilize money, support and votes.
What a bunch of phony baloney! On the one hand, there is the spectacle of openly racist, blood-thirsty Republicans shedding crocodile tears about unequal justice, political persecution and the Deep State—when it comes to defending one of their own.
On the other hand, there are all the Democrats pounding the table, demanding the supposed “rule of law.” What a laugh! Throughout his career in New York, New Jersey and elsewhere, Trump made gangsters, thugs, money launderers and drug traffickers his closest business associates. But that didn’t stop former Manhattan DA Robert Morgenthau, who was supposed to be so “incorruptible,” from palling around with Trump, while Trump helped underwrite Morgenthau’s political campaigns and favorite “charities.” Nor did it stop the City of New York from showering Trump and his buddies with one huge tax break after another, as well as one sweetheart contract after another.
As for all the big companies that own the major news media and entertainment outlets, including newspapers, news sites, cable news, social media, late night television, comedy specials, fundamentalist religious programming, they are already drumming up and hyping the indictments, while breathlessly waiting for mug shots, finger-prints, and endless trials. All that in order to gain higher ratings, more advertising dollars and subscriptions in order to fatten their profits and dividend checks.
Working people have no reason to get sucked into this political and media circus, just like workers had no reason to get sucked into the earlier “impeachment” circuses.
Both sides, Democrats and Republicans, are full of it!
Apr 3, 2023
In Nashville, 28-year-old Audrey Hale broke into a private Christian elementary school and began shooting, killing six people, including three 9-year-old children. It was the 131st mass shooting of four or more people in the U.S. this year.
Quite understandably, this horrific event evoked a tremendous outcry, just as has occurred with many of the previous mass shootings. Many of these shootings have occurred at schools, and students from some of the schools have carried out walkouts and protests in response. Many have spoken of the devastating, lasting effects the shootings have left upon them.
Following each shooting, politicians and media commentators have been quick to jump into the fray as well. But Democrats and Republicans only offer technical answers, not addressing the root causes of the issue. Each time, Democratic Party politicians quickly seize on people’s anger to call for stronger gun control measures. They point out how much more common mass shootings like these are in the U.S. compared with other countries, and point to the availability of guns in this country as the cause.
Republicans, playing to their base among gun-rights advocates, have staked out their ground each time in opposing the Democrats on this one issue. In place of gun control, some on the right have called for arming teachers as the solution to the problem.
Certainly, the availability of guns, including semi-automatic weapons such as assault rifles, contributes to the problem, and that availability has grown over a period of many years. The vast majority of those weapons have been produced by companies right here in the U.S. and gun manufacturing has become a multi-billion-dollar industry.
The federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) says that almost 170 million firearms have been produced in the U.S. in the last 30 years. That’s more than one for every two people in the country! And every time there is a mass shooting, gun sales go up even more. People are buying guns out of concern for their safety and that of their families.
For the politicians and the mainstream media, the discussion about how to stop mass shootings, and school shootings in particular, practically begins and ends there. Some have attempted to look at the motivations of some of the shooters. In some cases, it’s been shown that the shooters were motivated by racism, misogyny, homophobia, anti-Semitism and other oppressive attitudes prevalent in this society.
In the case of the Nashville shooting, it came out that Audrey Hale identified as a man. Some Republicans and far-right commentators like Donald Trump, Fox News host Tucker Carlson, and Marjorie Taylor Greene jumped on this fact to suggest this was somehow an example of a trend in transgender violence. In fact, biological men commit 96% of mass shootings, according to a study at Northeastern University.
The number of mass shootings in the U.S. has gone up considerably since 2020 compared with the six years from 2014 to 2019, from about 350 per year to about 650 per year. This is a time in which other stressors in life have increased with the pandemic and its related employment, financial, and family issues and social isolation.
Mass shootings are a social problem. Their increase reflects the despair felt by more and more people under a capitalist society in its period of decay. A society that produces endless wars, extreme poverty, mass imprisonment and little hope. To fix the problem, the whole system has to go.