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
Dec 13, 2010
The elections are over; the “compromises” have begun.
Compromises? Not hardly. Backroom deals is what they are–between Democrats and Republicans, handing over hundreds of billions of dollars to the wealthy–with a few crumbs thrown to the working class to get us to shut up.
Obama began the “compromises” by eliminating a cost-of-living wage increase for all federal employees, followed by a two-year wage freeze. Most of the people whose wages were cut are ordinary workers: clerks, secretaries, data entry, maintenance, phone operators, park employees. And most don’t make $50,000 a year.
This was no joint sacrifice, no compromise. It was an open attack on workers, intended to show the Republicans that Obama would work with them.
The Republicans weren’t impressed. They wanted more. And Obama gave it to them, deal after deal. Extend Bush’s tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires for the next two years. Lower the taxes paid on inheritances over five million dollars. Tax capital gains and dividends at a much lower rate than ordinary income–the benefits to go almost entirely to the wealthy. Let hedge fund and private equity speculators pay a lower rate than do people with wage income. Change the “alternative minimum tax” to lower the taxes paid by those making more than $150,000 a year. Let companies deduct nearly all their material expenses. Decrease the corporate tax rate.
The richest one% of Americans, on average, will get a tax break of $70,000 a year from these backroom deals, more than most of us make in a year. At the same time, taxes will actually go up for families struggling on less than $40,000 a year.
And what did Obama get in return from the Republicans in this “compromise”? An extension of unemployment benefits for only some of the long-term unemployed. In fact, many of the long-term unemployed have already been cut off; and they will remain cut off, because the extensions don’t run long enough.
The long-term unemployed should be covered until the capitalists provide enough jobs, so that everyone who wants to work can work. But that wasn’t part of the compromise that Obama worked out with the Republicans.
This is no “compromise” between some politicians who want to attack us, against other politicians trying to defend the working class. No, it is a deal cut between two bunches of thieving politicians, both of whom will cut us to the bone in order to let the wealthy gorge all their appetites.
The bitterest irony of all is that both the Republicans and Democrats say they want to cut the budget deficit–while these gifts to the wealthy are about to increase the deficit by 900 billion dollars! One thing is sure: next year, the Republicans and Obama will cut another deal–this time to reduce the budget deficit they themselves created. But they won’t cut the gifts they just hand out to the wealthy. They will cut deeper into all those programs the population depends on: social programs, public services, education.
Obama says he has no choice, he must “compromise,” since the Republicans now control the House of Representatives. Well, Bush pushed through his programs even when the Democrats controlled both houses of Congress.
Obama does have a choice, and he made it–to steal from the poor and working population, to give to the wealthy. It’s the same choice made by the Republicans. The same choice made by the Democratic Party over the past two years, when they controlled the White House and both houses of Congress.
They’re all thieves. Every last one of them.
Dec 13, 2010
More and more young and not-so-young workers cannot afford their own place to live. According to an AFL-CIO study last year, more than one in three workers between 18 and 34 still live with their parents.
This is no surprise. Workers between 18 and 24 suffer some of the highest unemployment. As for those with jobs, very often they are part time or temporary with very low wages and few or no benefits, not even health care. The capitalist society throws millions of young workers, with all their potential, onto the scrap heap.
When young people can’t afford the things their parents had, it’s a sign that society is moving backwards.
Dec 13, 2010
Third-quarter U.S. business profits hit an all time high.
Businesses’ 1.659 trillion dollars even beat the record of 1.655 trillion in the third quarter of 2006, in the financial “bubble” before the crash.
The money will go to the elite: to bankers and to large stockholders. Their economy is booming while ours is busted.
Dec 13, 2010
Genentech, a large biotech company based in California, announced that it will be laying off 840 employees in San Francisco and Vacaville, California.
These layoffs follow Genentech and other big companies’ campaign against California’s Proposition 24, which sought to repeal a large corporate tax break. Genentech spent more to defeat this proposition than any other company–claiming it was a “job killer.”
Well, Genentech and those other companies defeated Prop 24 and kept all their tax breaks. But it didn’t take long for Genentech to prove that the real job killers are the bosses themselves.
Dec 13, 2010
After 43 days of occupation, the Chicago Board of Education gave in. A dozen mothers and their supporters had been occupying the field house of Whittier Elementary, slated to be torn down. The parents had converted the field house into a library, which the school didn’t have.
The parents’ sit-in and determination forced the school board to provide 1.4 million dollars in new funding. The school board also agreed to put a library in the school, as well as keep the field house open for meetings.
These parents set an example for those at the 146 elementary schools in Chicago that lack a library.
Parents, students and teachers can win funding–when they fight for it.
Dec 13, 2010
Arizona officials stopped covering certain organ transplant surgeries for low income people under the state’s Medicaid program starting at the beginning of October.
For around 100 people in Arizona, who are currently affected by this budget cut, this is a death sentence. One patient, who needed a bone marrow transplant, could not raise the amount of money required for the surgery, and died of leukemia in late November.
All this to save a lousy 4.5 million dollars more that the politicians can hand over to the wealthy.
Dec 13, 2010
Bill Gates, Warren Buffett and a fistful of other billionaires have signed a pledge to give away at least half of their wealth to charities.
Are we supposed to think these billionaires are making a sacrifice? If Warren Buffet were to give away 99% of all his wealth–he’d still have 450 million dollars!
And they’re not really giving away even that, since they control the foundations that fund the charities. The foundations are only required to spend 5% of their endowments every year–investing the rest, rolling up more profit.
They got rich by ripping off the workers–and they want to keep doing it. And look like angels!
Dec 13, 2010
The U.S. Supreme Court will soon issue a ruling about prison overcrowding in California and its inhumane state of inmate health care.
California has the world’s largest prison system per capita. One out of every 100 adults in the state is currently imprisoned. The current prison system holds 160,000 inmates, but is designed to house half that number, cramming inmates into triple-bunked gymnasiums, halls and even clinics.
The Supreme Court had previously ruled that prison overcrowding is not a constitutional violation, as if human beings can be packed like sardines in a can and survive in good health.
In 1995, California prisoners sued the governor and corrections officials saying their lack of health care violated the Eighth Amendment’s “Cruel and Unusual Punishment Clause.” The federal court ruled in favor of the prisoners. Since then, no fewer than 70 court decisions have ordered the state of California to provide the mandatory health care.
But California officials have done nothing, and the courts have let them get away with it. In 2005, one of the court orders stated that “…it is an uncontested fact that, on average, an inmate in one of California’s prisons needlessly dies every six to seven days… [due to lack of adequate health care caused by overcrowding].” Other court orders explained that the overcrowding contributed to the spread of infectious diseases, mental illness among prisoners, and suicides. In one instance, a prison cell was so crowded, prison staff did not become aware that a prisoner had died for several hours.
Finally, in 2009 a Federal court ordered California to reduce its prison population by 46,000. The state attorney general at the time–Jerry Brown–refused to carry out the order and appealed it to the Supreme Court. This appeal is now being supported by attorneys general in at least a dozen other states–where the prisons are also monstrously overcrowded.
Meanwhile, conditions in these hell holes continue to deteriorate even further.
Dec 13, 2010
The current deal between Obama and the Republicans will not extend unemployment benefits as promised. It will only continue the current temporary unemployment program, which tops out at 99 weeks, for another 13 months.
It will do NOTHING, absolutely nothing, for all those who exhaust those 99 weeks of unemployment benefits. Nearly two million have already passed 99 weeks; up to four million more unemployed workers will pass 99 weeks next year and lose their benefits, even with this “extension.”
That means close to six million unemployed workers without income or even minimal benefits–a vast social catastrophe that the politicians pretend doesn’t exist.
Dec 13, 2010
The headlines say that the recent tax deal between Obama and the Republicans will cut taxes for everyone. This is a lie.
Families with incomes less than $40,000 per year–that’s most of the working class–will pay more.
That’s because the deal eliminates the “Making Work Pay” tax credit of $400 for individuals and $800 for families that was introduced in 2009, and the two% reduction in the Social Security payroll tax does not make up for this.
And for six million federal, state, and local government workers, it’s worse. They do not pay Social Security taxes because they pay into other pension systems, so they will lose the $800 tax credit, but receive no cut in their payroll deductions.
No matter how the politicians try to dress it up, this deal stinks to high heaven.
Dec 13, 2010
Several large school districts in the U.S. are installing cameras in classrooms to videotape teachers for “evaluation” purposes.
These are some of the same districts that are laying off teachers and increasing class sizes, such as New York, Denver, Dallas, Pittsburgh, Memphis and Charlotte, N.C. All of them have talked about being short of money. Now they want to pay people–not to teach, but to sit on their butts and watch teachers teach!
Where do such “brilliant” ideas come from? From bosses, of course–big bosses.
One big fan of classroom cameras is Bill Gates. And Gates has money to push for what he wants. His foundation is investing 335 million dollars into changing the way teachers are evaluated–by installing cameras in classrooms, for example.
What B.S.! Gates and all these administrators are saying, don’t hire more teachers; don’t fix the crumbling buildings; don’t improve facilities and teaching materials–just monitor the overloaded teachers every minute of every day!
It’s just another way of attacking the teachers, while draining even more money from the real education of the children.
Dec 13, 2010
Detroit’s mayor, businessman Dave Bing, says the city has to shrink. Last February, he explained it this way: “There is just too much land and too many expenses for us to continue to manage the city as we have in the past.” He insisted that no one will be forced to move, “We’re going to use incentives.”
Yes, but which incentives?
“If they stay where they are,” says Bing, “I absolutely cannot give them all the services they require.” In other words, extortion: move or you won’t have public lighting, water, trash pickup, ambulance service, schools.
Despite all the publicity about people moving out, leaving 30% of Detroit’s land vacant, most of the vacant land isn’t residential—this was the finding of a survey done of the city’s land parcels by the Detroit Data Collaborative last February.
Most of the vacant land in the city comes from big corporations like Ford, General Motors, Chrysler, Kmart, A&P, Triple A, and others. They closed old plants and offices—leaving behind land that was so polluted with toxic chemicals no one could live or build anywhere near it. If they wanted to build elsewhere in the city, one mayor after another pushed residents out, grabbed their land and handed it, along with some tax breaks, over to those same companies.
But guess who else produced vacant land and buildings—the city of Detroit and the state of Michigan. One mayor after another closed recreation centers, fire stations, police precincts, neighborhood city halls, and health centers.
In 1980, there were 39 recreation centers in Detroit. Those rec centers once provided activities that gave young people something to do. Today there are only 16.
There were 11 neighborhood city halls in 1980. That saved people from having to go downtown to the City-County building to get a license or pay a fee. Today there are just five.
Look at the recent fires in Detroit and the long response time by firefighters and EMS. As recently as 2005, the city had more than 300 paramedics. Today, it has less than 190.
The city had 16 police precincts in 1980, and 49 mini-stations, where you could go if you had problems with a ticket or needed papers to file an insurance claim. Today there are six police “divisions” and no mini-stations.
There also used to be 11 neighborhood health centers; today just three, plus one with only minimal services available.
These closures directly create vacant land. These and other budget cuts are also one of the reasons people are pushed out of Detroit.
On a rotating basis, the city regularly cuts off street lights in neighborhoods around the city—for days or even weeks at a time, three or four times a year. The city has reduced bus service and eliminated large trash pick-up except for two times a year, cut hours and budgets to the libraries. Now it’s furloughing city workers 26 days a year. Combined with cuts to state workers, these cuts add time standing in long lines to get government services.
And all of this is made many times worse by the push to close public schools, driving children into charter schools. In the last five years alone, 124 Detroit public schools were closed.
City and state funding was cut almost to zero for attractions like the Detroit Zoo, the Detroit Historical Museum and the Detroit Institute of Arts. That became the pretext for private interests to take them over—and almost immediately raise or introduce entrance fees.
It’s all these deals and a multitude more that are destroying the city.
When the mayor held a series of “town hall” meetings around the city to promote his agenda, Detroit citizens came by the thousands to confront the mayor and his stooges. After the first meeting erupted into real anger, the big media acted as though people were crazy.
Oh yes, people were angry—and maybe they should go a little “crazy.” Because the politicians, one after another, have drained the city of money, using the taxes people pay to line the pockets of wealthy businessmen—like Bing himself, who got quite a bit of money several years ago from the city and state. Two downtown stadiums have been built, and yet another new arena is about to be built—all on land taken and cleared by the city. Compuware got four square blocks of land, worth tens of billions of dollars, to build its headquarters downtown. The city and state together gave American Axle 18.5 million dollars to build a new headquarters. And both those companies were given so-called “Renaissance Zone” abatements freeing them from most city, county and state taxes for 13½ years. The state, which has given GM millions of dollars to move its headquarters from one part of the city to another, recently gave it another 25 million dollars just to stay put!
The State Fairgrounds, where the State Fair had been held for 160 straight years, was closed by the state of Michigan. The state said it didn’t have the money—but it had the money to give and prepare that same land for a profit-making company, Meijer, to build a store there.
So yes, people are angry.
It’s been called Mayor Bing’s plan—but that isn’t quite right. He’s only the puppet. Money to push the “shrinking of Detroit” comes from a national organization calling itself “Living Cities.” And this so-called “benevolent” group gets its funding from foundations like Ford, Kresge, Kellogg, and Skillman and backing from big financial interests like Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, Morgan Stanley, Deutsche Bank, and Prudential Financial. In other words, the same interests that caused the current economic crisis, who organized the sub-prime mortgage scam, and who are now “robo-signing” foreclosure documents are behind the scam to shrink Detroit.
Aligned with the big Wall Street banks in this effort is the Detroit Economic Growth Corporation. And its directors include two retired GM vice presidents, the chief administrative officer of Compuware, a prominent Detroit developer and builder, and the head of a law firm which lives off legal work from the city.
It’s hardly the first time that people have been pushed out of their homes. In the 1940s and ’50s, the city, with help from the federal and state governments “urban renewed” what used to be known as Black Bottom and Paradise Valley.
Black Bottom, originally a Jewish and Italian area, came to house most of the black people who came up from the rural South during the Great Migration in the first half of the 20th century. As migration continued, the black population expanded into what came to be known as Paradise Valley and from there to the North End.
Black Bottom and Paradise Valley were denied many city services, and they suffered the ills of old housing, overcrowding and poverty, but they also were intensely solid communities.
Black Bottom had a vibrant social and political life. The Communist Party was active there. Many black churches were community centers. The Nation of Islam was founded there, and Malcolm X was minister of the Nation’s mosque there.
It was a thriving community, with many people tilling small plots of land to put in greens and other vegetables. In fact, the name “Black Bottom” derives from the fact that the land there was the good bottom land nourished by the Detroit River.
Paradise Valley was Detroit’s center for jazz in its heyday, with dozens of jazz clubs not only showcasing jazz greats from around the country, but serving as the training ground for generations of Detroit musicians. It had several hotels where great artists like Billie Holiday and Duke Ellington stayed because none of the city’s big hotels would let them in.
These two communities were effectively destroyed when the state used federal funds to tear out Hastings Street, which was the center and heart of the black community. In the place of Hastings Street, which had tied together the whole community, the state built the Chrysler freeway, which cut it in pieces.
In fact, the placement of the freeway was the pretext for a big land grab. The big money in the area coveted the land in Black Bottom and Paradise Valley, which were close to a downtown rapidly spreading outward after World War II. Affordable public housing units were promised for displaced residents—but never delivered. Eventually however, expensive housing, two downtown stadiums and the Detroit Medical Center were erected there.
In 1979, when GM wanted to close two of its oldest plants and replace them with one new plant, politicians rushed to pay GM to take Poletown.
Poletown, which bridged sections of Hamtramck and Detroit, had also been a cohesive community, attracting immigrants from Eastern Europe, who stayed there, as did many of their children, grandchildren and great grandchildren. The area had its own hospitals and a farmers’ market. It had two lively commercial areas on Joseph Campau and on Chene, with little ethnic restaurants, bakeries, butcher shops, hardware stores. And it had parks. There were numerous small plants, plus the massive Dodge Main—which Chrysler was deserting for a city tax abatement at two other plants it wanted to build or rebuild in the city.
Detroit and Hamtramck didn’t even put up a pretense of convincing residents to move. They took the land by claiming “eminent domain”—and sent in bulldozers to move out those people who wouldn’t go and were still demonstrating. The two cities evicted people by force even before the courts had ruled on all the issues.
People were paid a pittance for their homes—not what it would have cost them to get another. 4,200 people and the community they had built up were displaced, replaced by one GM plant sitting in the middle of acres of land—plus a prison. The two commercial centers, Joseph Campau and Chene, were cut in half. The city paid 250 million dollars to acquire the land, plus provide the infrastructure of the plant, including roads, trains, electricity, sewers, etc. On top of that, it provided a 50% tax abatement for twelve years.
Politicians justified this great big gift to GM by claiming the GM plant would employ 6,000 people. It employs 1,200.
These areas robbed were neighborhoods in which people lived, linked together for years. Tearing up neighborhoods added to the city’s atomization and the marginalization of people and burned a new hole in the city budget for decades to come.
Mayor Bing decries the “problem” of the city’s vacant land.
In fact, it’s an opportunity.
The city could re-open and build new rec centers, fire stations and neighborhood health centers. Some people have suggested community gardens. Why not? A city that’s livable has gardens. They clean the air and they’re pleasing to people.
The city could build parks, swimming pools, basketball and tennis courts, and ball fields to provide recreation for people, playgrounds for the kids, areas to play checkers and cards for retirees, skating rinks in winter, roller rinks in summer, theaters and amphitheaters where people could put on plays or concerts.
There certainly aren’t enough of such facilities in Detroit. According to the Center for City Park Excellence, Detroit ranks 23rd out of the 25 biggest cities in the amount of park land proportionate to the population and 20th in the number of public pools.
Of course, the politicians would scream: there’s no money for such things. Well, they found the money for all these deals for the wealthy. There is money: the politicians just haven’t been using it for the needs of the population.
People know what needs to be fixed in their own neighborhoods. But with big capital in control, people are not part of the process.
What would people do confronted with the problem of vacant land in Detroit? They might say, “Turn over that tax money to us—we know what needs to be done to turn Detroit into a really liveable city! And all the politicians and big money men who don’t like it can take their carpetbags and leave!”
Dec 13, 2010
General Motors came out of bankruptcy by offering 478 million “common” shares in the new GM, and (4.35 billion) “preferred” shares.
Eighty% of those shares were sold beforehand, in large blocks, millions and tens of millions of shares each, to banks, mutual funds, hedge funds, sovereign wealth funds. The wealthy have money beyond belief, to snap up millions of GM shares–not to build vehicles, but to speculate.
Their speculation paid off as they bought their casino-chip shares at $33 in advance and then offered them for sale–and found other speculators who would pay $35 a share! Six% profit within one minute of the opening bell!
That’s the bare truth behind all the hoopla!
Dec 13, 2010
Wall Street doesn’t need Santa this year. The Wall Street Journal estimates that the top 35 publicly-held firms will give their top wheeler-dealers more than 144 billion dollars in pay and bonuses.
The Journal expects the executives at the top five firms alone to find $90 billion in their stockings.
This is the very same gang of Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, Bank of America, and the rest, who speculated in fraudulent mortgages and derivatives until they caused the entire economy to crash in 2008.
The economy has not even started to recover. The losses caused by this gang are nearly incalculable.
Yet instead of facing jail terms, instead of having their loot confiscated to go toward damages to our entire society, these thieves are allowed to reward themselves?
We don’t need Santa this year. We need Robin Hood.
Dec 13, 2010
This article is taken from Lutte Ouvrière (Workers Struggle), the paper of the revolutionary workers group of that name active in France. Martinique is an island of 400,000 people in the Caribbean, an overseas department of France. In February-March 2009 workers carried out a general strike, led in large part by the General Confederation of Labor Martinique (CGTM), whose leader is Ghislaine Joachim-Arnaud. She is also a leader of Combat Ouvrier (Workers Struggle), a revolutionary workers group on the island.
Ghislaine Joachim-Arnaud is on trial in Martinique, accused by Jean-François Hayot, one of the richest men on the island, of “provoking discrimination, hatred and violence with respect to a group of people, the békés.”
The békés are the descendants of the original slave owners on the island. They are still masters of Martinique’s economy. During last year’s big struggles, Joachim-Arnaud repeated in a broadcast the slogan that was chanted by the tens of thousands of demonstrators:
“Martinique is ours. We’re going to kick out a band of békés, profiteers and thieves! This is our fight. We must continue it.”
It’s an outrage that Jean-François Hayot is spearheading an attack, accusing the leader of the CGTM of racism!
Ghislaine affirmed at a press conference that the thousands of demonstrators had naturally taken the békés as a target, viewing them as the incarnation of the bosses. She added that the term béké in the popular language means boss.
Withdrawing nothing of what she said or wrote, she affirmed that it’s necessary to get rid of the capitalist regime and to continue the fight to put those people outside it, that is, outside the economy of the island.
Another béké, Alain Huyghues Despointes, recently declared:
“In mixed race families the children are of different colors. There isn’t harmony. I don’t find anything good in that. We békés wished to preserve our race.” He added, “Historians only speak of the negative aspects of slavery, which is regrettable.”
These representatives of the béké lobby, whose riches were built on the exploitation of slaves, continue to enrich themselves on the backs of the workers, and dare to complain of “discrimination!”
Today, the béké capitalists—who are only 1% of the population—own most import and export businesses, the big stores and 65% of the farm land of the island.
From this point of view, the Hayot family is a good example, since Bernard Hayot’s company has sales of two billion dollars, mainly in supermarkets, department stores and auto dealerships.
During the general strike in Martinique, the békés couldn’t stand it that the demonstrations and strikes of thousands of workers of African, Indian and even white origin disrupted business and sales. Today, they seek revenge by targeting one of the principal leaders of that movement.
Dec 13, 2010
In early December, the top leadership of the UAW held a rally of about 150 outside a Hyundai Tech Center near Detroit. They claimed it was in support of the temporary workers’ strike in Korea.
Of course, this show of support was for workers thousands of miles away. Meanwhile, right here at home, these same UAW officials have helped the auto companies to impose two-tier and long-term temporary status against their own membership! So, the corporate policies that the UAW officials claim to oppose in South Korea ... they support in the U.S.
Workers DO need to organize. AND fight, like the workers in South Korea are doing. But for Bob King and the rest of the UAW top leadership, it’s not about organizing and fighting—it’s about putting on a show.
Dec 13, 2010
In Haiti, the two candidates for the run-off election for president have been finalized. They are political insiders: Mirlande Manigat, the wife of former president Leslie Manigat, and Jude Célestin, the protégé and future son-in-law of outgoing president René Préval.
Préval tapped public funds to pay for Célestin’s campaign. Together they blanketed the country with newspaper, radio and TV ads, chartered sound cars and even a plane, while bribing people to come to their meetings. The money spent on this extravagance was ten times as great as what has been spent to fight the cholera epidemic, which has already killed 2,000 people.
The representatives of the great powers, including the U.S. and France, that dominate Haiti, had hoped that these elections would give the country a certain political stability. They had dispatched observers to guarantee a fair election.
But the fraud was massive: stuffing ballot boxes, strong-arming voters, preventing people from voting by dropping names from the rolls or not sending voter cards, etc.
On November 28th, the day after the first round election, thousands of people demonstrated, especially in Port-au-Prince. They demanded the election be nullified. But the Provisional Electoral Council refused.
Meanwhile, even as the local and international authorities push the election for president and the National Assembly, they hardly seem concerned about the actual living conditions in the country. Not only do Haiti’s people continue to suffer the consequences of the January 12th earthquake, they are confronted by a devastating cholera epidemic.
There is also increasing tension between the international troops, who are deployed across the country, and the population. It was recently confirmed that United Nations forces from Nepal, who are stationed in Haiti, brought cholera to the country.
The aid to contain the cholera epidemic and reconstruct the devastated and impoverished country still hasn’t arrived.
Dec 13, 2010
On November 15th, temporary workers at the biggest Korean auto company, Hyundai Motors, went on strike. The biggest Korean companies owe their famous cost competitiveness to temporary workers, who make up almost half their production workers.
On average, temporary workers get less than half the weekly pay of permanent workers doing the same jobs, but work longer hours. They have no legally mandated benefits or union rights, and can be laid off without compensation.
At Hyundai Motors, more than 8,000 of the 42,000 production workers are temps. The law provides that after two years in a company, temp workers have the right to be made regular. But the big corporations like Hyundai have always ignored the law, with the complicity of the justice system.
Last July, the South Korean Supreme Court overturned a decision which had allowed Hyundai to violate this law. Although symbolic, this decision was interpreted by many temporary workers as announcing the end of the discrimination against them.
All at once, temporary workers’ unions, which led an almost underground existence at three Hyundai plants, tripled the number of their members to 2,500. These unions launched a campaign to transform all the temps into regular workers, with speeches and demonstrations at the plant gates and to win the support of the regular workers.
Finally, on November 15th, following another provocation, temps on the assembly line occupied their factory in Ulsan. Management called out both the police and its private militia. This is all it took for the strike to spread like wild-fire to the four other Ulsan assembly plants and to those in Jeonju and Asan.
The movement continued for about a month. In Ulsan itself, 2,000 strikers carried out a permanent sit-in which paralyzed the assembly lines. Every day, support demonstrations were organized in front of three plants.
For its part, the Korean Metalworkers Union at its November 22nd convention decided to have a vote of its members for a national strike in December to support the Hyundai part timers. After this announcement, Hyundai responded by suing the temporary workers’ union, demanding compensation of 1.2 million dollars, while the government issued an order aimed against seven strike militants, calling the strike illegal.
On December 9th, the temporary workers’ unions and the country’s largest union agreed to suspend the strike with negotiations continuing. No matter how this fight turns out, one thing is clear. The stakes go well beyond Hyundai and the temporary workers. For more than two decades the Korean bourgeoisie has imposed this type of super-exploitation on the whole Korean working class. To reverse this relationship of forces, the Korean working class needs all the energy that it can put into the movement.