Airport Contract Fight Exposes Need for Revolution, Not Reform

MIDWEST AIRPORT, December 30 — The class struggle of airport and metro-area cleaners is getting sharper as the bosses attempt to stall and delay over union contract negotiations. The SEIU bargaining committee, composed of rank-and-file janitors, confronted the cleaning bosses’ high-priced lawyer in an angry exchange. Metro-cleaning bosses are keeping new cleaners on probation for an illegal extra 60 days. This is anti-working-class and nothing but racist super-exploitation which has many workers ready to strike if need be!

The majority of cleaners are African and Latino immigrants, from El Salvador, Mexico, Ethiopia and Somalia. These workers are tired of the cleaning bosses not respecting them, something bosses will never give workers under capitalism.

The bosses know that if negotiations break down after the December 31st deadline, it would take three weeks to replace strikers with scabs, which could be crucial for the metro cleaners’ contract fight as well. This is why airport bosses are harassing the union shop steward. After an onsite union meeting at the airport, supervisors and managers wrote up only the steward for “failure to return to work area on time.”

The airport bosses are desperate because they know what could happen if airport cleaners strike. They want to make an example of the steward to scare workers into not fighting back, and use this attack on the steward to get the union’s focus off contract negotiations. The workers seemed determined in their battle against the racist bosses. The contract struggle is opening new opportunities for airport workers to learn about PLP and revolutionary politics.

The union steward gave a presentation to fellow workers called “Communist Revolution versus Capitalist Reform in our Contract Struggle.” The workers asked great questions and some agreed a communist revolution for an anti-racist society is needed.

We put our small class struggle at the airport and metro area in the context of larger struggles worldwide, such as the immigrants’ strikes in France, making the connection that we are all oppressed by capitalism. We also showed how our airport /metro area struggle is connected to the capitalist economic crisis. The bosses’ solution for their problems is by taking away workers’ gains. A communist revolution globally would liberate the international working class. We will win some day against our fascist oppressors.