QUEENS, NY — “You know we’re gonna get screwed on this,” said the PLP’er. His coworker and CHALLENGE reader shrugged. At today’s briefing (the meeting at the beginning of a shift) the boss tried to force extra work onto a group including the PLP’er and several CHALLENGE readers. They would have to work a flight, and fuel vehicles.
One worker objected to the group having to do two jobs at the same time. Not surprisingly, the supervisor ignored the criticism since without class struggle he controls everything and doesn’t have to listen to a word we say. Furthermore, the white boss’s arrogance takes on a racist character as he ignores the input of the mainly black and Latino workers.
“We do all the work and should be making the decisions about who gets what assignments,” said the PLP’er to another group member.
“What do you expect?” responded the worker, who’d seen enough capitalist exploitation to be able to predict a thing or two as well. True, we should expect a dictatorship of the bosses under capitalism, but fighting back and building the PLP can lead to a revolution and workers’ power.
However, the workers were still under capitalism two hours later when the boss stormed into the break room, upset that two vehicles had not been fueled. What did he expect?
Since the head supervisor could now reprimand him, the junior boss told the group of workers they were in trouble. “You’re getting a formal warning, which can lead to a letter on your permanent record and further disciplinary action.” What all this will mean is unclear, but essentially it is a boss attacking a group of workers to save his own neck — nothing new.
“They’re digging their own grave when they attack a group of us,” said the PLP’er later. “They’re happy to call you into the office by yourself because when it’s you alone against a boss they have all the power. They can take your job away; they can take the food off your table; they can take the roof from over your head.”
“But when they attack a group of us? They can’t fire all of us! We do everything around here and they know that when we remind them.”
The workers argued back and forth about if and how they should take action. “I’ll just go talk to the head supervisor tomorrow” said one worker. Another volunteered to go and try to convince the junior boss at the end of the shift.
“Whatever we decide, we should do it together, because that’s when we are the strongest. That’s when we have the power,” said the PLP’er. Unity is the key to our strength — individually fighting back is no solution.
The bosses love to isolate and alienate workers who speak up and play favorites with others. This takes on a racist and nationalist character: with white and Latino workers encouraged to identify with white and Latino supervisors rather than their sister and brother workers. All workers get hurt when we are divided and can not stand up together against the bosses’ attacks on us.
The idea of a united response worried another worker. “I don’t know, [the junior boss] tends to get frantic when he feels cornered and won’t listen then,” he reasoned. “Good,” shot back the PLP’er, “he should be afraid.”
The workers continued to discuss their plan of action, but could not come to a consensus. The PLP’er talked later with one worker about escalating the struggle with the bosses, and that while we may not win every battle we need to build anti-racist unity for the war.
This struggle can move forward with more discussions about the need to fight back and how the little struggles we wage today are a necessary training ground for the mass struggles of the future. Workers have now been more intensely exposed to some of the PLP’s ideas of unity, resistance and revolution.
The bosses’ class war is unfortunately far from over, with many more workers from Port-Au-Prince to New York City facing death, unemployment and cutbacks so long as capitalism rages. Positively, young workers like this PLP’er are organizing industrial workers at the point of production, where the struggles to organize working-class fight-backs provide a school where communist ideas can flourish. More battles lie ahead. J