Israeli Cops Attack Rail Workers’ Wildcat vs. Privatization

ISRAEL, May 12 — Railway workers here went on a wildcat strike protesting the arrest of their union leaders during a demonstration held the previous day. That action was protesting the railway management’s decision to privatize car maintenance service, transferring it to private manpower companies. This caused hundreds of railway workers to be laid off and, in the process, damaging and endangering the public safety.

Israeli police, always ready and eager to serve local bosses, violently attacked the workers, arresting ten of the railway workers’ union leaders. The next day, the courts — another organ of the bosses — issued a decision forbidding the workers to strike. The railway workers defied the court’s decision and wildcatted, demanding the immediate release of their comrades from jail.

This is a typical example of creeping fascism: the use of a police force to intimidate and break down the spirit of workers struggling to defend their jobs. The railway workers showed us the way to fight fascism — they challenged the bosses and their rotten capitalist system.

In recent years we have witnessed a process  by all Israeli governments, right and “left,” aimed at destroying organized labor. “Public” companies are handed over to private bosses and manpower companies, the modern slaveowners. Thus, workers are forced to work for slave wages with no collective contracts.

The capitalists and their servants in government have wanted to privatize Israel Railway for a long time and hand it over to a private local tycoon. To achieve this, they are leading a campaign to de-legitimize railway workers. They cut the public safety budget endangering passengers while putting the blame on the railway workers, setting the public against the workers.

Privatization of public services, including transportation, has failed in other countries and proved ineffective. Despite this, the bosses are determined to transfer the railway service to one of their own in order to extract maximum profit.

We in PLP strengthen and support the railway workers in their struggle to block the bosses’ aims. In their brave actions, the railway workers proved that workers’ unity and determination to fight for a just cause can defeat the bosses’ police and courts.

We support their firm stand to prevent manpower companies from bringing in cheap slave labor to replace fully-experienced and trained workers and in doing so endangering the public safety. But under capitalism workers never win. Even if these reforms are won, they will eventually be taken away in the name of profit. Only when workers hold state power, will we have control to make decisions that will truly benefit all workers and not just a few rich bosses.