No pay, more layoffs—Oaxaca Healthcare workers strike

OAXACA, MEXICO, January 23— Striking doctors and nurses put locks and chains on the entrances to the Aurelio Valdivieso general hospital in Oaxaca city. In the last couple of days, thousands of workers of the Health Department demonstrated in a mass march to protest the direct attack against our job stability. The government intends to eliminate more than 2,200 regular jobs in Oaxaca and eventually many more in the whole country.
The strike began last week throughout the state in hospitals and health centers by workers who  have yet to be paid this month (Mexico News Daily, 1/24).
Juan Diaz Pimentel, secretary of health and state, is using the excuse that there are more than 1,000 “temporary” workers and the staff is “full.” He has made threats of layoffs and has kept the bi-weekly pay corresponding to the first two weeks of January of more than 4,000 workers.
Mass cutbacks head
The capitalist system and its bosses are preparing the path for privatization of health services that undoubtedly will bring more misery, illness and death to the working class. For those of us that work in the healthcare field, privatization will bring huge instability at our work places.
All of us workers need to realize that this putrid system called capitalism will continue its mission to make more profits from healthcare. This is why the working class must organize to face this attack from the capitalist state and understand that one mass march is not enough.
We need to create organizational strategies to fight against the capitalist system, but also to build class consciousness. To achieve this, we need to establish the base of a Party led by the working class, a party that fights for the interests of the working class—Progressive Labor Party.
Fascist ”homeland security” law
Let’s take advantage of this critical moment and understand that the state will continue its attacks.  If needed, it will use the brutal force of the army. It is no coincidence that the army was given the freedom to act under the slogan to protect “homeland security” (see next issue). The oppressing state is allowed to act to violently subdue any outbreak of dissent. However, in history we’ve seen there is no power that can stop angered workers. That is why we need to understand that there is no other solution besides building a party with Marxist-Leninist ideas that leads workers.
The Progressive Labor Party aims to build a communist party to destory the capitalist system, which is the cause of death and misery in the working class.