CHICAGO, September 13—A hotel workers’ strike here reached the seven-day mark today, with some 6,000 workers from over 20 major hotels represented in the struggle. Hundreds of these workers are actively participating on at least two dozen pickets.
Their contract with the bosses expired on August 30, and the demands of the strikers include year-round health benefits (workers have been made to go without when many are laid-off during the winter months) and higher wages. Comrades from Progressive Labor Party have joined in the picket, distributed CHALLENGE, supported chants, and talked with strikers.
Considering the make-up of the hotel workers in the industry, the working conditions created by the hotel bosses need to be seen for the sexist and racist attacks that they are. Many of the hotel workers are women and immigrant workers. Many face sexual harassment, assault, and other degrading conditions from their bosses and hotel clients alike. To see these same women workers pouring energy and leadership to the picket line and strike is an inspiring example of fightback against sexist capitalism.
Progressive Labor Party holds tight to the political line that strikes can be powerful schools for communism. When workers shut down the bosses’ industries, and drastically damage their ability to make profits off our labor, the working class learns a profound lesson about our class power and our capacity to create revolutionary change.
What is key to such revolutionary development, however, is revolutionary leadership and a mass international PLP. Our task is to continue to immerse ourselves deep within inspiring working-class struggles, such as this strike, wherever we are. In only this way, we can win more workers to the struggle of overthrowing bosses and capitalism all over the world and creating our own communist society that we collectively organize to meet our needs.