CHICAGO, January 7 – Members of the communist Progressive Labor Party (PLP) rallied today outside the office headquarters of Howard Brown Health (HBH) in support of workers and patients facing cuts in jobs and services. With our bullhorn, we chanted “Not one layoff!” at the busy intersection, distributing flyers and copies of CHALLENGE to HBH workers entering the building for negotiations and others passing through the neighborhood.
Our actions were a continuation of support for the HBH workers, who had just completed a three-day strike in protest of the bosses’ racist and sexist layoffs of dozens of employees. The HBH network of “non-profit” clinics across the city – which claim to be a top provider of services for LGBTQ+ workers – are crying broke. But many workers are cutting through the lies and excuses about the bosses’ funds and are fighting back!
We support their fightback as communists because we know it is also our fight. Whether it’s striking nurses in the UK or New York City or health workers facing jail time for protesting in Zimbabwe, we must see all these battles as a common struggle against an oppressive and exploitative capitalist system that can never meet the needs of the working class. We invite workers to join the revolutionary communist struggle to overthrow the racist capitalist system once and for all and replace it with a worker-run world.
The bosses say cut back, we say fight back!
Workers at HBH first learned of the bosses’ intent to lay off dozens of staff around a month ago and immediately organized a protest at that time with a rally outside a North Side clinic. After it was made clear that the bosses intended to still follow through with the cuts, hundreds of workers mobilized through their union in order to call for a three-day unfair labor practice (ULP) strike.
The HBH bosses have stuck to their claims that the institution is in dire financial straits and, therefore, layoffs are necessary to stay afloat. Never mind the fact that they are going ahead with building a brand new facility on the North Side of Chicago to the tune of some $50 million, or that top executives like CEO David Munar rake in a salary of over $300,000 (Chicago Reader, 1/13).
Furthermore, they have shamelessly pushed the lie that they are mainly cutting unfilled positions and that the layoffs won’t negatively affect patient care. What a sick joke! Those at HBH, as well as the majority of workers exploited under capitalism, understand how less staff on the job means a greater workload, more stress, and worse outcomes for ourselves as well as for patients.
Also, on account of capitalism and racism going hand in hand, the proposed cuts are projected to occur at South Side clinics where more Black and Latin patients receive services. In PLP, we say a system that cannot provide decent healthcare for the entire working class doesn’t deserve to exist and must be destroyed with revolutionary communist leadership!
Putting communist politics forward on the picket line
Those of us in the PLP that participated in the pickets pushed to advance class conscious and communist ideas. We brought hot food and beverages to support the workers chanting and marching in the wind and rain, along with our co-workers and friends from our work in mass organizations. We also distributed a couple hundred Party flyers about the strike along with many copies of CHALLENGE.
Being in the thick of the picket helps us as workers get a sharper understanding of the nature of the class struggle and the necessity of worker unity and fighting back. Talking with strikers and hearing their speeches in person about how much they worried for their patients’ conditions and their own in the aftermath of the layoffs added extra fuel to the fire.
We stressed the importance of being proactive in the class struggle, not just waiting until the attacks came to us personally. As one PLP member put it, “I’m here because I know I’d want you all to have my back when I’m on strike at my hospital.” The workers united will never be defeated!
Liberal identity politics, union reformism fail workers
The experience of the Howard Brown strike helps to shine light on a couple truths in the class struggle. The first fact is that a boss is a boss, whatever their gender identity, sexual orientation, nationality, or race. It makes no difference if HBH CEO David Munar is a gay man; at the end of the day, he will enforce the business decisions necessary to the nature of competition and the profit system. The same goes for Black Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot protecting the murderous kkkops and attacking workers as she looks out for wealthy developers.
The second fact is that unions are clearly limited under capitalism. While they can provide a basic level of protection and organization to workers, they can never shield us completely from the bosses’ attacks because they operate within the confines of the bosses’ laws. While the union may have stopped the HBH bosses from eliminating over 100 positions like they originally planned, over 60 workers still lost their jobs (Block Club Chicago, 1/6). They can never raise the bar of struggle to the point where no worker is seen as expendable; only a communist society can achieve this by putting the working class in control.
Join the communist Progressive Labor Party
This worker-run communist society is being fought for here and now. We don’t have to continue to settle for less on the never-ending treadmill of reform. We invite workers from HBH and everywhere to join the Party to crush capitalism and build an egalitarian world.