Loudoun workers: Transit strike vs pols & boss

Loudoun County, VA, February 14—“FIRE KEOLIS” rang out today as about 100 transit workers in ATU Local 689 and their allies took their over-month-long strike to the Loudoun County Board of Supervisors. Their demand? End the politicians’ deal with Keolis. The workers exposed a gang-up of these “progressive” political leaders with Keolis, the $6 billion French transit company perpetuating a two-tier wage system and cuts to benefits.
The Loudoun politicians, despite their crocodile tears for workers, are proving yet again that the state is a tool of capitalist class domination. By definition, the bosses’ politicians cannot represent workers’ interests. Workers must fight them and the Keolis bosses tooth and nail, defeating them and their entire system with communist revolution.
Progressive Labor Party (PLP) members have played an important role in this strike. We have joined picket lines and brought revolutionary ideas by sharing CHALLENGE newspaper with scores of workers. We protested with workers at the French embassy and mobilized transit workers from other jurisdictions to join the picket lines (see previous strike reports in CHALLENGE, 2/1 and 2/15).
Reject cuts and wage disparity
Today’s action featured a fiery speech by a PLP member, the former president of striking ATU Local 689. He declared, to unanimous cheers, that if the workers’ demands were not met, the workers should initiate a general strike. Such an action, he said, would build on the great 1968 general strike in France that brought the French bosses to their knees and led to big increases in wages and benefits.
Multiracial workers also spoke about the desperate need for significant improvements in their contract in order to survive. The two most pressing concerns are cuts to benefits and unequal wages: one pay scale for the union-represented commuter bus drivers, and one for the non-union local bus drivers. Workers are refusing this division between local and commuter drivers.
Union leaders have begun to take a more militant line—the current Local 689 president declared that he would not be fooled by politicians again and would not support any of them in the next election.
But the International union leaders continue to emphasize relying on Democratic politicians, which ties workers to the capitalist system.
The PLP approach of building a revolutionary party within these front-line battles in the class struggle must replace this self-defeating march to the ballot box.
Strike fever
Why did the workers zero in on the Loudoun Board of Supervisors? These politicians have a contract with bottom-feeding, Nazi-linked Keolis (Atlantic, 3/18/2014) which states that the company would be fined daily for failing to provide service – something Keolis can’t do with a 95 percent effective strike!  But the politicians were happy to violate their own contract and not enforce fines against Keolis. The failure of the politicians to punish the French company in this wealthy suburban area has allowed the company to stonewall the striking workers rather than negotiate to meet their demands. As we have seen in countless strikes over the years, politicians will  offer aid to their real bosses, the capitalist bosses who own the means of production. Workers may vote but capitalists are the rulers.
Strike action against Keolis has spread beyond Loudoun County. Teamsters local 639 in Prince William County, VA struck Keolis this week and joined today’s rally in solidarity. Keolis was run out of its contract in Las Vegas (thisisreno.com, 2/14), and lost its contract in Raleigh, NC as well. The transit workers in Reno have struck three times against Keolis to try for a decent contract. Strikes, as Lenin said, are schools for war where workers learn to fight against their class enemy, the bosses. Strike fever is growing!
Working-class solidarity
PLP members linked this transit fight to the intense negotiations between Montgomery County teachers (MCEA) with their Board of Education,
sharing flyers from that struggle in Amharic, English and Spanish. PL’ers also brought some well-received posters reflecting the broad importance of the struggle in transit. Transit and transit workers are essential to the bosses’ ability to run society. Even during the beginning of the pandemic, the bosses understood the necessity of keeping transit running.
One of the strikers who spoke carried and waved the sign, “A GOOD CONTRACT = PUBLIC HEALTH.”
Other workers welcomed  the sign, “TEACHERS SUPPORT TRANSIT WORKERS.”
Our Party fights for multiracial struggle and internationalism. A transit strike in Loudoun County impacts workers all over the world. We talked with workers about a Senegalese railroad strike in 1947 that lasted 4 months, recounted in God’s Bits of Wood by Ousmane Sembene.  That story also ends with a speech calling for a general strike in Dakar, Senegal, which linked nicely to the PLP call for a general strike here.
Of course, even a general strike and militant uprisings alone cannot defeat capitalism and racism. We call on workers to channel this militancy into building a revolutionary communist Party to smash this criminal system, and create a society led by workers that guarantees a decent life, without exploitation, for all. As the major imperialist powers build toward world war, workers will be under increasing pressure to sacrifice and produce for the bosses. The workers in Loudoun County are providing the leadership we need to defeat the bosses and build a world run by and for the working class.