Union Hacks, Bosses, Obama Gang-up — So GM Workers Picket UAW HQ Over Wage-Cuts

DETROIT, MI, October 16 — “Eventually, we’ll all be Tier 2!” That’s what one woman said as about 200 autoworkers picketed outside the locked gates of UAW headquarters at Solidarity House today. They were protesting a 50% wage cut for 40% of the workforce at the Lake Orion GM assembly plant, UAW Local 5960. Workers came from a number of plants and locals, including Local 23 at the Indianapolis stamping plant where workers rejected wage-cuts, defied the Governor and ran UAW International reps out of their union hall.

Under the new contract, Tier 2 workers will make $14.50/hour and work alongside Tier 1 workers making $28/hour. Fearing a repeat of the Indianapolis rebellion, where wage-cuts were overwhelmingly voted down, 457 to 96, workers would not be allowed to vote on the wage-cuts. This is UAW President Bob King’s “UAW for the 21st Century,” where GM and the union “share common goals and a common vision” of keeping U.S. bosses on the top of the heap with a future of low wages and endless war.

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France: As Millions Marched and Thousands Struck: Sarkozy, Union Hacks Push to End Rank-and-File Movement

PARIS, October 31 — Two million workers and youth took to the streets in massive nation-wide demonstrations — 170,000 marching in Paris — to protest the ruling class’s raising the retirement age and the rising unemployment caused by the bosses’ economic crisis. A movement that began in the spring over pensions broadened to encompass a fight for jobs amid workers’ rage over the tremendous disparity in wealth between the ruling class and the working class.

Large numbers continue to join the anti-retirement demonstrations against low wages and President Sarkozy’s connivance with the wealthy. The focus on retirement “reform” stems from the fact that it affects the largest number of people. “The wage problem is overshadowed by the jobs problem which is overshadowed by the retirement problem,” explained Antoine, an unemployed worker in his forties. “It all results from the unequal distribution of wealth.” And all that is integral to capitalism’s drive for profits. Only a communist revolution that destroys this system and replaces it with one run by and for workers can end these evils.

Initially Sarkozy and the sellout union leaders had figured that some one-day strikes and demonstrations would allow the workers to vent their anger and then the pension changes would sail through. But this became a miscalculation when the rank and file pushed past the union leaders, organizing unlimited strikes, with polls reporting from 65% to 71% of the population supporting them. It then became difficult for the union hacks to back out of the struggle and to control it.

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Boston: Students March vs. Racist Police Terror

BOSTON, MA., October 29 — About 50 students and faculty from Roxbury Community College (RCC) marched to the police station today to protest the vicious October 22 police beating of a sixteen-year-old-youth in the Administration Building. The youth had run away from a Department of Youth Services facility in order to be present at the birth of his child.

A student recorded the incident with her cell-phone camera and posted it on Youtube while a cop attempted to intimidate her. If not for her, the incident would have been swept under the rug.  No one except those who had witnessed it knew it had happened. The RCC administration kept it silent for almost a week, helping the police cover up their crime. They didn’t address it on the campus until the Youtube video made it an issue in Boston.

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Elections: Bosses’ Charade to Enforce their Dictatorship

The workers of the world are struggling through the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. Jobs are disappearing, wages are falling, and millions of people are being thrown out of their homes and into the streets. In the U.S., over half of the federal budget is going to fight imperialist wars in the Middle East and Central Asia and the rest is being funneled into the hands of the capitalist class through bank bailouts and other giveaways.
Naturally, the ruthless greed and relentless attacks provoke anger in workers. This mass anger represents an opportunity for communists, who must strive to transform this unorganized and often misdirected anger into a mass communist movement. To do this, we must expose one of the bosses’ primary ideological weapons: elections.

Elections are a Ruling-Class Charade

The controlling forces in society — government (including elections), cops, military, schools, culture, etc. — comprise what we refer to as “the state” and are funded, organized and led by the ruling class. They function solely to reinforce the existing, racist structure: bosses exploiting, workers exploited. Elections, no matter who is elected, can NEVER change this.

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Chilean Mine Disaster a Capitalist Crime!

Billions of people cheered the recent rescue of 33 heroic Chilean miners. This outpouring of admiration and sympathy for the workers and their families encourages our revolutionary communist Party. It shows that worldwide class-based solidarity is indeed possible.
But the cheers and tears that filled the world’s media for the miners rescued from the San Esteban Primera Company’s San Jose copper and gold mine occurred amid an orgy of Chilean patriotic nationalism led by billionaire President Sebastián Piñera. It should not obscure the collaboration of profit-hungry mining bosses with Chile’s capitalist government which caused this disaster and many others.
José Rojo, a 20-year veteran miner, charged that the bosses had “turned a blind eye to the San José mine. They told us it was coming down; every so often there were cave-ins. They knew it was going to happen. At times when I was there with the Jumbo drill, I had to stop because I saw that the roof was coming down on me.” (Argentine daily, “Pagina 12”) On the day of the cave-in, he was lucky — the machinery he operated was broken, so he was not at work!

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Billionaire’s Payoff: More Capitalist Control of NJ Schools

NEWARK, NJ, October 15 — So what do you get when you put Oprah Winfrey, Newark Mayor Corey Booker, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg on a stage to talk about how to reform the Newark public schools? Another attempt by the U.S. ruling class to make schools more efficient warehouses, producing capitalist ideas and maintaining class inequality and racist divisions of the working class. Especially in a place like Newark, where the “official” unemployment rate is well over 14%, and over 70% of students can’t pass state tests, the bosses need to cover up their racism with a U.S. nationalist “We are all in this together” mentality. This is where Zuckerberg comes in.
On September 24, Zuckerberg announced that he is setting up a foundation, like fellow billionaire Bill Gates, to focus on the improvement of education in the U.S., and particularly Newark.

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Transit Workers, Riders Blast Racist Bankers; Union Backs Politicians

NEW YORK CITY, October 16 — TWU (Transport Workers Union) Local 100 representing most of NYC’s transit workers sent 20 buses to the October 2 “one nation” rally in Washington, D.C. However, many buses were largely empty. The international TWU “contingent” of mass transit, airline and railroad workers was nothing more than a distribution point for lunch, T-shirts and temporary tattoos. Many Local 100 members, including recently laid-off transit workers, were motivated to go to fight for jobs and against MTA bosses. But the rally was nothing more than a big pre-election photo-op for Democrats.
Preparing for the rally, in September PLP protested at two of five MTA (Metropolitan Transit Authority) public hearings on fare hikes, confronting the MTA Board face to face. Along with a few spirited transit riders and workers, PLP pointed out that layoffs, service cuts and fare hikes hit the city’s mainly black, Latino and immigrant workers the hardest.

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Students, Parents and Staff Know We Must: Probe School Bosses, Not Students and Teachers

BROOKLYN, NY, October 12 — “What’s the purpose of these schools? Is it for you to get educated OR to keep you under control?” This is what one PLP member asked his class last week in response to this schools’ administration harassing students about their participation in the October 2 March for Jobs in Washington, D.C. Many students attended this event, sponsored by the United Federation of Teachers, with family and friends, as well as staff members.
The administration has pursued campaigns of intimidation before when students and staff members have attended various events together, such as when teachers and students worked alongside each other in helping to rebuild New Orleans. This effort to create a climate of fear and hysteria has backfired on them before and will again. The Washington rally was attended by politicians as well as thousands of students from all over the East Coast.

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Mexico: Seeds of Emerging Struggle Fertile Ground for Revolution

PLP must go where the workers are, get our newspaper around and motivate the class struggle. Reforms are not the workers´ way to victory but can be used as a way of learning to fight, since what we really need is to destroy this murderous system. The workers of the Mexican electricity company have been on strike since March, and they need solidarity as much from the outside as the inside. We need to make our presence known there. We will also motivate the workers from Volkswagen with our solidarity.

Our class ties will grow as well as our feelings of brotherhood. We will grow and learn from the class struggle there. That´s what we communists do. We learn a lot from strikes such as the one from Stella d’ Oro in New York, and they elevate our level, encourage our revolutionary spirit and our commitment to fight until we accomplish our objective. We contribute collectively and win new comrades to communism in the struggle, and we expand the distribution of our newspaper.

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Battle Rulers, Cops, Politicians: Militant Moms Holding Fast

CHICAGO, IL, October 1 — The occupation of the Whittier field house is in its third week. It appears that following one week of direct confrontation with the CPS (Chicago Public Schools) security (see CHALLENGE, 10-6-10), the city’s police, politicians, ruling class and their school board are waiting them out.

CPS, planning the demolition of the building, refused the mothers’ demand for a library and after-school facility, so they have begun transforming this place into the library and community center they want. Volunteer librarians and donations of hundreds of books have transformed the field house into a near-functioning library, proving we don’t need these politicians and the banks and businesses they serve to provide for our needs.

The predominantly Latina mothers are beginning to see this as more than a struggle for a school library because they now know it is simply 1 of 160 Chicago schools, mainly black and Latino, that don’t have libraries!

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