Letters of January 18

SEIU No Cure for Attacks on Hospital Workers

I have been working at a Chicago area hospital for the past two years. My department consists of workers from all over the world —India, Haiti, Nigeria, South America and Eastern Europe, as well as native-born blacks and whites. The unions encourage workers to be divided, instead of uniting against all layoffs. We fight to recognize that attacks on us are racist and sexist, and fight back against these divisions on a class basis.

One of the first agitations we organized was a meeting with our division boss about two supervisors who were disrespecting us. One co-worker helped organize people to the meeting. We wrote up grievances against the supervisors and struggled with workers to lend their names and support to the grievances. The director denied all the complaints, but several months later, the supervisors were fired. Unfortunately, this was only the beginning of our troubles.

An ongoing struggle is to help a ventilator-dependent patient stay alive by preventing his transfer to a shoddy nursing home (see CHALLENGE 11/2/11). An entire shift picketed in front of the hospital supporting the patient, and protesting layoffs. The county bosses closed the hospital where twelve ventilator dependent patients lived for many years. All but two have died since being transferred to under-staffed nursing homes.

Most recently, workers confronted the bosses about impending layoffs, since the closing of another county hospital and reducing services at a third public hospital. The hospital bosses denied knowing about the layoffs, and said it was in the hands of the head of the human resources department, who used to be vice-president of a local in our SEIU union. The union leaders and politicians go together like hand in glove. It is the job of union leaders to steer workers to accept layoffs and cuts, and manipulate us into allying ourselves with politicians (see CHALLENGE 11/16/11).

Before we could confront the union misleaders, three workers were laid off. An outpouring of workers confronted the union president, who played dumb. In reality, the union facilitated the layoff by organizing the displacement of workers.

We were invited to a negotiations meeting later the same morning at which the bosses’ lawyer said they would “look into it.” SEIU has been negotiating for a new contract for three and a half years, and has failed to organize workers towards direct action, even after union members overwhelmingly voted to authorize a strike. At the last union meeting, the president casually announced 100 layoffs.

The union local includes thousands of members who work for the government, schools, parks, and jails. It has the capacity to shut down a significant portion of the state, but is unwilling to lead any militant fight-back. In Wisconsin, the unions failed to shut down the state by not striking; instead they submitted to the destruction of collective bargaining for public employees. Negotiating with the bosses’ cronies is a dead-end road for workers. In fact, the union leaders are satisfied with hundreds of jobless workers.

The unions reproduce the exploitative worker-capitalist relationship. They have no interest in smashing the bosses’ and their state, because they reap benefits from it. What we need is communist leadership, fighting back as a worker, for a worker-run hospital and more. PLP strives to unite the workers against the layoffs, and to fight for communist revolution. Working-class unity, under communist leadership will defeat all bosses and their agents.

Hospital worker

CHALLENGE On the Mark for This Emerging Red

I write this after having been separated from PLP for many years. I was active in college, but fell away after graduating and later going to law school.

I used to read CHALLENGE regularly; I write this to say that your analysis of the global political-economic situation was at least ten years ahead of its time. In the wake of the September 11 attack in New York, CHALLENGE warned us that the government’s new focus on “homeland security” would lay the foundation for fascism if and when capitalism suffered its next crisis.

As it stands, Al Qaeda currently has fewer than a dozen active members (even by the CIA’s estimate). Our “democratic” president has dispatched Osama bin Laden. Yet Congress and the president are poised to legalize martial law. The National Defense Authorization Act for fiscal year 2012 declares U.S. soil to be a “battlefield.” Anyone suspected of terrorist activity can be detained indefinitely without trial (and no doubt subjected to “enhanced interrogation” during that time).

Let us not lose sight of the timing of this. Al Qaeda is less of a threat than ever. What does threaten the established order is the burgeoning class consciousness that materialized as the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement. At least one leaked memorandum from London has attempted to link OWS members with “terrorist” organizations.

In the years since September 11, these same police organizations have received paramilitary training and equipment from the federal government — at least one city in Georgia has even received an amphibious tank. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has hosted 18-city conference calls to help coordinate the police response to the OWS protests. Armed and armored DHS police were present during a recent raid on Occupy San Francisco (photographs exist).

Now we can all see that both Republicans and Democrats agree on the issues that matter most to the ruling class (or “the 1%” as the OWS is calling it these days). Class-conscious working people are the threat, and fascism/war are the solutions.

In short: you were right. Here’s 50 bucks. Keep it up.

Turning Red Again

Thanks-for-Fighting-Racism Feast

The 26th annual Thanks-for-Fighting-Racism Feast in Washington, DC was a huge success. Fifty friends, comrades and workers participated in answer to the genocidal Thanksgiving Day. This potluck celebrates our multi-racial, international unity and discusses the anti-racist struggles going on locally and worldwide.

The first speaker recounted the history of PL’s fight against racism from Harlem to Prince Georges County. PL has been fighting policy brutality, racist courts, and the KKK. Next was a speech regarding the struggle against HIV and the racism which plagues those involved in this fight.

Then, an Occupier reported on the latest developments at Occupy DC, where the DC PL’ers facilitated teach-ins, joined actions and general assemblies, and sold CHALLENGE regularly at the site. The Occupy movement is being steered towards electoral politics, and it is important for PL’ers to continue building for communism at these movements.

Another comrade described the struggle at Metro Bus. Due to the union misleaders selling out to the bosses, the new contract gave puny raises, took back health care benefits and raided the pension fund. The black and Latino workers will suffer the most. We must point out no one is secure under capitalism. Lastly, a comrade gave stirring closing remarks about the personal experiences that led him to join PLP.

The Thanks-for-Fighting-Racism Feast was a big hit. We will continue inviting friends to this event so they can see what the long haul, militant, multi-racial struggle looks like. The revolution may not be a tea party, but it can start with a feast, as long as it is a Thanks-for-Fighting-Racism Feast!

DC comrade

Transit Workers Need Class War Leadership

The December 3rd NYC TWU (Transit Workers Union) general membership meeting left me feeling transit workers were being set up to lose. There were two hours of speeches about unions mobilizing politicians trying to roll back the bosses’ nation-wide war on workers’ rights and even media mention of charges of “class warfare” because the TWU had given some support to the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement.

That movement has changed the bosses’ nation-wide austerity message to one that capitalist exploitation by the rich bosses needs to be attacked. To the embarrassment of the union movement, workers everywhere are picking up on the class warfare idea that reflects their reality and are demanding leadership willing to take on their parasitic employers.

During the meeting, I heard nothing about mobilizing for a strike, which was never mentioned even though it would be overwhelmingly supported by transit workers if the MTA bosses insisted on a big give-back contract, which seems likely. Strikes are a vital weapon workers have historically used to win most of the benefits they have today, which are rapidly being lost. The decades-long decline of the labor movement and worker compensation can be traced both to union “leaders” who have life-styles more like politicians and CEOs and to workers who have allowed themselves to be used as powerless voters instead of the producers of all wealth. Workers must understand their power and return to organizing class warfare to secure their needs.

At the meeting, over 40 workers lined up behind two mikes for a very brief question-only session that ended after only six speakers because, I believe, the comments were becoming too hot to handle. One worker forced a resolution demanding re-hiring of all 1,000-plus workers laid off. It passed unanimously. Another worker asked how the union can begin negotiating the MTA’s three-year wage freeze and give-back proposals without counter demands and a no-contract-no-work deadline. The worker ahead of me on the mike line was told his question would end the session. He said he would give up his question to ask why all the other workers were not being allowed to speak.

Although I didn’t get to speak, I wanted to raise  the class warfare idea by asking why the TWU doesn’t demand that the bosses who benefit from mass transit be forced to pay for the system which provides access to their businesses, which in turn produces hundreds of billions in profits off transit workers’ labor. I listed the multi-trillion dollar real estate industry, tens of thousands of stores like Macy’s, the multi-billion-dollar tourist industry and the trillion-dollars-per-day Wall Street transactions that would lose more than half their value without workers’ and consumers’ access to mass transit produced by our work.

Actually, at one time the real estate, department store and business  interests used to pay most of the operating costs for mass transit. Now all costs are forced on riders and taxpayers.

I would have asked how bankers and bondholders get away with stealing two billion dollars every year in transit debt payments from MTA fares paid by millions of mostly black, Latino and immigrant workers every day.

Transit workers have a long history of class war against the bosses, from the Great Depression to the 1966 NYC strike that broke the nation-wide wage freeze (used to finance the Vietnam War), to the Civil Rights movement. Many organizing these struggles were communists and anti-racists who used class warfare — strikes, anti-racism and labor solidarity — because they understood that those actions supported all workers’ needs which capitalism could never provide.

The bosses can survive recessions, depressions and wars but their greatest fear is that the working class, armed with communist ideas, will unite and turn the bosses’ class war against workers into a war against the capitalist predatory profit system to create a communist society.

Transit worker