On Tuesday, May 17, at 7:00 pm Eastern Time, the World Socialist Web Site Verizon Strike Newsletter will be holding an online call to discuss the way forward for Verizon strikers. Participating in the call will be the Socialist Equality Party presidential candidate and WSWS labor editor, Jerry White. To take part, dial 213-416-1560 and enter PIN: 581 991 086# or sign up for the Verizon Strike Newsletter to receive an email invitation.
Nearly 40,000 Verizon workers have been on strike for a month in one of the largest strikes in the US in years. Like major corporations around the US and the world, the Fortune 500 telcom giant wants to eliminate thousands of jobs, slash health care and pension benefits and turn its workforce into low-paid, casual laborers.
Verizon is mounting a massive strikebreaking operation with the full assistance of the Obama administration and state and local Democrats and Republicans. Last week, a federal judge issued an injunction against striking workers right after a New York City cop, driving a van full of scabs, ran down a worker in Queens. Another striker in Massachusetts was also hit by truck driven a strikebreaker.
The Communications Workers of America (CWA), the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) and the major labor federations are continuing their policy of isolating the strike and encouraging fatal illusions that the Democrats, who are aiding and abetting the company’s strikebreaking operations, will protect workers.
The SEP and the WSWS Verizon Strike Newsletter have championed the call for rank-and-file workers to take the conduct of the strike into their own hands, through the formation of independent strike committees that will fight for the broadest mobilization of the working class to defend striking workers.
The entire world has been divided into two warring camps: the big banks, major corporations and their political servants on one side, and the billions of working people throughout the world who are being forced to fight for their social rights on the other. The SEP is running in the US elections to unify every section of the working class, in the US and internationally, in a common political struggle for socialism and to end the capitalist system, which is the root cause of social inequality, attacks on democratic rights and the danger of world war.