This report was given by Eric London to the Seventh Congress of the Socialist Equality Party (US) in support of the resolution titled “Build the International Workers Alliance of Rank-and-File Committees! For a global counteroffensive of the working class!”
The report issued in advance of the conference in Davos details a series of deepening crises: the ever-worsening economic outlook, the intensification of geopolitical conflicts and tensions, the deterioration of health care, and the effects of climate change.
The announcement by Google that it is laying off 12,000 workers is the latest in the intensifying jobs bloodbath in the technology sector internationally and the spearhead of a drive by the financial elite to impose the inflation crisis on the backs of the working class.
Lehman’s written protest is an encyclopedic historical record of the election, comprehensively detailing every facet of the antidemocratic conspiracy by the entrenched bureaucracy to cling to power by suppressing the vote.
We are building a network of rank-and-file committees of workers in key industries and workplaces to stop the spread of COVID-19 and save lives, and prepare for a political general strike.
The GDL rail union is looking for a deal it can sell as a success and that does not jeopardise the “profitability of the railways.”
The Mack Truck Workers Rank-and-File Committee is calling for a no vote by the largest possible margin on this garbage contract. But to decide what to do next, it is necessary to understand how we got into this situation.
The fight against war is totally connected to the fight against exploitation and inequality at home. The same US government which says there is “no money” for decent wages and jobs at home is spending hundreds of billions of dollars for unpopular and criminal wars.
Although Fain claims that UAW members “are the highest authority in the union,” his deeds show the opposite.
The Drescher-Crabtree-Ireland leadership and the national board as a whole have proven themselves to be conscious agents of the corporate predators.
Opposition continues to mount among rank and file actors and entertainment workers after details of the tentative agreement between SAG-AFTRA and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) were released last Friday.
Voting on the contract began prior to the union’s membership having a chance to examine its contents. SAG-AFTRA declared the strike “over” before the ratification process began. The agreement betrays actors’ interests all along the line and should be rejected.
The deal is a thorough-going fraud, which the union is now attempting to perpetrate on the 65,000 striking actors.
After striking Blue Cross/Blue Shield of Michigan workers have been kept in the dark for three months, the United Auto Workers bureaucracy is seeking to push through a proposed four-year agreement at ratification meetings on Tuesday.
To ensure that their returns continue to rise, shareholders are now unequivocally demanding that the 800,000 or so workers employed by manufacturers and their suppliers must take a beating.
The Rank-and-File Committee of Allison Transmission Workers has issued a statement calling on workers to prepare for strike action
Only a month ago, UAW President Shawn Fain shared a platform with Biden opposite thousands of antiwar demonstrators.
The TA is a sellout that would increase pay from only $35,700 a year to $40,000 a year, still below a living wage in the city of Los Angeles.
The struggle of academic workers at the CSU System is significantly taking place as autoworkers, also represented by the UAW, have begun their battle against the Big Three.
The tens of millions of student loan borrowers who must begin making payments in October are confronted with confusion and lack of information from the privately-owned corporations that service their debts under contract with the US Department of Education.
The banks, hedge funds, investment companies and other Wall Street parasites are raking in billions of dollars in profits from the immiseration of tens of millions of student loan borrowers and their families—perhaps a third of the US population in all.
American Airlines flight attendants voted 99.5 percent in favor of a strike, but the National Mediation Board refused to release them from legally-mandated negotiations.
The rapid development of ports, such as the one in Savannah, is aimed at providing shippers with increased flexibility, eliminating supply chain bottlenecks and positioning them to deal with work stoppages. It is also a major part of the Biden administration’s drive to World War III.
Over the past three years, Unite union leader Graham’s “leverage” strategy in dozens of pay disputes has been directed to corporate boardrooms and shareholders.
The Knoxville facility is one of 29 across the country consolidating its processing operations into mega regional centers as part of the misnamed “Delivering for America” program.
Having isolated more than 1,700 nurses at Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital for four months without strike pay, the United Steelworkers is preparing to sell them short with an inadequate agreement.
After striking Blue Cross/Blue Shield of Michigan workers have been kept in the dark for three months, the United Auto Workers bureaucracy is seeking to push through a proposed four-year agreement at ratification meetings on Tuesday.
The UAW and Blue Cross Blue Shield announced a "verbal agreement" to end the 11-week strike without meeting workers' demands
Within minutes of the deal being announced, BMA members on social media expressed their anger and feelings of betrayal.
After delivering a 95 percent strike authorization, the California Faculty Association has organized only isolated one-day strikes over four days.
The Sinai Postdoctoral Organizing Committee, which is affiliated with the United Auto Workers, has kept the workers separated from other postdocs in the same local and is preparing a betrayal.
In a direct assault on freedom of speech, the San Diego County District Attorney’s office claimed they were investigating if the cartoon could be deemed a hate crime.
According to the Education Support charity’s 2023 index, educator wellbeing has reached its lowest level in five years, with stress, insomnia and burnout all continuing to rise and working in schools described as “unsustainably demanding”.
The wrist-slap punishment for the death of Caes Gruesbeck shows the government is an enabler for the trillion-dollar company, which views workers as replaceable machines.
1,000 workers walked out according to the GMB union. Approximately 800 workers were on picket lines or took part in protests outside Amazon’s warehouse.
Workers at the JFK8 facility in Staten Island, New York, walked off the job during one of Amazon’s busiest annual sales events.
Whatever the result of the upcoming election, Amazon workers will need new organizations to mobilize their strength independent of the trade union apparatus.
At least 27 chemical incidents have occurred in Texas so far this year, the most of any state.
Gusmão’s return as prime minister will see stepped up efforts to pressure the Australian government to back his campaign to construct pipelines from Greater Sunrise to Suai, in Timor’s south.
The family charges that the company stonewalled them and is seeking documents in connection to the accident.
Chemical workers at AdvanSix in Hopewell, Virginia were browbeaten into accepting a sellout agreement which they had already rejected three times.
The massive concrete and steel structure is part of the Pontiki mining complex owned by Oklahoma-based Alliance Resource Partners L.P. (ARLP), the second-largest coal producer in the United States.
The police investigation into the 2010 disaster that killed 29 mineworkers has been dragged out until at least the end of 2023, with no guarantee that anyone will be charged over the avoidable deaths.
The combined inaction of the federal and state governments has been condemned as “tantamount to industrial manslaughter.”
UMWA President Cecil Roberts has announced that pickets are authorized to return to work at Warrior Met; there is still no contract for the miners who have been picketing for nearly two years.
Striking London United bus strikers spoke to WSWS reports during their strike this weekend.
Last May, the union pushed through a 2.25 percent increase for a two-year agreement up to December 2021. Shepherds Bush was one of three garages that voted the deal down.
A driver from Norwood told WSWS, “It’s a really difficult time. Mortgages are going up and we have to work overtime to make ends meet. Without overtime you can’t survive.”
By Unite’s own admission, it has presided over four years of below-inflation pay deals. It now wants to impose another one.
The ICFI and its affiliated Socialist Equality Parties are advancing this initiative to begin and develop a global counteroffensive of the working class against the homicidal policies of the governments controlled by the capitalist ruling class, which are responsible for the worldwide catastrophe.
This resolution was adopted unanimously by the membership of the Socialist Equality Party in the United States at its Sixth National Congress, which was held online from July 19 to July 24, 2020.
The characteristic of every great crisis is that it lays bare the contradictions that have accumulated and been suppressed for decades. All that is backward, anachronistic, corrupt, and, in the most profoundly objective sense, absurd and even irrational in the economic organization, social structure, political leadership and dominant ideology of the existing society is brutally and comprehensively exposed. The pandemic is such a crisis.
This lecture by David North examines the causes for the betrayals of the trade unions in their hostility to the class struggle and socialism, and reviews the historical conflict between the trade unions and revolutionary Marxism. It was re-published in the 2014 book, The Russian Revolution and the Unfinished 20th Century.
