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!”
Labor Day 2022 presents the working class with two choices. One is with the AFL-CIO and the Biden administration, and the other is through the development of an independent movement of the working class.
This is the report delivered by Eric London to the 2022 International May Day Online Rally held on May 1. London is a writer for the WSWS and a leading member of the Socialist Equality Party (US).
Europe’s working class is facing the greatest assault on its standard of living in a century, when postwar inflation and the aftermath of the 1929 stock market crash destroyed the livelihoods of large segments of the working and middle classes.
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 potential for a united struggle involving railroaders and other key sections of the working class was the main theme of the meeting.
This statement was delivered by an autoworker at a public meeting Wednesday sponsored by the Railroad Workers Rank-and-File Committee.
With the vote, the next stage of the fight begins. Under conditions where the rail carriers have refused to give up anything for three years, there is no avenue left for railroaders to win their demands except by launching a powerful national strike to bring the carriers to their knees.
This is the founding statement issued by the newly-formed Renault-Nissan autoworkers Rank-and-File Committee at the global auto giant’s car assembly plant on the outskirts of Chennai, India.
Over 300,000 workers and youth marched yesterday in France in a day of action protesting inflation and the Macron government’s attempts to crush a nationwide refinery strike.
High schoolers across France blockaded 100 high schools and protested at hundreds more on Tuesday in support of striking refinery workers.
Doctors across Peru began a two-day walkout to press funding demands, while 1,500 University of Minnesota service workers are threatening strike action over contract issues.
Around 140,000 people attended a Paris rally against inflation and high living costs, including a number of student youth opposed to President Macron’s social and military policies.
The UAW apparatus opposed a 30 day extension of the election deadline because it assumed, correctly, that it would result in a substantial increase in the opposition vote, and that many of those votes would be for the socialist candidate, Will Lehman.
The decision by Judge Lawson brushed aside the fact that barely 10 percent of UAW members had cast ballots by the cutoff date, accepting the lying claims of the union and federal Monitor that the election was conducted fairly.
US District Court judge David M. Lawson sided with the United Auto Workers and the court-appointed Monitor, denying Lehman’s effort to extend the ballot deadline to ensure the right to vote for all workers.
This statement was delivered by an autoworker at a public meeting Wednesday sponsored by the Railroad Workers Rank-and-File Committee.
“The Union has had 28 years of my fees for basically nothing. We need a plan and discussion on what needs to be done.”
The strike wave in the UK is part of an upsurge of struggle throughout Europe and internationally including a one-day national walkout by public sector workers in Portugal last week and stoppages by oil refineries workers in France and the Netherlands.
The determination of nurses to fight is running up against a union bureaucracy that is doing everything possible to wrap up the dispute and ram through a sell-out deal.
A paramedic with 10 years experience discusses the city’s negligent response to the pandemic and the consequences that it has had for his colleagues’ mental and physical health.
The already dramatic social plight of German students is growing worse. According to the latest figures from the German Federal Statistics Bureau, more than a third of all students were at risk of poverty in 2021.
This brazen attack on workers’ democracy is a warning of the ruthless methods that the NTEU will use against all workers as it seeks to enforce wage-cutting deals at universities across the country.
The Labor Party has been in power in Victoria for 19 of the past 23 years, and its “demonstrated track record” is one of systematic underfunding of public schools, imposing real wage cuts and higher workloads on teaching staff, and promoting the publicly-subsidised private school system.
The strike wave in the UK is part of an upsurge of struggle throughout Europe and internationally including a one-day national walkout by public sector workers in Portugal last week and stoppages by oil refineries workers in France and the Netherlands.
Workers should reject attempts by the unions to sell out their strikes and expand their struggles throughout the working class.
The potential for a united struggle involving railroaders and other key sections of the working class was the main theme of the meeting.
Workers were originally set to strike on October 21 until the union agreed to federal mediation less than 24 hours before the October 20 deadline. But those talks were later canceled, and the membership voted to strike at a “special meeting” held on November 18.
The strike wave in the UK is part of an upsurge of struggle throughout Europe and internationally including a one-day national walkout by public sector workers in Portugal last week and stoppages by oil refineries workers in France and the Netherlands.
Amazon Japan workers are seeking a way forward as the Japanese working class faces declining real wages and a severe crisis of overwork.
The incident occurred amid extraordinarily high tensions at the warehouse, where workers are still without a contract despite having voted to unionize in March, and where dozens of workers were suspended last month for refusing to work after a fire.
An Amazon delivery driver in Pittsburgh speaks about the working conditions and calls upon fellow drivers and warehouse workers to unite to form a rank-and-file committee.
The setback for ALU at ONT8 does not reflect satisfaction by Amazon workers with their working conditions. But since ingratiating itself with the Democrats and union bureaucracy, it has been increasingly unable to appeal to rank-and-file anger.
The latest deaths follow a spate of fatalities and serious injuries in mining operations across the state last year.
The firedamp explosion that killed 41 workers and injured many at the Turkish Hard Coal Enterprises’ Amasra Plant Directorate mine in Bartın Friday was entirely preventable.
The mine explosion in Amasra that has killed at least 41 Turkish miners is an indictment of the capitalist system, the ruling class and the government led by President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.
As with the long list of previous mine disasters and deaths in this region, no company, no government agency, no trade union, has been held accountable.
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.
