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.
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.
Actors have made sacrifices for months, losing work, income and possibly homes or apartments, so that union officials could sell them down the river in secret negotiations.
Actors will have to mobilize themselves to prevent this sellout, which is already being celebrated by the companies, the media and the Biden White House, all of them inveterate enemies of the working class.
The UAW has delayed announcing details of the agreement with management, further enraging workers.
A young temp worker at Mack Assembly in Detroit speaks about the 2023 contract and the continuing attack on temp workers.
As at the Big Three, Mack is now preparing to implement plans for speed-up and mandatory overtime following the UAW’s betrayal of the strike.
The Big Three automakers are accelerating plans to slash jobs, intensify the pace and length of work, and restructure their operations.
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.
The student workers are demanding a stipend, but the union is ceding the initiative to the university’s administration.
The focus on the supply chain as a national security issue is an ominous warning that, on top of the proxy war against Russia in Ukraine and the Israeli genocide in Gaza, Washington is moving rapidly towards opening a third front, this time against China.
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.”
Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear declared a State of Emergency with a half-mile evacuation zone implemented.
The rank-and-file must now draw up their own red lines for the dispute and demand oversight of all further negotiations, rather than closed-door meetings of the company and Unite officials.
The online petitions and active participation of thousands of health workers in mass protests expose the vast gulf between the medical practitioners and the institutions purporting to represent them.
In Alabama, two local hospitals—Princeton Baptist Medical Center in Birmingham, and Shelby Baptist Medical Center in Alabaster—closed their programs for pregnancy and maternal care on October 25.
Hundreds of nurses, midwives, doctors and other health workers, horrified by the criminal targeting of hospitals and civilians in Gaza and the West Bank, protested in Melbourne and Sydney.
Laboratory workers, employed by private company Awanui, play a vital role in the health system but are paid poverty wages barely above the minimum wage.
Educators must not be intimidated by this threat. If they organize a real struggle, unencumbered by the treacherous union bureaucracy, they can win their demands.
“This meeting of educators condemns the genocide being perpetrated against the Palestinian people by the Zionist State of Israel and its imperialist backers the US and others.“
“Do not live your life as you used to live before COVID and ignore something that is present and killing Australians.”
The United Federation of Teachers completely disregarded the protest by New York City educators, instead backing the pro-war line of the AFL-CIO.
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.
The new starting pay at nonunion Amazon almost closes the gap with the new starting pay at UPS, further exposing last month's Teamsters contract there as a sellout.
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.
