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.
Working in close concert with management, the union effectively ambushed the workers, forcing them to immediately vote on a contract they had not seen.
Elect rank-and-file committees and organize for a re-vote of both the ratification vote and the national officers election! There must be rank-and-file oversight of both elections!
Quebec's hard-right CAQ government is determined to impoverish public sector employees, cut social spending and privatize public services.
Fearing growing rank-and-file anger over their inaction, the unions have connived with Renault-Nissan management to ambush us—forcing us to vote on an agreement that we haven’t seen, let alone studied and discussed.
UC workers speak about the role of the UAW imposing sellout contracts, and share their thoughts on Will Lehman’s campaign for UAW president.
Elect rank-and-file committees and organize for a re-vote of both the ratification vote and the national officers election! There must be rank-and-file oversight of both elections!
The appeal details the anti-democratic measures the union took to ram through a “yes” vote in the disputed contract.
The ratification follows the shutdown of a nearly four-week strike in which the union leadership ordered part-time faculty back to work weeks before a finalized tentative agreement was arrived at.
Lehman is demanding that all candidates be placed on the ballot in the runoff or that the elections be re-held, citing widespread and deliberate voter suppression, which resulted in a catastrophically low turnout of less than 10 percent.
Caterpillar worker are heading into a class battle this year which will prove to be of historic significance.
Stellantis Corporation, the current owner of the Chrysler/Jeep franchise in the US, issued a letter to its employees stating that medical appointments or sickness will no longer be considered an excused absence, implicitly, even in the case of COVID-19 infection.
Autoworkers in Detroit and Chicago have expressed support for the official protest filed by Mack Trucks workers and United Auto Workers presidential candidate Will Lehman over the results of the first round of the UAW election, which concluded in November 2022.
To prevent the impending sellout, all public sector workers must break free of the control of Verdi and the other unions and build independent rank-and-file committees.
In a recently published global survey and in interviews with the World Socialist Web Site, Amazon workers described their dangerous and inhuman working conditions.
Rail workers should deliver an emphatic “No” vote in any ballot. But this is not enough. Lynch and the executive have led their fight down a dead end.
Lynch, hailed as a militant workers’ leader by the media and pseudo-left groups, is working intimately with the rail employers and the government on a sell-out deal while rank-and-file workers have been kept in the dark.
To prevent the impending sellout, all public sector workers must break free of the control of Verdi and the other unions and build independent rank-and-file committees.
Although Quebec’s nurses have been complaining bitterly about forced overtime and inhumane working conditions for years, the province's premier tried to present the dispute as an isolated problem.
On the picket lines physiotherapists emphasised the issues of patient safety, stress and burnout, which have been highly exacerbated by staff shortages among physiotherapists.
The DSA is a pro-capitalist organization staffed by union functionaries, Democratic Party officials and other careerists whose role is to prevent workers, who are becoming radicalized and moving to the left, from finding a genuinely independent road.
Anger and oppositional sentiment must be organised in 2023! The Committee for Public Education urges educators to form rank-and-file committees in your schools.
The right-wing witch-hunt of John Comaroff at Harvard University continued Tuesday with a stage-managed protest during his first class of the semester.
The impact of real terms cuts in pay, the excessive workload of educators, is exacerbated by the lack of recruitment and high levels of stress and anxiety across the sector.
Workers voted to authorize a strike by 94 percent in November. They are fighting for higher wages to meet the rising cost of living in Seattle, one of the most expensive cities in the United States.
In a recently published global survey and in interviews with the World Socialist Web Site, Amazon workers described their dangerous and inhuman working conditions.
The strike demonstrates the willingness of Amazon workers to fight for significantly improved wages and conditions. But the GMB union has nothing in common with these aims.
The fulfillment center at Martorelles, opened in October 2017, is to close on April 22, threatening 800 jobs amid a global onslaught on tech and e-commerce jobs.
The craven worship of billionaire Amazon founder Jeff Bezos by members of the Māori elite highlights the fact that the fundamental division in society is not race, but class.
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 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.
