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.
Dana Corporation auto parts workers announce the formation of a rank-and-file committee in Pennsylvania to link their struggles with other workers at the company and throughout the globe.
The tentative agreement released just after 3am Monday morning by the Oakland Education Association leadership is a complete betrayal of our seven-day strike and must be voted down.
The Oakland Education Association has sought to divert teachers' anger over terrible conditions into support for the same Democratic politicians who planned the budget cuts and school closures.
Anger at the union’s abandonment of the workers’ demands for wage increases that keep pace with inflation, job protection measures, and the right to work remotely is so strong among rank-and-file workers that a major PSAC component union has felt compelled to issue a call for a “No” vote.
The betrayal of the Rutgers strike by the union bureaucracies and the Democratic Party has produced an outpouring of anger and opposition by academic workers, who rightfully see their struggle as having been sold out.
The IYSSE urges Rutgers academic workers to build an independent rank-and-file committee to take leadership of the struggle out of the hands of the union bureaucracy.
After isolating striking faculty and staff, University Professionals of Illinois union sent workers back to campuses before they had voted on tentative agreements and without releasing contract details.
The IYSSE at U-M urges rank-and-file strikers to pose and demand answers to these critical questions from the GEO leadership at tonight’s all-membership meeting.
The tightly scripted, 25-minute event was aimed at projecting an air of “transparency” and militancy on the part of the UAW’s new top leadership, while they in fact prepare to carry out the same policies as their predecessors: brutal attacks on jobs, wages and working conditions at the behest of the auto companies.
Seven workers were arrested when they and dozens of others laid down their tools at the lunch hour and refused to restart the line until that night.
Workers on strike at the Clarios auto battery plant in Holland, Ohio are calling for solidarity action from GM, Ford and Stellantis workers who are facing their own contract battle in September.
Striking workers in Ohio are battling the giant auto battery manufacturer and the sabotage of the United Auto Workers bureaucracy.
The government has been spending lavishly on the military, as part of its deepening strategic alliance with US imperialism against China, while refusing to make the necessary investments in a rail system that is a crucial means of transportation for the country’s more than a billion people.
Furious over the meager across-the-board $1.56 pay increase, dockworkers along the West Coast were absent from work last Friday, leading to the closure of several terminals.
The deal would effectively transform the Transport Workers Union into a division of management to drive up worker productivity.
“I lost my day off and nearly $20,000 a year,” one worker said. “We need to strike! People need to know what is happening!”
This was not a strike, but a stunt designed to create the illusion that the union will lead a fight for decent wages and conditions.
The introduction of paying wards, to convert the free public health system to a paid service, is occurring amid a deliberate rundown of the public health system and its network of government hospitals.
The Health Workers Rank-and-File Committee supports all actions taken by workers in the sector. But the token stop-work meetings and work bans called by the HSU bureaucracy will do nothing to resolve the crisis in health.
In a mass email sent May 11, Ochsner Health CEO Peter November announced the layoff of 770 employees, approximately 2 percent of Ochsner’s workforce.
This was a blatant act of political censorship, showing that the NTEU bureaucrats are intent on stifling the democratic rights of members as they rush to push through sell-out enterprise bargaining deals at one university after the other.
In every district in Massachusetts where teachers went on strike over the past two years—or had voted to strike before last-minute negotiations behind closed doors averted action—contracts included raises that fell far below the rate of inflation.
The union has declared the agreement a “historic win,” however it provides no guaranteed staffing of counselors, paraeducators or nurses, and includes paltry wage increases that barely meet inflation.
The unions are presenting teachers with one below-inflation agreement after another in an effort to wear down their resistance and force them to accept a wage-cutting deal.
Amazon staff were protesting the company’s forced return to in-person work amid the continuing coronavirus pandemic and its lack of genuine policies toward climate change.
Strikes at Amazon warehouses show the determination of this critical group of workers to improve their conditions. But this requires a programme based on internationalism, class struggle, and the primacy of workers’ needs over Amazon’s profits.
Last week’s article in the WSWS about the death of 20 year-old Caes David Gruesbeck at an Amazon warehouse in Fort Wayne, Indiana has generated considerable discussion among Amazon workers, who have drawn comparisons to conditions in their own facilities.
Caes David Gruesbeck, a 20-year-old forklift driver, died on Monday from injuries from an accident involving an overhead conveyor system.
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.
Scott Higgins, a machinist who was nearing retirement, is the latest victim of the wave of deadly accidents in the US oil refinery and petrochemical industry.
The US federal safety agency’s fine of $156,250 for the deaths of Ben and Max Morrissey was insulting enough but the giant energy conglomerate is still contesting it.
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.
The tragic death of two young workers, Dylan Langridge and Trevor Davis, highlights the ongoing refusal of mining corporations, governments and unions to implement basic safety measures.
The fathers of two of the 29 workers killed in the 2010 Pike River mine disaster are campaigning for the release of documents and correspondence relating to a 2013 decision to drop charges against Pike River CEO Peter Whittall.
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.
