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.
Instead of participating in a race to the bottom against low-paid, precariously employed delivery workers, we must turn to these workers and fight to rally them alongside us, for a joint struggle, based on our common class interests for well-paid and secure jobs for all.
The strike in Australia's most populous state shows that nurses want to fight cuts to their wages and conditions. But they are in a struggle against the Labor government and the union bureaucracy.
It has become absolutely clear that if we are to win this strike, we have to overthrow the dead weight of the IAM union bureaucracy.
The fact that Labour Minister Steven MacKinnon participated in the talks Thursday underscores that Trudeau’s Liberals have already begun their preparations to enact strikebreaking legislation, just like they did in 2018. But the CUPW leadership says nothing about this threat, and has struck a deal with management to postpone our strike.
The union is facilitating the destruction of a portion of its membership. This is the logical follow-up to the sellout contract agreed to by SAG-AFTRA after a lengthy strike last year.
We recently spoke to stuntwoman-actress Michelle Shock about the SAG-AFTRA contract and the general situation in the film and television industry.
When only a little more than a third of the membership bothers to vote in such circumstances, this has to be considered a vote of non-confidence in the union leadership.
The Drescher-Crabtree-Ireland leadership and the national board as a whole have proven themselves to be conscious agents of the corporate predators.
According to the Detroit News, the automaker has laid off nearly 4,000 workers in Detroit and Toledo metro areas since September alone.
United and effective action by Stellantis workers worldwide can only be achieved by the rank-and-file in direct opposition to the economic nationalism and corporatism of the trade union bureaucracy.
While the company has stated the closure would take place in mid-2026, it is already escalating its attacks on jobs, with “temporary” months-long layoffs beginning in December.
The global character of the cuts requires an internationally unified response of the working class. Job cuts in the auto industry are escalating worldwide as employers seek to slash costs in the EV transition.
The lawsuit, launched by the ACLU in California, alleges that the summary banishment by the University of California Regents was illegal.
Suspensions, banishments, withholding of diplomas, and demands for letters of apology are among the weapons used to attack freedom of speech.
The significance of the strike, and the police-state measures used to end it, are that they anticipate an even broader and more explosive confrontation between the working class, which is being forced to pay the cost of war, and American and world imperialism.
The UAW apparatus is a critical instrument of the Biden administration, which is relying on the discredited labor bureaucracy to hold back opposition to US imperialism’s wars for global domination.
The breakdown of talks is an exposure of the supposed “victory” declared by the ILA after shutting down a three day strike by 45,000 workers in October.
After two months on strike, 525 Eaton workers in Jackson, Michigan were forced by the UAW bureaucracy to vote on a fourth contract proposal, which was almost identical to the three they rejected before.
Boeing is determined to impose the cost of the strike, estimated at over $10 billion, onto the backs of workers themselves.
Leaders from the Transport Workers Union (TWU) Local 234 unilaterally overturned the will of transit workers to strike as their one-year contract expired last week.
This is the first major new strike in the US since this month’s presidential election. Trump is seeking to convert the presidency into a fascist dictatorship, the most extreme form of government of, by and for the corporate oligarchy.
The WHO said that in 2023 measles surged 20 percent above the previous year, underscoring the need to vaccinate against this dreadfully contagious disease.
“I have only worked two years and I feel like I am done. It’s such an unsustainable job, the hours, the workload.”
NSWNMA officials have stepped up their divisive claims that nurses and midwives are being discriminated against because they work in a female dominated industry.
Labor is intent on outdoing the Liberal-National Coalition opposition in making overseas students, along with immigrants and refugees, scapegoats for the intensifying cost-of-living, housing and social crisis affecting millions of working-class households.
This is the first major new strike in the US since this month’s presidential election. Trump is seeking to convert the presidency into a fascist dictatorship, the most extreme form of government of, by and for the corporate oligarchy.
“The NSWTF gave in. They could have fought more for a better deal. They are not in touch with what it’s like in the schools.”
UCLA astrophysics professor Daniel McKeown became homeless after working a year with a paltry salary. McKeown has been retaliated against by the administration for his outspoken social media posts denouncing UCLA’s refusal to renegotiate a livable wage for his work.
Instead of participating in a race to the bottom against low-paid, precariously employed delivery workers, we must turn to these workers and fight to rally them alongside us, for a joint struggle, based on our common class interests for well-paid and secure jobs for all.
With the ALU and the Teamsters offering no strategy against Amazon, workers at the JFK8 fulfillment center in Staten Island, New York, must seize the initiative in their struggle against the retail giant.
The KSBD air hub, which opened in March of 2021, is one of Amazon’s largest facilities on the West Coast.
Last week about 100 package delivery drivers at Amazon’s DIL7 Delivery Station in Skokie, IL went on strike demanding wage increases, a standard 40-hour work week, and to protest union busting efforts by the company.
After more than 10 weeks on strike, workers at Marathon Detroit Refinery are determined to win improved wages and stop subcontracting, healthcare cuts and dangerous work schedules.
Chemical leaks this week at petrochemical plants in Baton Rouge and a Houston suburb killed two workers and caused dozens of serious injuries. The facilities had been cited repeatedly for safety and environmental violations.
The Scottish pseudo-left aim to tie workers at Grangemouth to the “just transition” or “workers’ transition” fraud proposed by the Unite trade union at the closure-threatened oil refinery.
More than 270 workers went on strike Wednesday morning to demand substantial wage increases and an end to exhausting work schedules that threaten the health and safety of workers and the surrounding working-class community in southwest Detroit.
The police’s murderous tactics, dubbed “surrender or starve”, have caused outrage in South Africa where unemployment has soared to 42 percent and economic desperation is widespread in the world’s most unequal society.
The company is also seeking to impose further real wage cuts for remaining workers at the facility.
Siberian miners began a hunger strike over unpaid wages on Monday, four days after three were killed in a gold mine collapse in the Russian Far East.
Two deaths during August at the Byerwen Coal Mine brought the official number of miners who have lost their lives in the state of Queensland’s mining sector during the past decade to 26.
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.
