LOS ANGELES—"The union never kept any of their promises to us," said a woman janitor who reads Red Flag.
Another worker, also a Red Flag reader, said, "The owners are laying off workers and increasing the work load of the rest of us. Where I work, when we face these attacks, we workers act together, but in other building they don't. The union leaders don't organize the workers."
In the past, the "Justice for Janitors" union campaign was used to bring immigrant workers and their supporters to energize the Democratic Party. Today, workers' centers are also being used as a model to organize low-paid workers. The centers reach out to low-paid workers, especially immigrants, who are not union members, to join and promote the fight to make capitalism "fairer."
At their recent convention, AFL-CIO leaders, facing a decline to 11% of the US workforce, called for reaching out to all workers, in unions and not in unions. They plan to fight for higher minimum wage laws, immigration reform, and "fixing" Obamacare under the leadership of the Democratic Party. Richard Trumka, head of the AFL-CIO, recognized workers from Walmart and McDonalds for their struggles. He also pushed for jobs rebuilding the US infrastructure, a plan supported by the Council on Foreign Relations as part of the US bosses' preparations for wider war on the cheap.
While the union leaders talk about "shared prosperity" and inclusiveness, workers' wages are being cut, along with pensions, health care and other benefits. As the US Empire declines, the war budget keeps growing.
The AFL-CIO is trying to win angry workers to patriotically work for low wages and fight for the US bosses, seeing reform and voting for the capitalist Democratic Party as the way forward. Their campaign includes organizing fast food, Walmart, and other workers who are furious that they can't live on their wages.
After the convention, the California legislature passed a law raising the minimum wage to $9 in 2014 and $10 in 2016, not adjusted to inflation. This "victory" means continued wage slavery, as millions see their wages pushed down to the minimum.
The AFL-CIO and the US bosses behind it fear the rising anger of the working class—in the US and worldwide. They want every US worker to join their patriotic reformism.
Those who become involved in the AFL-CIO campaign will be sorely disappointed and disillusioned as many janitors are. The unions, the Democratic Party and the US bosses cannot and will not deliver on their promises to improve workers' lives. The capitalist system is set up to make profits by exploiting workers. Unions do not seek to end that, but only to negotiate the terms of our exploitation and divert us from communist revolution.
The capitalist-imperialist bosses in crisis are preparing for wider wars and world war over control of those profits—-at the expense of our health and lives. No union aims to or can end their rule. Masses of angry workers will find no relief with the AFL-CIO's new plan. However, they will be open to liberation through Red Flag and the fight for communism.
Spreading Red Flag to the workers whom the AFL-CIO is targeting with their campaign to reform capitalism can energize and mob-ilize masses of workers for communism! They can see that a system based on grinding workers down for profit can't be reformed to meet our needs, that only a communist system of collectively producing without bosses or money can meet those needs.
We don't need unions; we need a mass international communist party, ICWP, that mobilizes workers, soldiers and students to destroy the profit system. Masses of workers will lead society to meet our class' needs, with no bosses, competition, profit or profit wars. Only mobilizing directly for communist revolution can meet workers' needs.
In communism, the mass party of millions, mobilizing tens of millions more, will lead society. We won't have unions because we won't sell our labor power or negotiate the terms of our exploitation— there won't be any. Workers will build growing collectives to develop communists producing only what our class needs.