A Week of Business-Labor War:

The Key is Revolution, Not Reform

SEATTLE, WASHINGTON, August 29 — Throw a stone here this week and you'll hit a picket line or rally. Labor activity reached a crescendo on Thursday, highlighting what the Seattle Times called a "summer of labor discontent." Teachers rejected the school district's contract offer and held rallies at major crossroads all over the city. Farmworkers picketed local markets like Red Apple and Trader Joe's that carry scab Sakuma Bros. berries during their month-and-ahalf- long strike. Low–wage fastfood workers rallied downtown and at various restaurants to "Strike Poverty."
Non-union farm and fast-food workers led two out of the three labor actions. The teachers' union quickly went back to the negotiating table to get a tentative agreement to rein in the rank-and-file.
Most importantly, hundreds have taken and read Red Flag. We're about to distribute every paper in the city.
The Seattle media and University of Washington historians are portraying this labor discontent as a temporary local phenomenon. They frame it in the context of trade union politics in front-page Labor Day articles and "expert" commentary.
"The current movement on behalf of lowwage workers echoes Seattle's past as a hub of labor activism," said James Gregory, a UW history professor. "Unions want … these livingwage campaigns to turn [their declining] fortunes around."
That may be what union officials want. But the mass anger among low-wage workers echoes the movement of tens of millions who have hit the streets from Brazil to Bangladesh to fight the capitalist crisis. The masses are straining to break the confines of trade-union reform, rejecting labor leaders and taking the fight directly to the bosses' state.
The picture in Red Flag of Mexican teachers attacking government offices was particularly popular with workers at picket lines, strike-vote meetings and rallies. One retired hospital worker said, "What do you call three government politicians who just got beat by angry workers? A good start!"

Finish What We Start
We should have no illusion that militant reform is enough. This same capitalist crisis has broken the traditional alliances among imperialists, making the world a more dangerous place. As the capitalist system teeters, the bosses turn on each other like the cornered rats they are.
The only way out is to mobilize the masses for communism. Unions and community groups propose better laws. Laws aren't the answer and only divert us from the solution.
We need to eliminate wage slavery altogether, and with it production for sale and profit. Collective production for need is the answer.
The Seattle Education Association talks about better school reform. We don't need better capitalist education. We need to smash capitalist education and the isolation of classrooms. We need communist education centered on work and the working class.
We have to take this fight to our industrial concentration at Boeing. Many readers in the plants are inspired by these actions, but the labor leaders work overtime separating us from our natural allies. The International Association of Mechanics is straining to keep us in the confines of companybased trade-union negotiations. We have to prepare for political strikes by reacting to each and every attempt of the masses to fight against this system of poverty.
Both Seattle mayoral candidates are also trying to win votes by getting on the bandwagon, but when push comes to shove, they both back down. "The last thing we need [is] a business-labor war," said the frontrunner Murray. There is already a "business-labor war." We need to mobilize for communist revolution in order to win it!

Communist Collective Work:

CURE FOR MTA KILLER STRESS

"Job related stress," commented an operator on hearing of the death from a heart attack of a 54 year-old MTA Division Three operator with 32 years of service. "Most operators don't get to be 60, and those who do are riddled with many serious illnesses. The few lucky to retire after 60 don't live very long."
A study by the Southern California Coalition for Occupational Safety and Health corroborates this worker's assertions. It found that jobs in the transportation sector topped the list of occupations in California with the highest number of fatalities. It also concluded that transit work is one of the top jobs with a 120 percent above the average rate for contracting nine chronic diseases such as low back pain, asthma, depression and diabetes. The results of the study were posted on the website of the Amalgamated Transit Union (ATU) in an article titled: "Driving a Bus is Hazardous to Your Health."
Recently also ATU Local 572 in Portland, Oregon, published an "Open letter to Our Trimet Passengers and Community." Trimet blamed its financial troubles on its transit workers' health insurance costs to justify raising fares.
The letter (see below) argues that transit workers' health insurance costs more "because we need medical treatment more often. Countless studies have found that the transit worker's job is more stressful and physically damaging than almost every other job."
These studies, however, have also concluded that the "vast majority of these [work-related injuries and illnesses] can and should be prevented."
What are these fearless ATU union "leaders" doing about this?
The International Union didn't utter a peep about a solution. The Portland local also proposed no solutions, but was eager to help Trimet's finances at the expense of its union members, accepting that "we are going to have to shoulder more of our health care burden created by our jobs."
Trade Unions – led by these traitors or honest officials – can't solve these problems Only communist revolution can solve our problems permanently because capitalism's wage slavery is their root cause. Under capitalism we are wage slaves performing a job that creates profits for the capitalists.
That job is the only means of survival and wellbeing for us and our families. Losing our jobs is a major catastrophe. This puts tremendous pressure on all of us to try to obey all rules and regulations.
Under communism we won't have jobs, just creative useful work. There won't be any wages or threats about losing one's work. Everyone will be provided the basic necessities of life even if they can't, or refuse to, work. That is the only way of eliminating forever the stress created by capitalism's curse of "work (be exploited) or starve!"
The secondary causes of stress – also caused by capitalism – will also be eliminated. Communism will have good free mass transportation for everyone. In the US, this means eliminating about 200 million automobiles and many of the 54 million trucks registered in 2012. This will eliminate congested, dangerous streets and roads, on which 33,000 people are killed yearly.
We will therefore have less stress and a more enjoyable work environment. Interacting with the public will be stress-free. It will be based on communist social relations of respect and comradeship which will flourish by eliminating the economic stress that engenders most, if not all, of people's antisocial behavior.
Also, no one will be expected to drive a bus or train all day, five days or more a week. Millions will be mobilized to participate in developing the technology and social arrangements to plan, build and operate a mass transportation system that will require the least driving.
Under communism, everyone will have the best health care that society can provide. The emphasis will be on prevention, not just curing. For example, mass transportation will eliminate the toxic pollution of capitalism's profit-oriented automotive industry which, besides destroying the environment, causes yearly 18,000 premature deaths in California, over 1.3 million worldwide. No union contract, no matter how "good," could ever solve MTA operators' health issues, much less stop capitalism's genocidal attacks against the world's workers and the environment. Only communism can.
Understanding that we are in a life and death struggle against capitalism should motivate us to organize a political strike to inspire millions, who are also struggling against this racist murderous system, to see the way forward: to fight for a communist world. Join ICWP, spread Red Flag and organize readers' groups to make this a reality.

Workers, Students Join Mexico "Teacher Insurrection":

NEED COMMUNIST VISION

MEXICO, Sept. 4—More than fifty thousand teachers from the National Union of Education Workers (CNTE) have been encamped in the Zócalo (Mexico City's main plaza) for days. Every day they march through the streets of Mexico City.
The teachers' main demand has been against the Law of Professional Teacher Service (Education Reform). Last Sunday, Sept. 1st, Congress approved the law, which imposes punitive evaluations: If teachers do not approve this, they will be removed from their job!
Teachers have come from Oaxaca, Michoacan, Guerrero, Puebla, Veracruz, Guanajuato, Jalisco, Chiapas, the State of Mexico, Mexico City, and elsewhere. They, along with tens of thousands of youth and workers, have converted the city into a battlefield where they face thousands of riot and mounted police.
This reform is an attack on the teachers and the whole working class. This law gives all the power to the government to evaluate, hire and fire teachers. It creates the curriculum deemed necessary for the needs of productive national and international capital, especially US imperialism. The capitalists need greater control of the working class in their fight for markets and raw materials, and for their coming war.
The education, labor and energy reforms (privatizing Pemex) are part of the US and Mexican rulers' plans to prepare to confront China economically and eventually militarily in WWIII. The US imperialists and their Mexican allies need skilled and loyal Mexican workers and soldiers to produce and fight for them for low wages. For that, they need greater political, ideological control, and police and military control, to ensure the exploitation of workers' labor power and their loyalty to capitalism-imperialism and to prevent their rebellion.
But the working class is in motion, from the teachers to the community patrols. President Peña Nieto and his government gave their report, virtually under siege, protected by thousands of riot police. Are these the beginnings of insurrection or civil war? We don't know, but what is certain is that the masses are fed up with capitalism and open to communist ideas.

Workers' Solidarity
Workers immediately showed their solidarity. Thousands come to the teachers' encampment every day to bring food, medicine, water, clothes, money and, most important, to show solidarity as class brothers and sisters.
"Aid is coming from some states, towns, UNAM students and the social organizations. Some come on bicycles, others in trucks full of aid," said a teacher.
Other groups of thousands of workers, like those in the Electricians Union, and members of "In Defense of Oil" have also taken to the streets, in solidarity with the teachers and for their own demands, creating a mass mobilization of workers. They have demonstrated in front of Congress, the Presidential House, the Interior Ministry, and the rabidly anti-worker television stations like Televisa and TV Azteca.
Today, the CNTE has convened a "Teacher Insurrection" in civil and peaceful disobedience, throughout the whole country, in the streets, plazas, and classrooms.
Taking Communist Ideas to the Teachers On Saturday, August 31st, some ICWP comrades visited the teachers' encampment in the Zócalo.
The teachers there were worried about the threat of eviction and the imminent approval of the education reform law.
Teachers from Section 10 in Mexico City were meeting, asking for more participation. However, in spite of all the anger and proposals for more struggle, they did not say that this struggle should be to eliminate exploitation, that is the capitalist wage system.
When we asked them to read Red Flag, they all took it. Some gave a donation, although the majority did not, since they have serious economic problems. Some read it with great interest.
Capitalist ideology dominates, even in the minds of many of these workers. Nationalism clouds the reality of opposing social classes (workers and bosses) and makes people believe that we need to defend the nation, where the riches really belong to the capitalists, and democracy, which really is capitalist political domination, etc.
Even if the attacks on teachers are stopped and education is "improved," it's still education to meet the needs of capitalism. We need to destroy capitalism, its education, exploitation and its banks. The need to build a communist society based on meeting the needs of the international working class and not on profits is more urgent than ever.
A new vision of communist education which breaks down the division of mental and manual labor in service to the international working class is an important part of the communist vision we put forward to these teachers.
This mass mobilization is a great opportunity to meet teachers and workers from different parts of the country, and to establish a communist political relationship with them. It is also a big opportunity to mobilize our base among teachers and students to participate in these activities with our newspaper Red Flag and to organize ICWP study groups.
More and more, a change is required in the ideology in the current protests. Red Flag is putting in its grain of sand. Much more is needed to build communist class consciousness against the wage system. We invite the teachers and the rest of the working class to join us in the struggle for communist revolution!

Fast Food Workers:

ABOLISH THE WAGE SYSTEM

LOS ANGELES, August 29--ICWP members, one of them a fast-food worker, brought our communist ideas to a mobilization at a fast-food restaurant. Fast-food workers around the country have been hitting the sidewalks in protest against their extreme exploitation. The Service Employees International Union has tried to control this anger, focusing on lobbying the legislature for a higher minimum wage.
We had good talks with young union staff workers, who were the majority of the people at the demonstration. We pointed out that the focus of the rally was not class struggle, but giving speeches for TV. We said that workers shouldn't beg for crumbs, but fight to run society, getting rid of money and wages and organizing a communist world where production would be for need, not for profit.
The staff workers we talked to are recent college graduates who got jobs with the union because they care about social justice. Many of them agreed that workers need to fight back, rather than beg the legislature for nickels and dimes. We'll keep struggling with them, as well as our fellow students and fast - food workers, to join us to fight to abolish wage slavery, rather than begging for crumbs.

What the ATU Local 572 letter said:

"Stress is the number one cause of major health problems for transit workers and is linked directly to obesity and heart disease. The second cause is one that may surprise people—no opportunity to use the restroom. Computerized transit schedules leave operators with little or no time for breaks. How do we cope? Two ways: We "hold it" for hours, and we keep ourselves dehydrated—often drinking nothing in a 14-hour stretch. Daily "holding it" and voluntary dehydration damage our internal organs, causing catastrophic long-term effects on our health. "Being confined to the driver's seat for long hours is the third major cause of illness and injury. That immobility, as well as constant road vibration, has been linked to a wide range of chronic health conditions." They have identified the problems but have no solutions.

Contact ICWP: Email: icwp@anonymousspeech.com

FIGHT FOR COMMUNISM!

International Communist Workers Party