Garment workers taking Red Flag
Los Angeles, USA—-“The bosses do not respect our rights; they don’t even pay us the minimum wage,” shouted a garment worker from his moving car while he took a copy of Red Flag at the Koos factory. In another factory, a worker said, “In order not to pay the new minimum wage, the bosses divided the factory into three, with fewer than 25 workers in each one.”
Currently in the US, there are a variety of minimum wages. For example, the current Federal minimum wage is $9.25 an hour. California’s is $10.50 an hour. The minimum wage for the County of Los Angeles is $12 an hour, but a company located here that has 25 or fewer workers only has to pay the minimum wage of $10.50 per hour.
The bosses and their governments worldwide regulate the minimum wage. They use the lie that it is sufficient for a man or woman worker to live and have the strength to return to be exploited the next day, and at the same time to raise the next wave of wage slaves.
But we in the International Communist Workers’ Party (ICWP) fight to change this way of life. In Los Angeles, some 600 men and women garment workers receive Red Flag consistently. They know that we are fighting for a world without money or exploitation. A world where wages will be things of the past. A world where we will no longer have to sell our labor power. The workers, through ICWP, will plan what to produce to meet the needs of the whole society.
Currently, under capitalism, the governments create minimum wages supposedly to protect the workers. But reality is completely the opposite: they protect the capitalists. They use it to convince many workers that the minimum wage is determined by “neutral” institutions, and therefore it is fair and must be accepted and appreciated. Capitalism exploits the workers to produce profits for the bosses, not so that the workers can live decently.
One worker said, “In Los Angeles, to survive from month to month, a family of four needs at least 5 minimum wages. A minimum wage of $10.50 an hour is only enough for a two bedroom apartment with a minimum rent of $1,200 a month; and what about the rest of our necessities?”
The cost of living in Los Angeles is so high that many youth who make the minimum wage have to live with their parents. Workers have to live in groups of family and friends to survive. The majority don’t have enough to pay for medical insurance, much less to say that they have a secure future.
In communist society, the masses organized with the leadership of ICWP will provide what the workers need. There will be no need for wages or money. Each person will participate according to their physical capacity, skill, and commitment and each will receive according to their needs.
With the men and women garment workers, for example, we will plan the production of clothes, whether for summer or winter. How many people are there in the liberated area or place? How much is needed? Where will the materials come from? How many workers can produce this in how much time? This will apply to other basic needs like food, housing, medical care, transportation, entertainment, and others.
We will take into account that the human body is not designed to work for 50 years, for 40 hours or more a week behind a machine or crouching in the fields. Therefore it will be planned so that we all develop different kinds of work and have a life full of entertainment and activities. Work will make us calm, not stressed out.
These garment workers and millions more worldwide must fight for this world without the chains of wages. An important step is to join ICWP and participate in study groups and the distribution of our newspaper Red Flag. Join now.
Front page of this issue
