FIGHT FOR COMMUNISM!
International Communist Workers Party
|
|
FIGHT FOR COMMUNISM! |
International Communist Workers Party | |
| |
| |
|
| |
|
| |
| |
My comrades and I today went to an industrial area to distribute our material at a company that makes tanks for oil, petrol, for SAPC, Coca-Cola, etc. Those workers are represented by National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (NUMSA) because it’s an industrial firm.
The comrade who invited us is very unhappy about how NUMSA is run in the workplace because those shop stewards are far away from the workers. They don’t deliver any of the workers’ grievances and all those issues. So he invited us to go there and distribute our communist material. When we went there today at lunch time, we distributed almost all the 200 copies of Red Flag that we took. We only came back with about 30 copies so we distributed about 170 copies.
The response we actually got from the workers was very positive. We met another older man who has worked at that firm for 25 years. He’s also afraid now to retire because of the new legislation the government passed. The workers will only get 30% of their provident (retirement) fund. The other 70% will be controlled by the government. So people were very angry because NUMSA and other unions were supposed to be fighting this legislation. But they didn’t do anything.
So as we listened to the workers we tried to explain to them that it doesn’t help only talking about it, that we have to stand up and do something and that they should organize the other workers inside the firm so that they can present a united front to be able to defeat the capitalists.
Most of these workers there have not struck for 2 years because of NUMSA. NUMSA does not organize the workers to strike. So we told those workers that in order to ensure the defeat of capitalism we should organize the workers so they can be able to strike and also to join the Party. That’s the main objective of these distributions, to get as many workers as possible to join the Party to fight the scourge of capitalism.
So that’s one thing we touched on with the workers, how are we going to organize the workers. One worker asked, “Can you play the role of the union?” We said we can’t play that role because the union will be negotiating for reforms. We said we don’t want any reforms to this system. It’s too much of a problem, reforms don’t work. Capitalism needs to be eradicated, all of it. We can’t eradicate it without the unity of the working class. So we should work towards the unification of the working class so that we can be able to overthrow capitalism.