FIGHT FOR COMMUNISM!
	International Communist Workers Party
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“She is a dictator, a despot,” said a garment worker from Atomic Denim to a Red Flag distributor. She is one of about 140 workers—more than half of the workers in the factory—who get every issue of Red Flag.

 “Never in all the years that I’ve worked in the garment industry have they treated me like this!” said another worker.

“Are these new supervisors?” we asked.

“No. They’re the same ones. But now that they have to pay a higher minimum wage, they make us work more and harder. They keep track of every minute we work,” explained another.

“She won’t let us use our phones. A worker just pushed the button on her cell phone to see what time it was and the supervisor yelled at her to turn it off.” The bosses don’t want workers to spend even a second not producing for them.

“It’s constant pressure. One worker wrote ‘stop treating us like dogs!’ on the page where workers tear off the tickets to get paid pennies for each operation.”

A worker talked about the higher minimum wage, from $8 to $9 an hour. “The higher wage just means that prices of things we buy are higher too,” she said angrily.

“The wage system is a whip over us. We have to get rid of it with communist revolution,” said the Red Flag distributor.

“Yes, it’s a whip! That’s how they use it,” said the same worker.

Workers producing only $15 a day?

The Atomic Denim bosses threaten, “Those who can’t turn in $50 in tickets a day will be fired!”   This is the terror imposed by the whip of the wage system. Without a job, there are no wages, without wages, there is no life. That’s why we have to destroy this inhuman system.

One of the brands they sew clothes for is Diesel, which demands many very small stitches—hard, slow, detailed work. With the prices they pay and the quality they demand, the bosses claim that some workers only produce $15 or $20 a day. That is a big lie. All garment workers produce much more!

As one of the workers said, “I went to their web site and saw that Diesel jeans sell for $84 to $698 a pair in the stores.” 

Garment workers produce much use value—clothes for our class to wear—but the bosses sell it. That’s how they squeeze out of every garment worker an average of $126,000 a year.

These workers have made the bosses very rich. And what do they get? They spend their lives in the factories and only get mounting debts, arthritis and other health problems from the stress and repetitive work.

But what happens to this value that we produce? It doesn’t go to the workers. It goes into the pockets of the contractor and the store owners. It pays for their luxurious life style, and for their state apparatus (police, migra) to guarantee that we don’t rebel.

The bosses, desperate to make the highest profits in a world where more bosses are competing for shrinking markets, are pushing workers beyond their limits, and  intensifying their attacks on all workers.

As the bosses demand harder work for longer hours, we should ask, “How can the value we produce be ours?” 

“By eliminating the profit hungry bosses and their wage system, replacing it with a communist system.”

In communism, all the value workers create will be used to meet our needs.  There won’t be any bosses to steal and sell what we make for their profits. We workers will organize production to collectively produce useful clothes, food, and everything of high quality necessary for our class, while guaranteeing the safety and health of all.

Our motivation won’t be money or fear of losing a job, but to organize a safe, healthy society that meets workers’ needs worldwide. We don’t need money for this. We only need our brains and labor power.

Workers’ anger must become an unbeatable force directed against the whole capitalist system. Garment workers need to build ICWP clubs in the factories to spread Red Flag and fight for a communist world, mobilizing the masses of angry workers to take back the value we produce.

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